Since the inception of (DevOps) time, people have been attending conferences. Why? Because they are an excellent opportunity to get out of the office (or off your home office chair) and travel, connect with new people in your field, and learn what they have to say.
Harald is the Co-Founder of Hutte, bringing his vision of no-code DevOps to life. His passion enables teams and individuals to focus on what matters most – bringing value to the users they build for.
Vlad Shvets
Entrepreneur and Co-Founder
Vlad is a thriving global entrepreneur and Co-Founder of Hutte, bringing his passion for Git-based DevOps solutions and GTM leadership to the table.
Article highlights
The article outlines various Salesforce conferences for 2023, including Dreamforce, TrailblazerDX, and the Salesforce Nonprofit Summit, offering opportunities for networking, learning, and engaging with industry experts.
It emphasizes the importance of community-led events like Dreamin’ and the Salesforce Success Anywhere World Tour, which provide practical advice and insights from Salesforce users and professionals globally.
The article suggests that attending Salesforce conferences can significantly boost networking and professional growth, with tips on making the most of these events, such as prioritizing sessions and leveraging digital business cards.
Conferences are all about:
Networking
Expanding your knowledge
Getting insights into the latest trends
Getting to meet your heroes or role models
Leveling up your CV.
The Salesforce environment is no exception. In fact, at 2022’s Dreamforce conference, 120K people attended the event online – not to mention the thousands that showed up in person.
If you’re interested in finding the right Salesforce conference to up your DevOps game, this article is for you. We’ll delve into some of the top in-person and virtual Salesforce conferences. So, no matter your role, you will find a conference (or two or three) that will meet your unique needs, expectations, and desired learning areas.
Where: The Moscone Center, San Francisco, California (and online).
Dreamforce, one of the most elite and sought-after Salesforce events, is a flagship conference featuring celebrities and leaders in the field with a live broadcast of sessions.
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In 2022, more than 200 on-demand episodes were available online, each tailored by role, topic, and industry. The conference details will be released soon, so keep your eyes peeled.
Where: Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco, California (in-person and select episodes online).
The TrailblazerDX Salesforce Developer Conference, also known as Trailhead and TrailheadX, is one of the largest tech conferences for Salesforce developers. The event provides an opportunity to gain insight into Salesforce engineering and product teams' newest products and advancements.
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Don't miss out on engaging with keynote speakers and developers and gaining valuable knowledge from Salesforce administrators and architects.
This all-inclusive event features many activities, including workshops, sessions with industry experts, and networking opportunities with fellow attendees and Salesforce personnel.
Although increasingly virtual or hybrid, these are usually put on by Salesforce (Trailblazer) community members. Dreamin' events are created by Salesforce users, for users, and are loosely sanctioned and supported by Salesforce.
You’llfind practical advice from admins and hands-on professionals. Dreamin’ is a great place to find your people and meet someone you can collaborate with when you’re stuck on something.
A great thing about them is that they happen all around the globe, so they are highly accessible. Trailhead provides a Dreamin' calendar, so check it out to find one near you.
The Salesforce community hosts live world tours highlighting best practices, innovations, and product updates from the industry experts themselves. With these live broadcasts, you can:
Hear the latest news and announcements from Salesforce
Listen to the most inspiring stories of customer success and transformation
Get the latest insights from Salesforce executives, global leaders, and changemakers.
Where: The Brewery, 52 Chiswell Street, London, United Kingdom.
One of Europe's largest Salesforce community events is London's Calling. 2023 will be its eighth event, promising nothing short of hands-on learning, networking, and fun.
London's Calling offers:
A full day of content, with seven sessions to choose from at any time
A keynote presentation and the opportunity to network with independent software vendors (ISV) and system integrator (SI) partners
Networking with members of the community, MVPs, and Salesforce employees
Ted Hazard, Director of CRM Business Development, Unum
Ben Brantly, GM and VP, Product Sales Performance Management, Salesforce
Andy Kung, Senior Director of Product Management, Salesforce.
