Narrator: You're listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a
podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills,
knowledge, ideas, and learning, or the SK il framework.
Dominic Church: I can be an expert in my field, I might know
more than anybody else in the whole world, but I don't know at
all. So I want to continue moving towards that expertise.
But you don't have to be an expert to be a continuous
learner. You just have to be willing to continue.
Jason Baum: Hey, everyone, it's Jason Baum, Director of Member
experience at DevOps Institute. And this is the humans of DevOps
podcast. Welcome back for another week. Glad you could
join us. Thanks for making it. So today, we are going to have a
great conversation about continuous learning. And
continuous learning is one of those things that you hear quite
a bit about, I feel like it's, it's sometimes people just kind
of cough it up to being a buzzword, you know, to get get
their teams up skilled and on pace to be the best, best selves
they can be for the workforce. But there's obviously more to
continuous learning than just that. And it's a way of life for
many, it's a mentality. And here to discuss the topic with me,
and to educate me because this is something I would like to
learn more about, I would not define myself as a continuous
learner. I think many of us feel like they wish they could be,
and might not have the time at least that's how I feel. So I'm
really excited to talk about this topic today with my guest,
Dominic church. And Dominic is the regional vice president for
K 12 sales in the Eastern US with Instructure. And prior to
that role, he was the Regional Director of Sales for Florida
and the Mid Atlantic states. Before joining before joining
instructor, Dominic served the Broward County Public Schools,
which is the sixth largest school district in the nation.
He was a teacher, instructional coach, school administrator. And
then finally, the district supervisor over instructional
materials, and digital integrations. Outside of work,
Dominic can be found spending time with his family, playing
and listening to music. By the way, everybody loves music on
this podcast, and also experimentations and cooking and
geeking out over coffee, which is one of my favorite topics.
And we will certainly address at the end of the podcast. Dominic,
thank you so much for joining us. Welcome.
Dominic Church: It's such a pleasure to be here. Jason.
Thank you.
Jason Baum: And are you ready to get human?
Dominic Church: I am. Great.
Jason Baum: So let's just dive in. The first thing we usually
like to do, when we have a very focused topic is just define it
for the listeners. And so maybe you could explain a little bit
the concept of what continuous learning is
Dominic Church: absolutely. For me as somebody that spent a good
portion of my career working directly in the field of
education. Now, sort of tangentially as somebody that
sells into the field of education, have a lot of
experience with folks talking about things like lifelong
learners. But um, to me, continuous learning really is
about having a state of mind where you are both intentional
about what you desire to learn, but also accepting of new
information as it comes along, and how it might apply to the
things that you already know. So the connection between just the
everyday experiences that you have, and where you are versus
where you might want to go. And also being willing to sort of
let the learning take you places where it may not be intentional.
You know, in my own career, I will talk in a bit I'm sure, you
know, I thought I was working towards one goal. And my
continuous learning actually took me in a totally different
direction. Like here I am doing something that I never really
formally studied for. But because I was always willing to
sort of take in new information and find a way to apply it to my
own personal life and the things that I found interesting. You
know, I've had multiple opportunities to do just very
different and interesting things.
Jason Baum: We interview some very smart people on this
podcast, which is great for me because I get to continuously
learn myself. And someone, actually, several people pointed
out to me, I think through this podcast, that life is not really
linear, you know that your experiences are what makes you
and you may set off on one path, like you said, and you find
yourself going in a completely opposite direction, a whole
different place that you never plan for in your life and then
it ends up somewhere else. And so as you're talking about
continuous learning that that popped into my head, that it
isn't necessarily you know, one straight line To get from A to
B, is, is there a difference between continuous learner and a
lifelong learner?
