Overview of a Remarkable First Day of Dreamforce 2018

Today our team enjoyed one of the best Dreamforce events we have ever attended. The sessions were great, it was a fantastic occasion to meet people and make important connections. We also had the opportunity to learn about many amazing new developments within Salesforce. All sessions were transmitted live. Inevitably, we have our favorite ones. Here is a quick review of five of them.

But before getting into our fab sessions, we would like to share two important events we participated at Dreamforce: the Opening Keynote by Salesforce Chairman and Co-CEO Mark Benioff and the announced new strategic partnership between Salesforce and Apple.

And of course, we cannot forget to mention the fun we had at Metallica’s concert!

Opening Keynote. Dreamforce: A Celebration of Trailblazers

Speaker: Mark Benioff. Chairman and Co-CEO. Salesforce

Mark Benioff speaks in an easy, approachable way. The whole keynote speech was awesome. He talked about incredible ideas, such as “inclusive capitalism”, a capitalism that includes diversity and promotes equality, and through them, uses businesses as a platform for transformation. 

One of the amazing examples that Mark showed was PepUp Tech, a project that has taught Salesforce skills to hundreds of persons from different communities, empowering them to enter the job market.

But, he added, inclusive capitalism is not only about businesses. It is also about other subjects that include us, such as environment, gender equality and education. He was very clear, when he said that we all are responsible for a better world, and we must participate in the creation of a cleaner environment, an equal opportunity society, education for our children and more.

As he said, can we afford to accept that in a few years, the oceans will contain more plastic than fish?

Salesforce and Apple Strategic Partnership

Having worked for Apple as a programmer in the 1980s transformed Mark Benioff. As he said in an interview, “I have Apple in my veins”. 

Now, his company has entered into a partnership with Apple, where Salesforce will enable its apps with Apple’s voice assistant Siri, and will help to build out its client’s mobile apps with specialized features for Apple devices.

“We’re excited to work with Salesforce and that their industry-leading CRM will embrace native iOS and deliver exclusive new features on iPhone and iPad,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in a canned statement.

“With the powerful combination of iPhone, iPad and iOS — the best hardware and software for business — together with native Salesforce apps and the new Salesforce SDK, we can deliver great customer experiences for businesses around the world.”

We can expect incredible things from this partnership that unites two great innovators!

Metallica @ the Concert for the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals

We were so lucky to be there. It was amazing seeing the famous band performing. Yes, true, tickets were not cheap. But it was a charity event after all! We can’t wait to see Janet Jackson on Wednesday. Be there with us and help the children at Benioff Children’s Hospitals.

Our favorite sessions

It was really difficult to choose which ones were the best. The theme of the day was TRUST. All of the sessions provided so much information and insights.

Particularly we liked the idea of “Speaking the language of the customer”, which is so essential in this digital and global age, and can be described by saying that customer success is more than just using the features. It is about how they get value. 

So, here are our favorite ones:

3 Lightning Features Your Org Needs Now

Speaker: Carly Basch. Solutions Engineer. Salesforce.

Divided into three sessions, two of them today, Carly Basch explains the wonders of Lightning and its components, and showed how to collaborate, develop and automate. Today’s sessions were full of examples, which highlighted the speed and ease of development with Lightning.

Camp Innovation: Building Your Custom App on the Lightning Platform

Complementary to the previous sessions, this practical camp reinforced our learnings on the Lightning Platform. Something that surprises us, was the easy and speed of development, and the practical beauty of the final results. Undoubtedly, admins and devs profited as much as us from this session.

Getting the Analytics Edge: Grow Your Skills by Learning Einstein Analytics

Speaker: Behzad Richey. Product Manager – Mobile Analytics. Salesforce

Analytics is the future, and Salesforce’s Einstein is evolving and helping create the next generation of data-driven apps. From importing to creating awesome dashboards, we learned and enjoyed the whole experience. 

Build and Test AI Models for Trust 

Speakers: Till Bergmann and Mayukh Bhaowal. Salesforce

AI and particularly Machine Learning are difficult subjects for the majority of us. But with Salesforce’s Einstein, we learned the importance of these models and how to start trusting their results. This first session was very enlightening. We can wait for the next one on Friday.

#Salesforce Helps Employees Prioritize Wellbeing

Speakers: Abigail Hollingsworth, Director, Benefits AMER, Salesforce. Ali Kent, Salesforce, and Jill Unikel, VP, Employee Marketing & Engagement, Salesforce.

What is so incredible about Salesforce is its concern on employee wellbeing. Happy employees implies better business. We all know that. However, to see how to use Salesforce to promote employee wellbeing was really amazing. 

See you on Customer Success Expo Floor!

We are very excited for the coming events. We will be there and share with your what we learned again. 

And while you are there, don’t forget to stop by the booth #1907 for a quick demo on how our integration and replication platform works. It can really help your business to simplify and automate workflows, and to comply with cloud data regulations on backup and data storage. See you tomorrow!