Category Archives: Salesforce

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.

Excuse me, Your Excitement is Showing!

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I’ve found that some people seem to be getting just a little excited about Dreamforce, and why not? It’s just a few weeks away!

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You think it’s amazing now, Brian? Wait till you hear them speak!

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Great point, Alex! Partners are people too!

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Always thinking of ways to give back, Marc. Thanks for all you do! Don’t worry about packing those canned goods for your trip, you can buy them on your walk to Moscone!

The excitement is building… Anyone who is anyone will be at Dreamforce. Have you registered yet?

Dreamforce

See you there!

The Making of Dreamforce

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The Making of Dreamforce

I had the pleasure of chatting with both Marissa Kraines and Catherine Simmons about a month ago, and by chatting, I mean talking in a real, live telephone conversation and with both of them at the same time!  I was curious what it really took to make Dreamforce the awesome event that it is, and they were more than willing to share with me.

Let’s start with a brief introduction of the two “special guests” on this post:

Catherine Simmons

catherine_simmons

https://twitter.com/fabmissc

She started working for salesforce.com in 2008 in the London office, moved to San Francisco and the Dreamforce team in 2010. This year will be her seventh Dreamforce, and her fifth as part of the team putting the event together.  Catherine is the Senior Director of Strategic Events, is focused on Dreamforce all the time, and along with a huge team, responsible for the execution and strategy for the event.

Marissa Kraines 

marissa_Kraines

https://twitter.com/MarissaLK85

Marissa has been with salesforce.com just a little over a year, and she is the Senior Manager of Social and Content Marketing.  Prior to joining salesforce.com she was an MBA student at the University of Texas (Austin) and had an internship in product marketing with the Service Cloud.

We all know Dreamforce is a massive event, taking up a lot of resources in San Francisco. I was curious to know when planning starts for each year and what all is involved in the process. Catherine and Marissa both indicated that planning for Dreamforce is an ongoing process that overlaps year after year.  There’s not really a “start” date for any given year’s event. I asked the obvious question: Are there plans to move the event from San Francisco? The good news is that salesforce.com is very committed to San Francisco, and I’m told that Moscone is booked for the event all the way out to beyond 2020!

With Catherine being 100% Dreamforce, 100% of the time, I wondered how many other people are responsible for the event. Catherine’s response to that really didn’t surprise me. She said, “Dreamforce touches everyone at salesforce.com, and it’s non-negotiable.”  Those people whose job it is to produce the event – marketing, operations, etc. numbers around 20 with another 20 or so full-time contract employees, and infrastructure people including people from the George P. Johnson agency takes the total into the hundreds.  “And by the way, the George P. Johnson agency is also a salesforce.com customer”, says Simmons.

So my next logical question was how many people actually “work” the event, from registration and check-in, to helping people find their way, to those people on the street corners waving the clipboards that read “Dreamforce Questions?”   Catherine tells me that those people are all subcontracted out by George P. Johnson and number in the hundreds.

I was curious how Keynote Speakers and musical guests are decided upon.  Those decisions are made based on who will be inspiring to the audience and who can tell a great, relevant story. Of course, sometimes it also depends on who can be available at the right time. Elizabeth Pinkham, Senior Vice President for Strategic Events, and Lynn Vojvodich, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, and their teams are ultimately drive those decisions.

My final question to Marissa and Catherine:   Are there any “unsung heroes” who should be acknowledged for their contributions and efforts towards the making of Dreamforce?  Once again, the answer I received did not surprise me one bit.  “The entire team deserves the credit! We are like a family, to drink wine with at the end of the day, to give high fives to, etc., and that extends to the George P. Johnson agency too.”

So…there you have it. That’s how Dreamforce is made.

I still think it’s a lot of Hollywood magic, combined with smoke and mirrors!

Just a Little Dreamforce Excitement!

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There’s a great deal of excitement found in this Facebook post from Cheryl Feldman

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And this was before Cheryl found out she was named a Salesforce.com MVP!
Cheryl and 14 others were named MVPs for the Summer ’14 class, and 22 current MVPs were given the honor again. Check out all that excitement here: Summer ’14 MVPs .