Dominic Church: I think lifelong learning really is about having
a vision, or a mission statement for yourself around, hey, like,
I don't ever want to stop learning new things. That's,
that's to me what when we talk about lifelong learning,
continuous learning is a little bit more intentional, it's a
little bit more of a mindset shift for people to really
absorb all the things that they're encountering, whether
it's watching videos on YouTube, or reading articles online, or,
you know, new books that they might happen to read, how do
those things connect to, you know, your overall goals and
your personal missions and visions? I think you can be a
lifelong learner without being a continuous learner, but you
can't really be a continuous learner without being a lifelong
learner.
Jason Baum: Is there a passion that you need to have to be a
continuous learner? Like, I feel like for myself, it's hard to
get motivated. Sometimes.
Dominic Church: I think the passion really has to be around
curiosity, and just like wonderment, and a passion for
people and things and an acknowledgement that you don't
know everything. Oftentimes, we become experts in a particular
field. And, you know, you get to that level of expert and some
experts, stop. But most experts recognize that the more they
know, the more they don't know. And so I think that's where that
intentionality comes in. Like, yes, I can be an expert in my
field, I might know more than anybody else in the whole world,
but I don't know it all. So I want to continue moving towards,
you know, that expertise, but you don't have to be an expert
to be a continuous learner, you just have to be willing to
continue to learn.
Jason Baum: What would you say are the main benefits of
continuous learning,
Dominic Church: that that life can take you in a whole lot of
different directions, that there's excitement, around the
unexpected, about learning something new, about letting
that learning take you to a different place. I started my
career as an elementary music teacher. That was, by the way, a
different thing. For me, I studied to be a high school band
director, that was that was my passion in college. The job
wasn't there. And I decided to, you know, take the first job
that I could get, and I fell in love with it. So that was like
the the first thing in my professional career, just
understanding that just because you intend to do something
doesn't mean that that's going to work out or be the best
possible thing for you. As I look back. You know, if if I
hadn't taken that leap of faith to do something that was
tangentially related to what I wanted to do, but not 100%
related, I wouldn't even be close to where I am today, I
might be the world's greatest high school band director. But
instead, you know, my career has weaved in bobbed through a
number of different educational related things. And then sales
related things.
Jason Baum: You know, it's funny as you say it I like, maybe I am
a continuous learner. Because
Dominic Church: I think people are then they then give
themselves credit for
Jason Baum: I learned something new. I'm a continuous learner.
Right? You're
Dominic Church: hosting this podcast, you're learning
something at least every week, all the time.
Jason Baum: But But even so from a career perspective. Yeah, I'm
one of those people who bounced from I was a communications
major focused on tell, honestly, first radio, now then
television, then ended up in community building for
nonprofits and build communities. And I've been doing
that for 16 years. But in each phase, I felt like I needed to
learn a different piece of the business. So I was on a
marketing team I was on. And honestly, it's, it's was I get
bored easily. You know, and I was told very early in my
career, as I told I had the mindset that I wanted to do that
I would tell my supervisor, I'm like, I want to learn everything
that there is to know because someday I want to be you. And,
and that can usually go well, sometimes it doesn't. But I
would also get the advice early in my career. And it would be
you know, you've heard the phrase, jack of all trades,
master of none. And that stuck with me. But it's funny the the
further in that I get, and lately I hear that's a good
thing, that it's really good to be a jack of all trades. It used
to be I feel like people would look down like you didn't know
what you want to do.
Dominic Church: I think there's a second part of that phrase to
that if you're a jack of all trades and a Master of None, but
that's better than being a master of one. I find that to be
like my life statement. I've not mastered anything. And I'm
really really good at a lot of things. And that being really,
really good at a lot of things has allowed me to pivot in my
career when things you know, weren't necessarily going my
way, I didn't have to keep banging down the same door, I
had multiple doors open to me, because of my curiosity because
of my willingness to, to constantly learn new things, I
got thrown into that last job with Broward County schools not
knowing a thing about instructional materials and
digital integrations. But I was like the guy that would take it
on. And because of that, I became familiar with the
learning management system that we were adopting and all the
textbooks that we were purchasing as a school district,
which led me to this ability to jump outside of public education
and into the corporate world. And just because one day, I
volunteered to do something that nobody else wanted to do. And so
I think, you know, that willingness to kind of put
yourself in a position of uncomfortability, when you're a
continuous learner, you're just like, that's not a problem. I'll
learn the things.
