Dreamforce

[Joelist]

Just wanted to explain why I have been so scarce lately.

At my workplace I am part of a small team that has just completed a VERY successful trial of Salesforce.com and shown that the platform can be executed in our industry (managed care) despite our peculiarities. We also did it with no IT help and no consulting firms. As a result of the Trial two things happened:

1) We are rolling Salesforce out company wide (over 17000 people) over the next 18 months.

2) Our team has been invited to present at Dreamforce. Dreamforce is a premier technology conference centering on Salesforce.com and its related family of cloud based technologies. It is held annually in San Francisco and pretty much takes over the city as it draws about 100,000 people.

Needless to say having these things announced has tied up our team big time. Here is the Dreamforce site which starts to describe it:

http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF13/

 

[Joelist]

Well, this Sunday I will be off to Dreamforce!

Monday the 18th I get to be a speaker at the conference for a session on the uses for Formulas in the force.com platform. Then more presenting and such the balance of the week, so basically a week in SF with little chance to actually sightsee.

 

[Gatefan1976]

Good luck Joe!!

 

[shavedape]

Enjoy the conference and don't sweat the lack of sight-seeing. Been to SF several times and was always less than impressed. I remember it as being a city rife with crack heads. The "pan handling" scams are epidemic there. Couldn't walk down the street without being "assaulted" numerous times. It may be less problematic in the more touristy areas, but if you go off the beaten path be prepared to deal with the nonsense.

Whatever you do though don't fall for the line of crap from the guy with the family who claims he just came into the city for the day and ran out of gas and is just trying to get back home. Luckily, the first time I encountered this, a friend of mine was there to shut the guy down when he began his spiel. She looked him square in the face and said: "You've run out of gas on this block and have been trying to get back home for nearly five years now." That shut him up quick.

 

[Joelist]

Day two of Dreamforce. You have to see it to really grasp the size and raw enthusiasm here. They actually have streets closed off in the city center turning the whole Moscone Center area into a college campus type layout. Attendance is well past 100,000 already making only CES a larger tech event.



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[shavedape]

When you go to the street rave (as we all know you will) whatever you do don't drink any lime green "Gatorade". Trust me on this.

 

[Joelist]

Actually the "rave" was a charity benefit gala at AT&T Bank Stadium tonight. The musical acts were Blondie leading in for Green Day.

This morning we had a surprise as live music was performed in the center of the Dreamforce campus by an unannounced guest group - Huey Lewis and the News.

The size and scope of the event is actually kind of staggering, as is how well Salesforce runs it. The massive crowd is somewhat young-ish in age and pretty evenly male-female as well as being VERY multi-ethnic too. There is also a sort of air of "hip-ness" about the place with the live music, things like dance troupes and just the general atmosphere. And the part that surprises me the most is the energy of both the attendees and Salesforce.com, the enthusiasm for what they do and excitement level for the conference and the Force.com platform is something I have not previously seen in this type of technology venue .

 

[Joelist]

Back from Dreamforce. What a conference!

Learned a lot and also got a feeling for just how pumped up not just Salesforce employees and management but users as well are about the platform. Salesforce did an amazing job running such an enormous conference (current estimates are 130,000+ attendees). It really did drive home the strengths of a VERY powerful and easy to use SaaS platform like Force.com. I really am thinking that the future of enterprise systems lies down this road and not the old style of buying your own server farms and running all this stuff yourself.

 

[Overmind One]

Back from Dreamforce. What a conference!

Learned a lot and also got a feeling for just how pumped up not just Salesforce employees and management but users as well are about the platform. Salesforce did an amazing job running such an enormous conference (current estimates are 130,000+ attendees). It really did drive home the strengths of a VERY powerful and easy to use SaaS platform like Force.com. I really am thinking that the future of enterprise systems lies down this road and not the old style of buying your own server farms and running all this stuff yourself.

The numbers say otherwise, but for applications like SaleForce and email exchanges like hosted MS Exchange and Gmail Apps for Business are moving to the cloud because they need dedicated servers. The cloud migration to SaaS has largely failed in the enterprise. Too much dependence on the internet. It is the hybrid apps which are making inroads (those which can still function when the internet is down).

 

[shavedape]

Back from Dreamforce. What a conference!

Glad you had a good time at your conference but I can only give you a 7 out of 10 for the experience due to the fact that you didn't vandalize anything nor did you spend time in the drunk tank. Has your tenure at GateFans taught you nothing?

 

[Joelist]

Glad you had a good time at your conference but I can only give you a 7 out of 10 for the experience due to the fact that you didn't vandalize anything nor did you spend time in the drunk tank. Has your tenure at GateFans taught you nothing?

I know, I know. But that would have gotten me ejected from the conference and I didn't want that, especially as I was one of the speakers.

 

[Joelist]

The numbers say otherwise, but for applications like SaleForce and email exchanges like hosted MS Exchange and Gmail Apps for Business are moving to the cloud because they need dedicated servers. The cloud migration to SaaS has largely failed in the enterprise. Too much dependence on the internet. It is the hybrid apps which are making inroads (those which can still function when the internet is down).

Actually SaaS is taking over in the areas where it has good offerings. SaaS CRM is now over 40% of the market and at current upward trends will exceed 50% by 2015. The same trends are visible in enterprise messaging services (email, mobile, social media). Both per Gartner. And Salesforce.com is both the oldest big SaaS vendor and the most advanced.

Next year you may want to plan to attend - San Francisco isn't that big a trip from where you are.