Dreamforce by the Numbers

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First I did the Dreamforce Alphabet, and now it’s my Dreamforce by the Numbers.

One – Dreamforce is ONE awesome conference!

Two – There are way too many great breakout sessions to choose from but my top TWO, must attend sessions are: Michael Farrington’s Comedy of Clouds and Formula Tips & Tricks featuring Steve Molis. Fair warning though, be prepared for loud laughter, thunderous applause and the occasional “F-bomb”!

Three – 2014 will be year THREE for me hosting the Newbie Reunion Breakfast. Learn more about that here: http://goo.gl/5bwkBa

Four – Dreamforce covers FOUR days, and this will be year FOUR for me attending Dreamforce.

Five – Take FIVE minutes out of every hour at Dreamforce to introduce yourself to someone near you. Go on, Dreamforce attendees don’t bite, and you’ll never know who you might meet, and what you might learn if you don’t say “Hi, I’m Eric. Is this your first Dreamforce?” (Of course I would suggest you use your real name, and not mine!)

Six – Samanthia Achuff, Erica Kuhl, Matt Brown, Phoebe Venkat, Eanna Cunnane & Elna Miller are SIX key Salesforce.com people in the Success Community you should get to know.

Seven – The number of hours of sleep you should be targeting each night at Dreamforce is SEVEN. Your actual results may vary (widely) but try to be well rested each morning.

Eight – The number of meals you are likely to eat during Dreamforce. I know the math doesn’t work out…4 days, 3 meals a day should be 12, but this is Dreamforce. I’ll bet you’ll not have time between sessions for a real lunch or not wake up early enough for a real breakfast every day!

Nine – Nine Salesforce MVPs you should make a point to meet while at Dreamforce: 1. Sarah Deutsch – her story is inspiring; 2. Matt Bertuzzi – if you’re on Professional Edition, Matt’s your man with the answers; 3. Denise Carbone – she runs the Chicago User Group and has some serious skills; 4. Leyna Hoffer – one of the first 500 Certified Admins and runs the Twin Cities User Group; 5. Rhonda Ross – not only a Salesforce MVP, but also the San Diego User Group leader for both the Salesforce user group but also the Marketo user group; 6. Michael Farrington – not only is he a dual MVP (Salesforce.com and Force.com MVPs) but he also manages his girlfriends using the force.com platform and he’s ‘kind of a big deal’ at Dreamforce; 7. Tal Frankfurt – a four-time MVP and founder of Cloud For Good; 8.  Bill Greenhaw – he’s the guy responsible for there being less of people at Dreamforce – he founded the DF’14 Health and Weight Loss Challenge;   9.  Steve Molis – He IS the Answers KING.  Who here hasn’t had a question answered by Steve?  Come on, admit it, you owe Steve a beer, or two

Ten – The number of Starbucks locations within a mile radius of Moscone Center. (If you’ve ever attended Dreamforce before you’ll understand the importance of this!) Disclaimer – this was a guess…I did not make any measurements.

What’s your lucky Dreamforce number?  Tweet it using hash tag #DF14FavNumber 

Oh no, I Forgot the “O”!

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A little while ago I published my “Dreamforce Alphabet” post. Since then, I’ve gotten some great feedback on other options I could have made for certain letters, such as B is for Bruno Mars.  One awesome reader also pointed out that I did not have the letter “O” in my alphabet.

Now I’d love to say that I did that by design, but that would be a flat out lie!  I totally overlooked the “O”.  Rather odd, if you ask me, how one might overlook an “o”.  None the less, since I missed it, the letter “O” gets a blog post all to itself.

Ode to Dreamforce

O is for OMG!  As is OMG, what  neat trick I just learned, I’m going to have to implement that as soon as I get back to work!

O is for OMG!  As in OMG, there are so many people walking between the Moscone buildings during session breaks that I feel like a salmon swimming up stream.

O is for OMG!  As in OMG, being able to walk up to a few MVPs in the Success Community Zone, ask a tough question and get a great answer on the spot is Outstanding!

O is for OMG!  As in OMG, I just ran into someone I know on the Dreamforce campus, and I didn’t even know they were attending Dreamforce this year!

