Monthly Archives: October 2014

The Dreamforce Hackathon…from an outsiders point of view

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So a certain person (who shall remain nameless) managed to get me into the Dreamforce Hackathon for a couple hours….it was quite the enlightening experience. I saw many things:

I saw Adam Seligman…live and in the flesh. I’ve been connected to him through Twitter and the Success Community for a few years, but never had the pleasure of shaking his hand, until now.

I saw Reid Carlberg…I’ve met him before, but it was great to see him again….same goes for Josh Birk.

I saw Pat Patterson…never had the pleasure in person, and can never say that about him again!

I saw April Nassi, but of course she’d be there! She’s the queen of the Developer Community!

But enough about people. That’s not what the Hackathon is about.

It’s about creativity and passion.

I saw plenty of that. There were dozens upon dozens of teams of developers coding away at what could become the next best thing since sliced bread. There were men and women of every shape, size, color and ethnic background, all striving towards the same goal…building a great App. It was an awesome thing to witness.

One other thing I noticed there, besides people eating and coding, coding and coding, sleeping and coding (or perhaps dreaming about coding) was another fine example of what the Salesforce community is all about. It’s people helping people, sharing ideas, sharing knowledge.

Sure, this is a competition, and a few people are going to win some serious cash, and others will just leave the Hackathon with a cool new App, and some sleep deprivation, but from the outside looking in, it’s all awesome, and has inspired me to dig into the world of the Developers.

One last thing, before I close out this post:

I hope the Dreamforce Hackathon continues for many years to come!

Are You Dreamforce Ready?

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One week.
7 days.
168 hours.

Yeah, its that time. The time salesforce.com fanatics look forward to all year long. The time when over 100,000 of your closests friends make the annual pilgrimage to San Francisco. The time when people all around the world are asking the same question:

Are you Dreamforce ready?

I’m not sure if I’m really ready for Dreamforce, but ready or not, its almost here. Here are some of the things I’m most looking forward to:

The Admin Keynote: Its an hour-long session featuring some fascinating tales of superheroic acts performed by ordinary Admins. Wednesday, 9am in Moscone West.

The Admin Zone, and the Developer Zone: Side-by-side, in complete harmony, helping to solidify the notion that Admins need Developers as much as Developers need Adkins…and that they are equally as important to the success of an organization.

Marc Benioff’s Keynote: Always inspiring, always exciting, always includes some awesome special guests.

Project Wave: Based on reading session descriptions, this sounds like the next generation of Salesforce Analytics. I hope I’m right, because I’m an Analytics geek at heart!

Live Podcasts: Mike Gerholdt, The ButtonClick Admin himself, now an Admin Evangelist with Salesforce.com…alway shares great tips. The guys from Arkus, Justin Edelstein and Jason Atwood…listening to them is always thought provoking. I wonder who else is on tap?

With so much goodness packed into 4 days, it can be very difficult to figure out what sessions to attend, and where to hang out between sessions. Aside from what I’ve already mentioned, don’t forget to save time to visit the expo hall to see what’s new with the awesome partners in the house. Be sure to make time on your schedule to hang out with the Community, the MVPs and user group leaders, as they staff the Hero Booths in the Admin Zone to help others get their questions answered.