BasicGov / BLOG

Salesforce.com’s annual Dreamforce event is earlier this year than most – August 30 – September 2, 2011.  Today is the last day for early bird registration in fact.  You can follow Dreamforce in social media at:

• Twitter at hashtag #df11 and at http://twitter.com/#!/Dreamforce
• Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/dreamforce
• Youtube http://www.youtube.com/salesforce#g/c/4F4339962AFB91B1
• Linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/company/salesforce.com

As a Salesforce.com partner, we (BasicGov) attend this conference every year and I’m looking forward to being there again this year.

This year’s keynotes that have been announced so far are:

• Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO Salesfore.com
• Vivek Kundra, US government Chief Information Officer
• Marcel LeBrun, CEO and Founder Radian6
• Loic Le Meur, CEO and Founder Seesmic
• Jeremiah Owyang and Charline Li, Partners Altimeter Group
• Michael Fauscette, VP IDC

There will be these new areas at Dreamforce …

• Welcome to the Social Enterprise. You need to reach customers at every point of interaction—not just in your own products, but also through sales, services, Twitter, Facebook, Chatter, and community sites everywhere. @dreamforce will offer an intense focus on social media, the movement that’s reshaping the business world. Hear jaw-dropping secrets from leading practitioners on the cutting edge of the industry; they’ll share everything from the basics of setting a social media strategy to tracking metrics and going viral.
• Expanded expo hours. This was your top piece of feedback from last year and we listened: The Expo will be open all four days, for up to eight hours each day. This year, we’ll have 300+ cloud computing leaders on hand—in addition to the Salesforce.com Campground in the center of the Expo. With all these value-add technologies under one roof, you’re guaranteed to find the next must-have solution for your organization.
• Extended learning time. You asked for more time to take advantage of all Dreamforce has to offer. We’ve added a fourth day, full of content, allowing you to attend more sessions, get more hands-on training, and unlock even more value . . . Dreamforce ’11 is packed — Monday with pre-conference training and certification, and Tuesday through Friday with sessions, keynotes, networking events, expo time, and more.
• Technology deep dives. Looking for more information on all the new salesforce.com products? We’ve added plenty of sessions that focus on Heroku,Siteforce, database.com, and Radian6. Pick up all the details and training you need; then get started using them right alongside our experts.

Not sure if you should attend?

Check out “Justify your trip” here

I just recently attended Salesforce.com’s annual event, Dreamforce, in San Francisco last week with my BasicGov colleagues, David Roberts (CEO) and James Wikkerink (Tech.).

Overall, it was a very good event.  It combined good business, good fun, and a solid education in a very packed 3-4 days in San Francisco.  As I reflected on the conference I was left with a general theme of openness.  Everyone at the show is there to figure out how to do more business and expand the “cloud and salesforce ecosystem”.  Lots of good discussions with SalesForce, AppXchange partners, customers, and other OEM partners like BasicGov.

The 5 highlights of my Dreamforce experience are:

1. Database.com was an interesting announcement and development for Salesforce.com (see blog) as it leads to a more open platform.  Any platform that allows for open access is good for our customers.
2. The acquisition of Heroku is a big indicator of how committed Salesforce.com is to pushing a strategy to become the defacto open standard for cloud development.
3. Meetings with Salesforce.com’s public sector sales people to work more closely with their economic development products and BasicGov community development and land management products.
4. From an entertainment perspective Steve Wonder with Will.I.AM,  Bill Clinton keynote and Neil Young performing were an impressive line-up of talent and fun events to attend anywhere let alone to have it included in the Dreamforce registration.
5. Marc Benioff continues to impress with his quest to make cloud computing the go to strategy for IT people in all industries.  His contribution to charity with the 1-1-1 strategy is what other corporate leaders should be looking up to.

Watch the Dreamforce keynote video