O is for Orange.  As in I think I’ll have some Orange juice with my bacon at the DF14 Newbie Reunion Breakfast. #DF14Bacon  For details, check here:  http://goo.gl/N4CXM8

 

I hope no one Objects, or calls me Obtuse.

I hope no one says Off with his head, or makes me an Outcast.

I hope I don’t Offend anyone for Obvious reasons.

I hope to meet all you Outstanding people at Dreamforce in October.

The Dreamforce Alphabet

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Here’s everything you need to know about Dreamforce from A to Z!

A is for Activity. There’s a lot of things going on at Dreamforce!

B is for Bacon. Join the DF14 Newbie “Reunion” Breakfast, and enjoy some bacon and conversation with your fellow newbies, and a few veterans too.

C is for Community and Causes. Get together with your community and do something good for someone!

D is for Discussions. Go ahead…talk to someone! You might get into a great discussion and solve a problem!

E is for Eggs. Why eggs? Because you need something to go with all that bacon.

F is for Fun. If you don’t leave Dreamforce after having some fun, do us all a favor…don’t come back next year, unless you change your attitude!

G is for #GirlyGeeks. (Sorry Guys, this one’s for Ladies only!)

H is for Howard Street…which most likely won’t look at all like a street during Dreamforce.

I is for Isaacs…Charlie Isaacs. If we are lucky we’ll see him do a handstand or cartwheel!

J is for Julie Liegel, because without her and the Dreamforce team, well, let’s not even go there!

K is for Kraines…Marissa Kraines that is….she’s another member of the awesome Dreamforce team!

L is for Learn.  As in you’ll learn a lot from all the great content found at Dreamforce.

M is Moscone. By the time Dreamforce is over you’ll know it like the back of your hand.

N is for Newbies. That’s people attending their first Dreamforce, in case you didn’t figure that one out on your own. I’ve got a few tips for Newbies here: http://goo.gl/OBOSVC

P is for People you should get to know…like the MVP’s! http://goo.gl/CPqNLS

Q is for Quick. QUICK! Someone get me a battery pack, my mobile device is dying!

R is for Rain, because if we mention it now, perhaps it will stay away from Dreamforce this year!

S is for Salesforce…need I say more?

T is for Twitter…keep an eye on #DF14, #SalesforceLive, & #Dreamforce among others to stay informed.

U is for User Groups.  Join one (or more) today!  http://goo.gl/CW3fpy

V is for Vicariously. If you can’t attend Dreamforce, you can experience at least parts of it vicariously through Twitter, the Success Community and Salesforce Live!

W is for Water. You’ll want to be sure to stay hydrated and drink plenty of water.

X is for Excellent. Yeah, I know, that’s not quite an “X”, but it’s the best I could do. Dreamforce is an Excellent place to meet Excellent people, learn Excellent things about an Excellent ecosystem!

Y is for You. Because without You, Dreamforce just won’t be the same.

Z is for Zipper. Why?  Honestly, I’m at a loss for how to relate the letter Z to Dreamforce other than the zipper on your Dreamforce backpack! 

Notable quotes from the Salesforce Community

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Here’s a few of my recent favorite quotes from the Salesforce Success Community and Twitter.

Here’s a great presentation shared by Patrick Watkins on the Raleigh User Group page on “Putting Your Browser to Work as a Salesforce Admin”…lots of great time-saving tips in here.

Here’s a “short-n-sweet” post from MVP Jen Nelson “How to Become a Salesforce.com Consultant”. She sparked some great conversation on the community, so be sure to read through the entire thread, not just her blog post!

Here’s a great Salesforce1 Admin tip from Kelly Bentubo, If you build it, they will come! I just recently moved to an Org not using mobile (and thought they didn’t need it). I’ve been slowly recruiting team members over to mobile and now users are starting to approach me to ask about ‘that cool thing that Aaron is using’… If you can think up the use case, build it out and then demo it. Often users/management need to see it in action before you can get their buy in. Also agree on the other tips for automation & ease of use, show them how it will save them time (answer the ‘What’s in it for me?’ question)

Want your quote included in a future post? Use hashtag #sfdcQOTW and I’ll be sure to check it out!