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According to Salesforce's latest research report, sales ops reps spend only 28% of their week selling. More than 7.7K sellers weighed in on how sales ops teams are helping reps get back to the work that matters.
This webinar will help you learn more about:
Why 94% of sales orgs plan to consolidate their tech stack in the next 12 months
What organizations can do to optimize their CRMs for maximum ROI
How AI and automation are increasing productivity for high-performing teams.
According to Salesforce’s trend report, 94% of marketers say customers expect personalized experiences, but only 26% are confident in their personalization strategy. Learn how Salesforce uses Marketing Cloud personalization technology to engage with its prospects and customers one-on-one.
In this webinar, you’ll hear from Salesforce experts on their plan to transform Salesforce’s digital experience.
They plan to achieve this using a world-class personalization platform for prospects and customers to have the best experience possible, including:
How Salesforce moved from running a pilot to personalization primetime
The pillars of personalization and how Salesforce leverages both Marketing Cloud personalization and customer data platforms
Content readiness and tagging – plus campaign management
A sneak peek into the company’s plans for omnichannel personalization.
Sales reps need help right now. According to Salesforce, 60% of sellers say their jobs are more complex than ever, and 72% expect to miss their quotas. The teams enabling them are struggling, too, which is why 94% of enablement initiatives do not meet seller expectations.
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That is why Salesforce has developed a new framework to use enablement to drive rep engagement and improve the revenue outcomes for the business.
If you join the webinar, you will learn about:
The outcome-based enablement framework
How to find the proper outcomes to drive business impact
How to engage your sales leaders on their key revenue challenges.
Get an exclusive look at the new features coming to Marketing Cloud this Spring. Hear from product experts walk through all of the recent innovations across Salesforce’s entire suite of Marketing Cloud products, including:
Email
Mobile
Data
Ads
Web
Analytics.
Some pointers when attending Salesforce conferences
Pointers When Attending Salesforce Conferences
Attend all types of Salesforce events
A few Salesforce community events might come across your radar, and there’s value in attending all of them.
Each event type brings something unique to the table. You should engage with a mix of Salesforce-sponsored and community-led events.
Salesforce user groups
Local events are led by a community member, customer, or partner. Topics are often ‘how to’ or ‘best practice’ oriented.
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There are usually 20–30 people, sometimes more in larger metro areas.
Salesforce world tours
These are generally in a big city and are official events hosted by Salesforce (free to attendees). Expect a couple of thousand people, a large expo hall, dancing mascots, and a high-energy keynote full of product news and big logo customers.
Know exactly why you're attending
Do a little thinking to determine your ‘why’ for attending these conferences. Your objectives for attending Salesforce community events might include the following:
Tactical or ‘how-to learning’
Getting ideas and inspiration
Networking with other users
Meeting your Salesforce account team
Recruiting
Sales and prospecting
Learning about exciting products that work with Salesforce
Evaluating prospective partners
Building a personal brand in the ecosystem.
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Determining what’s most important to you will help you prioritize events and determine your ultimate go-to conference.
Make digital business cards
You can bring physical business cards to exchange with potential customers, investors, or like-minded professionals. But, as you may know, many peopleuse QR codesinstead of traditional printed cards.
Some people connect their codes to their LinkedIn, and other QR codes can create a contact record in the scanning user’s phone.
Speak and volunteer
Once you have a feel for these events, you should consider becoming a speaker. Speaking at events can be incredibly rewarding and fantastic for networking.
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It’s validating to find others with the same challenges as you and know that others are figuring out the same thing together. Ultimately, we all have something to learn and something to teach.
Another great way to get more engaged is through volunteering. If you’re not a natural networker, some events, such as the Web Summit, offer volunteers the chance to attend one full day for free if they volunteer one or two shifts during the other days of the event. This option is perfect if someone wants to network through volunteering.