Jason Baum: I think there's two sides to it. I think there's
people like you who are like, I'm excited, I want to do it. I
take that as a challenge. And actually, I shouldn't say that
way, because I think many of us feel this way. But we also
talked about imposter syndrome. And the statistic that I threw
out the beginning of, of that panel discussion was that 90% of
people feel imposter syndrome. And then I said, the 10%, who
said they didn't are lying, because I think that's not true.
I think that everyone feels it to a degree, or maybe they just
don't know what it is. And for me, the desire to learn
everything was also that they say after 10 years, you're an
expert in your field. I don't know if that's true. I like you
said, I don't know if you're ever really a master archer.
Unless you have obtained Nirvana and you're able to levitate and
all this other stuff. I don't know if you've ever really
mastered it. So when I heard that I was like, I need to go
out and I need to learn everything. Because even though
I've attained maybe, you know, I'm going on the second decade
in the same profession. I feel like I don't know, nearly as
much as I should. And that's a motivating factor.
Dominic Church: I think, you know, the idea that a continuous
learner needs to know everything is probably a false one. I think
that we have the opportunity to learn about the things that
interest us and see how do they relate to the things that we do
or want to know. Um, you know, certainly I'm, you know, there
are people out there with different interests than me that
just those things may never interest me, and vice versa. But
I find that you can do a deep dive into your individual
interests and bring that back and apply it to life in general.
Like now that I'm in the field of sales and sales leadership, I
find myself looking at things through a different lens. You
know, I can watch you know, the YouTube video hotlines with Sean
Evans, another wonderful interviewer, where where he
challenges celebrities to eat chicken wings that range from
like, not so spicy to very, very spicy. Anyway,
Jason Baum: it's a really good, really like a great show.
Dominic Church: It's a great show, check it out on YouTube.
But I was sharing with my team the other day, like, let's watch
this episode together, because there's some stuff in here that
we can apply to the work that we do. And we sat and talked for 45
minutes about Dave Grohl, and Sean Evans having this hot wings
challenge. And like, what can we learn about sales from that? So
I think that's the thing, right? You can stay in your veins of
interests and begin to apply those things to other parts of
your life. There's my favorite professor in college, Dr.
Clifford Madsen. He's just about ready to retire at the Florida
State University this year. planted this seed long ago for
me, he said, Dominic, everything relates to everything. There's
always something that you can learn and apply to what you do.
And that's been, you know, such a blessing for me to have that
mindset. Leaving Florida State and going into the workforce,
because it's been so true for me.
Jason Baum: And we have so many tools to help us these days
where you didn't really have that, like my pool heater broke.
I what, I guess I could go call the pool guy and spend, you
know, 800 Whatever $1,000 to fix it, or I could YouTube it and I
can fix it that day. You know, there's so many tools to help
us. Or I could watch chicken wing eating contest with Dave
Grohl, which actually I need the link to that at some point.
Alright, so we've talked about how it can benefit, you know,
the individual. What about the organization?
Dominic Church: Think similarly to how continuous learning is a
mindset for the individual. It's got to be a mindset for the
organization as well. I'm blessed to work at a company
that services education, K 12 and higher ed with a laser focus
on teaching and learning, and so because of that, we want to be
very self reflective learners as well, and constantly learn, how
can our products be meeting the needs of our customers better?
