The biggest, best and most eager anticipated Salesforce Community Event finally happened yesterday.
Days before the event, you will see social media flooded with messages from speakers, keen to showcase their session to you. You will messages from fellow attendees about their awesome agenda choices. And messages from the great sponsors, keen for you to jump by their stands at the expo.
Finally, on Friday, a every early alarm went of to start our journey to London. After a taxi, train, tube and a bit of walking through what is the maze around Liverpool Street (and mopping up some fellow attendees) we arrived at the The Brewery. This must be one of the most awesome and best locations to hold such an amazing event.
After a smooth badge collection and some quick refreshments, the day finally kicked off. In the opening we were told this would be a day of many firsts.
- Starting with the news that for the first time, sessions would be live streamed. And if people would sign up and buy on the day for the live stream, free days of education would be giving (end of day news: we sponsored 12 years!!! of free education)
- Then we would have a different end session – not a serious keynote speaker but something more lighthearted
- For the first time, instead of having paper cards to collect stamps, it would all be digital through the app, with the prices also be digital (enough swag to collect during the day)
Normally after the introduction, everyone would run of to different sessions. But this time, very cleverly, the team organised the Demo Jam to be run first. Meaning a full hall to witness 8 teams giving lightningspeed 3 minute session on their awesome apps. And how awesome where some of them. QKom showing a seamless integration of Microsoft Sharepoint into Salesforce, SharePix adding awesome audience pictures into the org, RevenueGrid showing clever activity visualisation on opportunities, NativeVideo live recording and transcribing meeting notes and we even had a cheeky hacker team displaying best tools to protect your org. After a heated online voting session GearSet and NativeVideo were worthy winners of the speed demo battle.
What followed was a morning full of fantastic speaker sessions. It is always difficult to choice between 5 different sessions, and you always feel you miss out. Luckily for us participants we can watch everything back later!
My first choice was a session by Matthew Morris about the Art of Diagramming Solutions. I have always considered this to be an essential skill for any Salesforce Expert and Matthew showed us some great examples of what we can do to explain the complex world of Salesforce to businesses.
What followed was a very engaging, funny and tips rich session by Claire Wingate about Embracing Flows. As someone who really wants to get their hands more stuck on Flows, Claire showed some great tips on how to tackle the challenges of Flows. I think from now on, anyone who joined this session will remember to follow the Orange Road.
After this light session on Flow, Simon Connock decided to try to enlighten us more on Flows. It seems that if you do the set up badly it will be a gift that keeps on giving. Loops within Loops within Loops from the moment you click save to when the data finally gets committed, a nightmare story for anyone!
After such an exhausting morning, it was time for lunch and the all important networking and exploring the expo. It was great to reconnect with many people, getting to know new people and enjoy the general positive atmosphere. Yes it was busy with around 1,000 of us taking over the Brewery but it still felt intimate and village vibe. And of course the fantastic summer weather helped whilst chilling outside in the gazebos.
To finalise the day we had a couple of sessions left. First a lightning quick session trending tools. Lee Palmer always gets the room laughing with his witty and clever slides. After that a quick run through the building to get to the basement to hear Vanessa Grant talking about User Stories. I think we are all keen to know more about that one project she doesn’t want to talk about. I also hope the photographer did get the shot in when she talked about something small
After that it was a wrap. The organisers, of course, had a lovely glass of bubbly in hand before they introduced us to the final session of the day. As said earlier no we didn’t go for a very serious keynote speaker. Instead we got much needed light entertainment by Mark Watson. He was brilliant in reflecting on the event. Yes, swag is a thing, we indeed know the Save button is vital and no one has much of an idea about Slack.
After this long and exhausting day it was time to head back home again and waiting for the announcement for next year. London Calling to me is the must attend event of the year and again this year did not disappoint.
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