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.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of

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