You know, what, what are the things that we could be doing to
make a bigger impact in that? Space? Right, we're very mission
driven company. And so when you have a company that's committed
to being responsive to their customers, being responsive to
the environment, and being good stewards of the things that
we're responsible for, you know, we, that becomes kind of a part
of the hiring process, it becomes part of the culture of
the organization, so that you're always in a, in a mode of
learning. When I first got hired the CEO at the time, had all of
the new hires in a room and he said, Look, we're always
learning here. And if you ever see something that you think
we're doing that stupid, you got to speak up and tell us because
it's because either we'll explain why we're doing it, and
it's stupid, or we'll fix it. And so I think that that was
like really neat to see from the top this appreciation for, we
can make Mark, we can make corrections, we can learn from
the people that are in the in the building, and we can learn
from the people that are that we service as well.
Jason Baum: There's a lot of ego checking, it sounds like when it
comes to this, you know, leave your ego at the door, admit
you're wrong. Mistakes are okay, these are all and these are
DevOps principles to, by the way, you know, the, but that's
hard. And not everyone has that culture. How do you help foster
that kind of culture?
Dominic Church: I think it starts with hiring, right? You
you want to hire people that are aligned with that, because it's
a difficult one to teach. If somebody you know, comes to a
company and they're not comfortable being wrong,
sometimes it's very difficult to get them to that place. So I
think it begins with a culture of, you know, find people that
fit that, that individually are continuous learners who can
contribute to the business from a perspective of hiring to we're
always trying to bring people on with different perspectives. You
know, my, my colleagues would tell you, I have I look for
people that that lead from where they are, but and that have lots
of varied interests, because I want to have as many things for
us to draw on as a team as we possibly can. You know, I could
just go out and hire season salespeople from wherever, and
like, they may be very mechanically good at selling
things, but they don't add anything additional to the team.
And I we do this across the board, not just on my team,
we're always looking for people that that add something to the
company culture and don't just slot in, but but really bring
something new so that we can evolve as a company.
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after trial activation. So I you hear sometimes that people are
like, I'm not gonna hire someone necessarily with the background,
like not hiring off of the resume hiring nor off of the
motivation, the willingness to do and learn. But that's, that's
also a lot of, I guess. You have to have the confidence in
yourself to see talent, and motivation. How do you look at
those things? How do you how do you know someone is a continuous
learner? How can you see that?
Dominic Church: Um, there's questions that you can ask in
the interview process, but I think you know, to your point
earlier around, like resumes oftentimes are the barrier. You
know, when we have a job posting, there's hundreds of
people applying and I read every single resume that comes
through. And what I look for is people who can make connections
between their past work and the work that that this job is
supposed to do? Right? We get a lot of teachers applying for
positions at Instructure. Because they've used Canvas, and
they're familiar with it. And I counsel a lot of teachers on
LinkedIn and what have you for that? They'd say, Hey, we've
seen that you've made the transition, you know, what did
it take. And my advice to all of them usually is, you've got to
find a way to take the things that you've done in the
classroom or as an instructional coach, or any of the random jobs
that you may have had an education and find a way to
apply it to the job make the connection for me, I don't have
the time when I'm reading 100 resumes to make that connection.
So it's the ones who can think outside of the box and say, You
know what, when I was in a classroom, my customers were my
students and my families. And while I wasn't necessarily
selling products to them, I was selling ideas to them. And I was
able to do that through, you know, great communication and
setting expectations. And, you know, I did have targets that I
needed to meet quarterly as a teacher. And so if it, if an
applicant can make those connections, chances are,
they're going to be a standout in an interview process with me.
It's the ones that just like, they take the same application
that they would use to apply for a third grade teaching job to
apply for sales position with me, those are the ones I usually
walk past. Because if they if they're not able to make those
connections, then I can't do it for them.
Jason Baum: Yeah, you kind of just took us through it a little
bit. But take us through it a little bit more on your own
formal career, your career path, and making those links and going
from your university setting. You know, the school side of it
to then the sales side working for a major company for an LMS
and the implementations and all those things that come with it
that I mean, it's not a 180. But it is it is a it's a complete
departure in some respects from what you were doing.
