Dreamforce 2021
Colliver Technology Group had the opportunity to sit in on portions of Salesforce’s annual conference, Dreamforce. This annual event is geared toward Salesforce users, partners and customers to educate, entertain and network with others in the field. Salesforce is built around community and uses the term “Trailblazers” to describe those using this platform to initiate positive change. Here at CTG, we think of ourselves as Trailblazers as well! Dreamforce was certainly geared toward the Trailblazer community with the unbeatable energy surrounding the event. It truly is a global conference, which has been made even more accessible with Salesforce’s new streaming platform, Salesforce+.
Salesforce+
Dreamforce has been growing since 2003 and this year is the event’s 18th year. “Dreamforce is famous for being such a large event. This year, 1,000 people will be here on-site and over 160,000 will join online,” said Colin Fleming, the Senior Vice President of Global Brand Marketing at Salesforce. With the majority of attendees online, Salesforce released Salesforce+ to stream the event live and for the sessions to be posted on-demand. This was intentional yet interesting. Using their platform enables everything to be found in one place and monitored by Salesforce, however, this newer service did cause a few bumps in the road. Attendees noticed occasional buffering and pausing of the livestream which could have potentially been avoided if a more experienced platform would’ve been used.
Slack Integration
A major theme of Dreamforce 2021 was how Salesforce now owns Slack Technologies. CTG is a big fan of Slack and have been using it internally and with some of our clients now for three plus years. We mainly use it as another communication tool but clearly it has a lot more power that is yet to be tapped. There were a couple of segments directly highlighting the Slack integration with the Salesforce platform and how this will help bridge the gap between sales and marketing teams. Slack bots can create channels in Slack to connect leads from Salesforce with the account executives allowing for the personal nurturing of that lead. The only caveat here is that this feature is not directly included with Slack or Salesforce, it is only programmable. Even though this tool has potential, it is hard to say the logistics of its current use without it already being programmed into the platforms.
A Staggering 2,700 Sessions
Some of the sessions that CTG tuned in for were; Explore Slack & Salesforce’s Successful Path to Integration, Getting Back to Growth: B2B Sales Reimagined, Right Here, Right Now: The Power of Community, Grow Faster and Reach Further with Partners The IT Leader’s Guide to the Salesforce Platform Roadmap, The New Power Couple: AI and Growing Businesses.
On CTG’s Radar
The conference lacked a ton of detailed information about Pardot, Salesforce’s B2B Marketing Automation tool. We use the tool and were hoping to expand our knowledge during these sessions. Fortunately, there is another conference, Pardreamin, coming up in late October which we plan on attending. It will be interesting to see what else comes of Salesforce+ after Dreamforce or if the global conference is its sole purpose. As for the Slack integration, we are watching it closely moving forward because there is no doubt it will change how everyone connects, not only here at CTG, but on a global scale. If you missed this event, you can catch up with the on-demand sessions on Salesforce+.