DevOps Institute

[EP71] Continuous Learning with Dominic Church

Podcasts

On this episode of the Humans of DevOps, Jason Baum is joined by Dominic Church.

They discuss:

 

  • The concept of continuous learning
  • How does continuous learning benefit individuals?
  • How can continuous learning benefit organizations?
  • How can managers/leaders foster a culture of learning/continuous improvement in their organizations?
  • Pro tips

Thanks to our episode sponsor Kolide!

Voted Best 25 DevOps Podcasts by Feedspot

 

Dominic Church is the Regional Vice President for K12 Sales in the Eastern US with Instructure. Prior to that role, he was the Regional Director of Sales for Florida and the Mid-Atlantic states. Before joining Instructure, Dominic served Broward County Public Schools (the 6th largest school district in the nation) as a teacher, instructional coach, school administrator, and finally as district supervisor over Instructional Materials and Digital Integrations. Outside of work, Dominic enjoys spending time with his family, playing and listening to music, experimentations in cooking, and geeking out over coffee.

 

Please find a lightly edited transcript below

 

Narrator 00:02
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 SKIL framework.Dominic Church 00:17
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 00:33
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 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. 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 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 02:34
It’s such a pleasure to be here. Jason. Thank you.Jason Baum 02:37
And are you ready to get human?Dominic Church 02:39
I am. Great.Jason Baum 02:41
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 02:55
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 04:18
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 a continuous learner and a lifelong learner?

Dominic Church 05:08
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 05:57
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 06:06
I think the passion really has to be around curiosity and just like wonderment, and a passion for people and things and an acknowledgment that you don’t know everything. Oftentimes, we become experts in a particular field. And, you know, you get to that level of expertise 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 06:57
What would you say are the main benefits of continuous learning,

Dominic Church 07:01
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 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 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 08:07
You know, it’s funny as you say it I like, maybe I am a continuous learner. Because

Dominic Church 08:12
I think people are then they then give themselves credit for

Jason Baum 08:15
I learned something new. I’m a continuous learner. Right? You’re

Dominic Church 08:19
hosting this podcast, you’re learning something at least every week, all the time.

Jason Baum 08:23
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 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 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 09:42
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 11:04
I think there are two sides to it. I think there are 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 12:11
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 he challenges celebrities to eat chicken wings that range from like, not so spicy to very, very spicy. Anyway,

Jason Baum 13:14
it’s a really good, really like a great show.

Dominic Church 13:17
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 14:12
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 14:47
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 a 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 building, and we can learn from the people that are that we service as well.

Jason Baum 16:21
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 16:42
I think it starts with hiring, right? 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 add something to the company culture and don’t just slot in, but really bring something new so that we can evolve as a company.

Jason Baum 17:58
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Dominic Church 19:36
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 a sales position with me, those are the ones I usually walk past. Because if they’re not able to make those connections, then I can’t do it for them.

Jason Baum 21:26
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’s a complete departure in some respects from what you were doing.

Dominic Church 21:58
Yeah, the day-to-day work is very different. But the industry, I still feel connected to the education industry. So that’s kind of how I rationalize it. I’m still working with school districts, they just happen 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 you know, Wii Remote and turned it into a touchscreen to attach to a projector like, I was doing these deep dives into weird things to try and make the music experience more engaging from like your like

Dominic Church 23:55
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 we were off and running. And, you know, kids were coming up and touching the treble clef on the white screen. And I know 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 add 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 kinds 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 the same idea where I built a little microblogging 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,

Dominic Church 27:13
you know, 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, lunchrooms 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 it. And I applied for that. And some of the same people 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 30:39
I think there are 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 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 important, right as you make those transitions and, and also give you some of that confidence, I think to move 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 31:55
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 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 32:53
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 33:36
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 34:04
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 34:43
to me, like the waves of things that happened during the pandemic. Everybody got into sourdough bread and everybody got into you know, Tiktok 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, I love sourdough baking, like long before the pandemic, so I didn’t dive into that I dove into making chocolate from bean to bar at my house, I bought 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 35:32
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 35:44
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 36:12
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 36:35
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 look and say, You know what, my life is better because I knew him.

Jason Baum 37:03
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 37:15
Likewise, I really appreciate being on with you.

Jason Baum 37:19
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 37:40
Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of DevOps podcast. Don’t forget to join our global community to get access to even more great resources like this. Until next time, remember, you are part of something bigger than yourself. You belong

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