Dominic Church: Yeah, the day to day work is very different. But
the industry, I still feel connected to the education
industry. So that's that's kind of how I rationalize it. I'm
still working with school districts, they it just happens
to be all across the country now. So you know, I started off
as an elementary music teacher, as I mentioned, and within a
couple of years of being an entry music teacher, I was very
taken by some really quality school leaders that I met and
became passionate about, that was the direction that I wanted
to go. So I went and got a master's degree while I was
working in educational leadership, with the full
intention of becoming an assistant principal and then a
principal and, and going up the school leadership path. I
interviewed 20 times before I was able to break through from
being a teacher to a school administrator. A lot of the
feedback that I got on got early on was Dominic, you're super
bright, and you've got great ideas, but your experiences are
limited to the music classroom, in an elementary school, you
need to do some different things in education before we're going
to have you make the jump. And just so happened that like a
couple of weeks later, the district's director of
innovative learning, which is like an instructional technology
position was walking through our building. And my principal said,
Oh, you've got to stop by Dominic's classroom. He's the
most techie music teacher I've ever met. And at the time, I had
built my own classroom learning management system because we
didn't have one as a district back in 2003. I had taken a you
know, Wii Remote and turned it into a touchscreen for to attach
to a projector so like, I was doing these deep dives into
weird things to try and make the music experience more engaging
from like your like
Jason Baum: Wii Tennis with a treble clef just hitting it
across like,
Dominic Church: Well, no, actually, there was this thing
where like, you could attach a Wii remote to a projector and
turn any touch any whiteboard into a touchscreen. It was
crazy. No kidding. So I like duct tape this remote control to
my projector and, and we were off and running. And, you know,
kids were coming up and touching the treble clef on the on the
white screen. And I know it was it was a lot of fun. But this
woman walked by and she was like, I'm gonna have some
positions open pretty soon you should apply. And so when the
opportunity to apply to become an instructional technology
coach arose. That was a real one ad for me. I hadn't studied
technology. I was always just interested in it. Like my dad
was has a computer science degree from a long time ago, on
mainframes and punch cards and things and I always had
computers around me, I had a Tandy trs 80 back in 1980. And,
you know, learn to program in basic on that. And so even
though I had all of these kind of tech skills, my passion was
for music and for like the softer side of things. So that's
what I studied in College. But now all of a sudden all of these
things came together for me, and being able to go and coach
teachers on how to bring technology into their classroom
in ways that make student learning more engaging and more
impactful. Well, from there, that was on a grant, and I
actually, the grant expired, and when it expired, they were gonna
send me back to music classroom, I said, I think I need to go
into a regular classroom, I think I needed at least a year
of teaching a subject or a grade level. And I ended up at an
elementary school where one of your colleagues, Roberta Ray was
the principal. And Roberta, I remember my first day I walked
into her office, and she said, Well, you're a music teacher, we
already have a music teacher, I said, Yeah, I'm not here to be a
music teacher. And she goes, Why don't know where to put you. And
I said, Put me wherever I'll figure it out. And she goes, I
think you'd be really good at fifth grade. So she slapped me
into a fifth grade classroom. And same idea where I built a
little micro blogging platform off of WordPress for our room so
that we could, you know, have our students have continuous
access to the information, whatever we learned during the
day, I wanted them to be able to go back and revisit it at night,
we did not have an LMS at the time. And so you know, having
these sorts of things in the classroom really helped make
learning stick for kids. Well, at the end of that year, I kind
of fell flat on my face. Frankly, the kids took the end
of the year test, the scores were not great. I remember going
into recruiter's office again and saying I'm sorry. Like, I
tried all of these weird things because I thought that they
would work and they clearly did it. And she was like, No, I
watched you teach and you were good at it. Just because the end
result isn't favorable doesn't mean you did things wrong. You
could sometimes do everything right and still lose. And she
was like, you're going to come back and do this again next
