History was Made

Captain’s log – August 29, 2013:

Nearly 90 of the just over 100 Salesforce and force.com MVPs gathered at the Omni San Francisco Hotel officially beginning with breakfast at 7am and ending about 10pm with a social gathering and dinner at The City Club of San Francisco.

In a word, the entire day was awesome. But awesome does not fully do justice to how the MVPs felt during the entire experience. It was a day filled with Safe Harbor statements, lively discussions and demos of things I wish I could tell you about. However, if I told you, I would have to kill you, since those memory erasing flashy things from the movie “Men in Black” have not yet been invented.

Flashy Thing

Suffice it to say, if the preview we MVPs saw becomes reality in future releases of salesforce.com it will only reaffirm your belief that Salesforce.com, its senior management, product managers, and development teams really do some great work striving to provide a world-class, full featured system.

Enjoy the new releases as they come out, and don’t forget to use discount code D13MVPREF when you register for Dreamforce.

Oh yeah…and big thanks to Charlie Isaacs for delaying a vacation by one day to enjoy dinner with a few MVPs. Huge thanks to Peter Coffee for, well, being Peter Coffee and sharing some wisdom as well as his viewpoints in a way only he can do.

SUPER HUGE thanks to Den Mom Erica Kuhl and Den Dad Matt Brown for not only all they did to make this event possible but also all the did by going above and beyond the call of duty for seeing that the first ever MVP summit made the word “awesome” seem to mean about the same thing as “OK” because to describe the Summit as merely awesome would be the greatest understatement of my life!

Bring on Dreamforce…it will be WayBeyondAwesome!

One last thing – the Safe Harbor statement applies here. Please do not base any decisions regarding use of salesforce.com on this post as it contains certain forward-looking statements. For a complete copy of the Safe Harbor statement please visit Safe Harbor

History in the Making

A few thoughts occurred to me while flying to San Francisco for the Salesforce MVP Summit.

We are on the cusp of a breakthrough.

The MVP program has been around for about three years now, but up till now, the only gathering of the MVPs has been at Dreamforce when most MVPs make the annual pilgrimage. This time, all the MVPs from all over the world were specifically invited by Salesforce.com to attend the first ever MVP Summit. It’s an honor to be included in such a great crowd of people, and it’s an even bigger honor to know that Salesforce.com wants to know what we think about their products and services.

Safe Harbor.

I’m sure there will be things shared with the MVPs at the Summit that they can only discuss amongst themselves, and I’m certain that all the MVPs will honor this. Having had the privilege to see something that is being developed for a future release already, I can say it is incredibly awe inspiring when a company comes asks the users of its products for input, but to top that, to ask about something that’s not even available to the general public…Wow!

Dreamforce.
Register Now!
Don’t forget to register soon, and use promo code D13MVPREF to save $100!

Wait a sec, I’m an MVP, and you want me to what?

This past April I was named Salesforce.com MVP. I was quite thrilled with that honor, in fact I’m still not sure I fully understand how I deserved it.

Now I have been invited to San Francisco along with all the other MVPs for a day full of meetings with Salesforce.com management. I will be talking to the very people who are shaping the future of cloud computing…the movers and shakers. Wow! That’s pretty incredible. Hopefully I won’t pull a Wayne and Garth when I meet Marc Benioff.

Wayne’s World…We’re not worthy!

I’m really excited to be headed out to San Francisco at the end of August. There are three main reasons why I’m so excited.

1. I get to meet a lot of key people at salesforce.com. These are the people who decide what new functions get released and when. They are the movers and shakers of cloud computing.

2. The community… I already know many of the MVPs thanks to me being a user group leader for the past three years and having attended the past two years’ Dreamforce. But now, I’ll get to meet all the MVPs I may not have meet yet.

3. Its San Francisco…I’m from Indiana. Need I say more? OK…I will say more. Without the support of my family (who may not fully understand what I do everyday) and my manager, and the entire team of people I work with everyday, none of this would be possible.

So…off to the MVP Summit I’ll go. And then I’ll start the real countdown to the big show, Dreamforce. Its bound to be way beyond awesome this year! If you haven’t registered yet, use promo code D13MVPREF and save $100 ! See you there!