Thoughts on Dreamforce
200k of your closest friends in addition to the normal goings-ons of San Francisco. NBD.
In the first week of November 2017, three members of our team and I attended Dreamforce, a conference put on by Salesforce. We were not alone. We were joined by any professional services firm and add-on technology vendor. Add in a group of knowledge hungry (and other types of hungry) marketing and IT professionals and it is a spectacle. All making the daily pilgrimage to a few blocks of downtown San Francisco.
I prepared my schedule, replanned it after I realized I was walking across town several times. I learned a lot, and took away a few action items to explore new or improvements to ongoing initiatives. Below are a few thoughts on the experience:
- The conference is a great way to get a common set of examples. Most everyone on our team reads industry and/or subject matter publications. In meetings we sight examples from the things we read. With a few teammates attending the conference together and debriefing the sessions we attended from the day provides the team common examples to reference. “Hey this is similar to what the person at X Dreamforce session was saying. We could try something similar to what they did”.
- To get something/anything out of the conference you must have a base understand of the tool and/or the business processes it touches. This conference or at least the parts of it require some experience.
- All people in charge of brick and mortar stores, any physical customer experience, and especially event planners should take note of the Dreamforce experience. At every turn, on every building were graphics representing Salesforce Dreamforce or a partner that was involved with the event. They blocked streets, had plenty of areas to sit, copeous amounts of charging stations. In select common areas there were speakers projecting noises of a forest or parks to further create an environment of hiking/trailhead theme. There were people at every turn helping conference goers find their way.
- And what a great idea for Salesforce. Their current customers who are paying them money pay to use their software are now paying them money to attend this conference, where they hear success stories about other paying customers using their other products. At the end of the conference you leave feeling jazzed about these success stories where you end up wanting to sign up and pay for a few more products.
Overall a great experience! I took away to dos or enhancements to our initiatives in AR/VR, analytics, and the general relationship/partnership between marketing and sales.