year. And I bet the results are going to be different. Well over
that summer, I ended up applying for another assistant principal
opening and got that job. So I never got a chance to see if a
second year of being a fifth grade teacher was was going to
be a better fit. But I got to move on to the administrative
side of things. I'm mainly due to Roberta's encouragement, and
just, um,
you know, she she saw something that maybe other people didn't
see before. And she said, you know, you've got a, a humility
about you, but also an opportunity to affect some
change, you're always trying new things. And I think we need to
get that into school leadership. And so she, you know, maybe
pulled some strings, I don't know how the politics of things
were. But I, I ended up getting that, that promotion to
assistant principal job and guess what hated it. It was not
the job that I thought it was going to be it was a lot of
monitoring, lunch rooms and bus duty and things like that. And I
was just, you know, not in love with that work. But it that too
was a learning experience for me, like sometimes you can go
after something and then you achieve it. And it's not exactly
what you thought it was gonna be. So I've, you know,
relatively soon found a way to move into back into the
districts. I really did love working at the district level
when I was an instructional facilitator, because I love
systems and, and building systems that could touch 240
schools in Broward County 227,000 Students 14,000 teachers
really spoke to me more than managing the bus line at one
school. And so that became my passion for a few years, I got
to just invent whole cloth, our adoptions and instructional
materials, monitoring processes, I got to be part of the team
that was evaluating learning management systems when finally
we're going to get one. And then through that process, I decided,
I'm going to raise my hand and say, hey, I want to be the
administrator of this thing, too. And so I got a chance to
dive into the backend of it. And I learned a lot. We had some
excellent folks from Instructure that were embedded with us that
I was learning from throughout that time, and made some great
connections there. Fast forward a few years later, and the sales
person that sold us canvas, reached out to me and said, Hey,
I'm leaving, I'm going to another company, you should
apply for my job. And I said, sales, like I've not done sales.
I've spent, you know, almost 17 years in public education. He's
like, no, no, you've got you've got it. And I applied for that.
And some of the same people that that I met through the
implementation process, were on the hiring panel and recognized,
you know, the abilities that I brought as a Canvas admin, and
they recognized my ability to communicate and they said, Yeah,
you actually will be a good salesperson. And sure enough,
you know, I made that transition. I'm selling
something that I was passionate about, like that I knew could
make a difference made it easier for me to make that jump. But
it's that summation of all of those experiences that would
eventually make me a success. is full salesperson, and then that
my success as a salesperson came, came along with still my
desire to lead. I never lost that even though I didn't like
being an assistant principal, I loved leading people and
coaching people from my time as an instructional coach. And so
when the opportunity came to move up into a sales leadership
position, now things are starting to synthesize my
passion for leadership, the passion that I have for, you
know, bringing canvas to the masses, the love that I have for
this organization and for public education, it really became a
great fit for, for where I am and what I needed, where I
needed to be at this time,
Jason Baum: I think there's a few things to point out from
what you were just, you know, as you went through your, your
path, which was definitely an interesting path, is that you
had people in your corner who were encouraging you. And and,
and also saw some piece of you that could be, and I think
that's important to point out because not everybody has that
or if you don't seek that out, because it's it's important,
right as you make those transitions and, and also give
you some of that confidence, I think to move because because
transitioning is hard. And making leaps from one thing to
another, even though you might not see it immediately. You
know, if others do see that for you, or can help you to see it,
I think that's important and encourage you. You know, for
those who are on their path, just starting maybe, and you
hear the phrase continuous learning, and you're like me,
maybe you were overwhelmed at first, let's face it, and I
don't know, this kind of asking question before the question. Do
you ever just feel like burnt, your brain is done. Like, I've
learned so much. I don't feel like learning today, I'm gonna
go stick my head in a couch cushion for about four hours.
