Salesforce World Tour – The Review
We were recently lucky enough to attend the Salesforce World Tour 2018 in London on 17th May 2018. It was our first Salesforce World Tour and although we had seen previous blog posts, and read the Salesforce Blog website to understand what would be involved, we were still unsure of what the experience would hold for us.
After navigating various trains, tubes and DLR’s we arrived at the Prince Regent entry to eXceL in London and were immediately conscious of the amount of ‘Salesforce’ types that were around us, including one the owners of a Salesforce Golden Hoodie! We entered eXceL and after the expected security check, we proceeded into the Registration area, which at that time was relatively empty and painfree. A quick scan of the QR code on our phones and we were there, our first Salesforce World Tour!
We had already planned our Salesforce World Tour Agenda sessions that we were hoping to attend, so we grabbed a quick and much needed coffee, and headed towards the Partner Booths, with our blue lanyards getting us into the event early.
BrightGen Booth
Booth 150 was special! It was none other than the BrightGen booth, where you could meet a fantastic group of people. The booth was also conveniently placed opposite the coffee and later beer station (not sure if that was pre-planned) but it was great to see that the stand was extremely popular throughout the day. Without BrightGen both Sonny and I would not have been attending the Salesforce World Tour, so a big shout out to BrightGen is needed!
Blaze a Trail – Trailhead Area
Prior to attending the Salesforce World Tour, I had a goal, a purpose – to network with the amazing Salesforce Ohana, to be inspired by the Sessions, to attend Dreampitch London, oh and of course ensure that I brought home a Salesforce Character Plush for my Twin girls.
Trailhead is of course the fun way to learn the Salesforce platform, but on the day there was an extra challenge. If you completed a Trailhead module at the Salesforce World Tour you would receive a special stamp, and if you then proceeded to ‘Ask an Expert’ a question you would receive another stamp. These two stamps would allow you collect a Codey plush as well as a Trailhead t-shirt. We promptly completed a module each and received our first stamp of the day!
Ask an Expert as you can imagine the Ask an Expert booths were busy, very busy with lots of attendees full of questions. We made our way to the Reporting Expert as we wished to ask a question surrounding the ability of using Salesforce as an Agile Test Management Tool which of course would need to have some pretty nifty reporting and the ability to replace a development tracking tool like JIRA. The expert was very insightful, listened to our questions and gave some very interesting advice that we have taken away with us and will put to work in our Salesforce Org. Just before we moved on, we got our second stamp and with it two Codey’s and two t-shirts!! Thankyou Salesforce/Trailhead!
London Built From Lego
One booth that seemed to catch quite a few eyes, was the IoT Smart Lego City, the detail was amazing to see and well….its London…built from Lego…!!
Salesforce World Tour Sessions
With the use of the Salesforce Events app, we were able to pre-plan our day of events and session and although we were not able to attend all (there was A LOT OF SWAG to collect!!) it was very helpful in reminding us of the sessions that we wanted to see. Three of the our enjoyable sessions were:
1. Meet the Salesforce MVP’s
One of the earlier sessions was the chance to meet the Salesforce MVP’s. It was a close session with some great interaction and questions like what it takes to become an MVP, what’s a favourite thing of being an MVP and some cheeky audience members even manage to bag an MVP Group Photo! It was fantastic to meet such a bunch of positive and knowledgable people who have fully embraced all things Salesforce.
2. The Command Centre
An interesting session was the Command Centre one, whereby a demonstration of the power of visual metrics was available. With four monitors collecting LIVE data from the Salesforce World Tour, it really showed how much useful data could be collected, visually displayed and of course then utilised to improve one’s company. I would definitely have these dashboards displayed on various monitors around my company to show/improve employee engagement. I would like to think that the mass-tweeting from Sonny and myself helped in getting #BrightFORCE (The BrightGen Tour Hashtag of choice) displayed on the Command Centre! We also manage to snap one of our own tweets being displayed on the monitor!
3. “We Are All Trailblazers” with Simon Mulcahy, Global Chief Marketing Officer
With new technologies are customers demanding smarter, faster, and more personalised experiences. The Salesforce World Tour Keynote by Simon Mulcahy, Global Chief Marketing Officer, described how brands like Ulster Bank and adidas are using the latest Salesforce to ensure that they are able to use the masses of data available to them to ensure that they can provide a personalised customer experience.
There were also the following Salesforce World Tour ’18 Trailhead Trailmixes that would take the user through the modules and areas that both companies were using; Ulster Bank / adidas
Dreampitch
Now, being a fan of Dragon’s Den and having an interest in the VC world and new Start-Up’s, I couldn’t wait for the Dreampitch session to come around on the day. I knew well in advance that this would be one of the highlights of the day for me, the free sweets and ice-cream while queuing helped as well.
Three entrepreneurs (Liz Fulham of SalesOptimize, Kapil Singhal & Arti Khanna of humanLearning LTD and Jin Chen of Digital Fineprint) would be pitching their companies onstage to three judges; James Caan, Jacqueline de Rojas and Dale Murray, for an opportunity to win a £100,000 investment from Salesforce Ventures.
To be eligible, each of the entrepreneurs had to fulfil the following criteria:
- Their technology stack has been built on or integrates with the Salesforce Platform (Lightning, Force.com or Heroku)
- The company must be domiciled in and organized under the laws of the UK or Ireland
- Aggregate cash funding of entity is less than £5,000,000 since formation
- Current gross revenue is more than £100,000 annual run rate (based on company’s gross revenue from its most recent quarter, multiplied by four (4))
- Company is a public or private limited company
- Companies meet the eligibility criteria as described in the Official Rules
- You comply with the Official Rules
Each Entrepreneur had just 5 minutes to talk about their company (with use of presentation slides), then the Judges had a further 5 minutes for a Q&A session before finally announcing the Salesforce Dreampitch 2018 winner.
It was fantastic viewing and all the pitches were extremely confident and professional and they answered all of the Judges questions.
I thoroughly enjoyed Dreampitch and cannot wait until the next one, this was certainly a MUST SEE session of the day.
Overall, it was a great experience and I hope that this will be the first of many Salesforce World Tours that I will be able to attend. I would definitely recommend attending whether you are working for a Salesforce Partner, an existing Salesforce Customer/User or simply just interested in using Salesforce within your company.
A Certified Salesforce Administrator, Salesforce Einstein Analytics and Discovery Consultant, ISTQB® Certified Tester Advanced Level, Jitterbit Foundations and Jitterbit Core Certified QA Test Automation Manager who is also an experienced creative all-rounder with enthusiasm and the proven ability to understand client needs and deliver satisfying solutions. A thirst for new technology and modern Quality Assurance and Testing techniques keeps me aspiring to learn at every opportunity. My current role is at Publicis Sapient who are an official Salesforce Platinum Partner. Publicis Sapient provide Salesforce expertise and strategic thinking that enables organisations to transform their business to Cloud-based technology.