Prioritize your sessions
When it comes to more prominent conferences and Dreamin’ events, it’s not uncommon for popular sessions to fill up and not be able to accommodate everyone who wants to join.
A good tip is to skim the agenda before you go and pick three sessions you want to attend.
Think about who you would like to meet and network with beforehand
Ask around and see who’s attending conferences you are interested in. Events give you an official space to get Facetime with people you only work with online.
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You can then reach out to these people before the event. You can even set up a coffee or lunch date or plan to find them the event day.
This step ensures you get the extra value you hope to get from the event.
Monitor Twitter
The Salesforce ecosystem is very active on Twitter, which means It’s the place for social connections during an event. For larger events, follow the event hashtag to see pictures, find information about adjacent events, read people’s takeaways, and more. Many user groups also have their own Twitter accounts and hashtags.
Not inspired to attend a Salesforce conference yet? Maybe these quotes from Dreamforce will help
Over the years, some of the world’s most inspiring people have taken to the Dreamforce stage. So, here are some of the most thought-provoking quotes from some of the great minds of Dreamforce.
Marc Benioff, Salesforce Chair and CEO
“In a world where everyone works from everywhere, a digital HQ is an essential building block to build a trusted enterprise.”
Pam Plyler, Managing Director of Financial Services Business Consulting, Salesforce
“There is no question that we have accelerated to a ‘digital-first’ environment, which means that your website and mobile experience must be based on human-centered design, complemented with easy-to-use bots, live chat, and voice support for those more complex needs.”
Breanna Kuhl, Global SVP of Strategic Partnerships And Alliances At Vonage
“It is now fundamental for companies to stay connected to employees and customers from anywhere – through whatever channel they choose – video, voice, messaging, and chat. Customers don’t just want or expect this – they now demand it.”
Joe Steinbach, CIO of Author Solutions
“Technology changes rapidly, but an essential part of a great customer experience is customer awareness and understanding their needs.”
Parker Harris, Salesforce Co-Founder, and CTO
“The B2B buyers have changed, meaning the B2B sellers must change. Are your brands showing up where your prospect wants to buy, and is your sales team digitally enabled?”
Breanna Kuhl, Global SVP of Strategic Partnerships And Alliances At Vonage
“We don’t know what the future will hold, but here’s what we do know – companies that design their service through the lens of their customers, move quickly, and get more done will win.”
James Roth, SVP and GM, Applications Group at Vonage
“Now more than ever, businesses worldwide are realizing the value of integrating the contact center with collaboration and unified communications solutions to keep employees connected and working efficiently to deliver a seamless, consistent, and personalized customer experience.”
Pam Plyler, Managing Director of Financial Services Business Consulting, Salesforce
“While contact centers receive hundreds, thousands, or even millions of contacts every month, it’s important to remember that for each of those individual interactions, it may be the one and only definitive event or time that a customer reaches out, and that experience can make or break your brand. Companies who get that invest in their end-to-end customer experience and frontline teams, and as a result, win in the marketplace.”
Richard Hall, Senior Director, Global Business Operations and IT at FinancialForce
“We are seeing more and more companies addressing the need to be flexible and work in the cloud to support their businesses – from sales to the customer service organization and finance. If all parts of a business have a 360-degree view of a customer, everyone can lean in and support customers. This is when you have customer success events.”
Get out there and network
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According to Statista, a research publishing site, 80% of professionals believe networking is critical for increasing opportunities and improving productivity. One of the best ways to network is attending (and even speaking at) Salesforce conferences.
The great thing is that they happen globally in major cities, in person, and through online events. So, you will never be out of the loop about what is happening in Salesforce.
Whether you are a Salesforce marketer, consultant, architect, developer, or even someone new to Salesforce, there is a conference that will ‘force up’ your growth.
Our team at Hutte attends most Salesforce-based events – both online and in-person. So, don’t hesitate to reach out, contact us, and meet up!