Dominic Church: Yeah, I do. There are absolutely times and,
but also, it's very difficult to turn off. Um, when I go on
vacation, like everybody brings books with them, right, you
bring a book to read on the plane, you bring a book to read
at the beach, or whatever. And it's like, I'm, even when I'm
reading fiction, I'm trying to apply it to, you know,
situations that I've encountered, you know, last
couple of weeks or something. So, I think you just sometimes
have to embrace that side of you and say, like, Hey, I'm always
going to be the person that wants to do this. But I find
that the when I do want to disengage, it's usually by
focusing on others that I'm able to stop for a second, my kids,
my wife, you know, the folks that I work with, being able to
just like, focus on their learning, instead of my own
allows me to stop for a second,
Jason Baum: a state of mindfulness I find to sing
incredibly important. So that you can kind of like reset, like
our phones, sometimes you, you hit that you get to the point
where your phone's like, I'm not gonna work anymore, if you've
been using me way too much. And now I'm just gonna stay on this
screen, good luck, reboot it. And I feel like our brains are
kind of like that, you know, these little micro computers
that we walk around with and take advantage of, we need to
reset them every now and then. So what's like a great pro tip
for those who are just kind of starting out on this journey,
and it might be overwhelmed by the term continuous learning.
Dominic Church: It doesn't have to be explicit. Just look for
things that fascinate you. It doesn't have to be work. Life is
always throwing learning opportunities at you. And so
it's that ability to make connections between new things
and your, you know, your kind of current state and allow them to
have an impact on you.
Jason Baum: You know, this is helpful for me because I think I
you know, can be overwhelming, right? continuous learning life
in general. Bouncing hard. It's hard. I'm glad we're talking
about this because, you know, I think sometimes, you know, I do
this to where I chalk it up to you know, we have these
buzzwords that you hear in the industry that are essentially
that become popular different times. I feel like right now,
everyone is home, and then continuous learning got really
you know it it's always there, but it picked up some popularity
as people were self pacing and things like that you could do
through self paced study virtual was fascinating
Dominic Church: to me, like the waves of things that happened
during the pandemic. Everybody got into sourdough bread and
everybody got into you know, tick tock and things like that.
Like, it was just fascinating to see those things come and go.
And it's because Everybody really is. Each person is a
continuous learner. Like they really are. Why would people get
become gravitated towards sourdough baking, for instance,
like, I love sourdough baking, like long before the pandemic,
so I didn't dive into that I dove into making chocolate from
from bean to bar at my house, I bought a, a crunching machine so
that I could grind chocolate beans into chocolate bar bars,
like because all of us need that outlet to learn something new.
Jason Baum: That sounds amazing. You're gonna need to send me a
chocolate bar because I'm a chocoholic. I really, I continue
to struggle. Alright, so going back to the beginning, and
geeking out over coffee. What's your favorite being?
Dominic Church: Um, I, I don't do favorites. I don't have a
favorite food or a favorite movie or a favorite bean. Um, I
get a subscription for coffee that gets delivered every couple
of weeks. And it's my favorite beans, whatever just got
delivered, because it's something new. And my curiosity
is far more power powerful than my desire to have anything
twice.
Jason Baum: And that certainly fits the theme I would say, of
the show here. Alright, so we asked one question at the end of
the podcast that is usually very personal. It's not very
personal, but it's more personal than I guess the rest of the
podcast. So today's question is, if you could be remembered for
one thing, what would it be?
Dominic Church: I want to be remembered as somebody who left
things better than he found them who had a positive impact on the
people around me, the world around me. The companies that I
worked for the kids that I taught, I hope that you know,
when the time comes for people to remember me, that people will
will look and say, You know what, my life is better because
I knew him.
Jason Baum: That's fantastic. I think that's all we could hope
for right? At the very least. Dominic, thank you so much for
joining us. It was wonderful. I really appreciate you walking us
through the topic and it was really nice to meet you.
Dominic Church: Likewise, I really appreciate being on with
you.
Jason Baum: And thank you for listening to this episode of the
humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm going to end this episode the
same way I always do encouraging you to become a member of DevOps
Institute to get access to even more great resources just like
this one. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and most of
all, stay human, live long and prosper.
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