As one of the lucky recipients of Sqware Peg’s prestigious Sqware Pegger of the Year Award, I’ve had the honour of joining our Sqware Peg Dreamforce team on a trip to San Francisco for three awesome days at Dreamforce!
As a second-time visitor to San Fran, I knew the city was big enough to take the 170-odd thousand Dreamforce attendees. Arriving on day 1 my first thought was how I was ever going to navigate the several locations for my jam-packed schedule full of sessions, expos and demonstrations, amongst all these people doing the same in just a few small blocks.
Salesforce takes over the entire Moscone area only closing a couple of streets, super impressive is how everyone manages to get around so easily and how the city absorbs it so well.
Day 1 Highlights: Plan of attack
If you want to know anything about Salesforce, close any knowledge-gaps or get a glimpse of the upcoming changes, this is the place to do it!
I was presented with 2700 sessions to choose from; something I did in advance was structure my days before I left home only to discover there was no way I was going to fit everything in. I quickly had to cull some of my sessions and cherry-pick the “must do” sessions!
On Day 1, I attended sessions on CTA journeys, Data security, SF Org Strategies, Enterprise Integration and Streaming API’s. All the sessions were fantastic, but the highlight of the day was attending Marc’s Keynote. It was impressive, hearing about the upcoming Philanthropy Cloud, Customer 360 and Einstein Voice products coming very soon.
Day 2 Highlights: Be in the moment
Day 2 consisted of more sessions on; technical best practices, new high-volume platform events and Heroku connect. I attended a thought-provoking session on closing talent gaps in professional services companies, which offered some great insights I can use as a team lead in our own practice.
During Dreamforce, it is important to be in the moment; taking some time to wander and chat to the other partners, ISV’s and associates in the Success Expo. Spending time in the Trailhead expo. Getting all my cloud-specific questions answered (and naturally chasing a little bit of Swag to bring home).
At the end of the day feeling tired and barely any energy left, I dragged myself into a Mindful listening session. It was fantastic to learn an amazing technique, that’s often forgotten in today’s world – to listen and listen well! I left the session reflecting that with all the technology and pace we have in our lives today, we seem to have forgotten how to do one of the simplest yet most important things in life!
We capped the day off at the Baseball (not the biggest Metallica or JJ fan) to see the Giants take on the Padres at AT&T.
Day 3 Highlights: Pushing through the pain barrier
By day 3 I was really starting to feel it – sore feet, overloaded brain and very tired! But I still had plenty to do, so I pushed onto the day’s sessions; Lightning performance management, canonical data models with Customer 360, and more sessions on security – event monitoring and shield. Finally, another session on enterprise integrations with Salesforce. On the back of Tuesday’s mindfulness session, I capped Thursday off with another session on building resilience – also great.
My Dreamforce 6 take-aways
We decided to end our Dreamforce journey that night and head north to Sonoma for a day of wine tasting and sightseeing in wine country which was a great way to bring the trip to a close. As I sit here waiting for my plane I reflect on the following highlights:
1. Journey to the SF architecture pinnacle – CTA here I come!
2. Seeing and listening to Marc at the Keynote
3. Customer 360 – bringing together customer data throughout all the clouds into one manageable place
4. Getting most of my questions answered – Dreamforce has an expert on everything SF related!
5. Re-learning how to listen and listen well
6. Coming back tired yet happy with a ton of knowledge which I still need to process
Thank you, Sqware Peg
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Sqware Peg leadership team (Reid, Chris, Libby, Mark, Jim, Ali and Olga) and my fellow Sqware Peggers for recognising me as a Sqware Pegger of the year which made this Dreamforce week one I will remember for a very long time!
Also, congratulations to my Sydney colleague Tanjid on sharing the award with me.
