So, it’s Dreamforce again. That big ball of crazy that is 145,000 people invading downtown San Francisco for four days of deep immersion into all things Salesforce. Sales Cloud to Heroku, Exact Target to the Internet of Things … There’s a little bit of everything here from the Hilton to the Palace Hotels.
Day 1 kicked off with the Community Keynote; a staple of Dreamforce for me since 2009. Once again filled to capacity, this keynote, led by the ever awesome Erica Kuhl, goes over what’s happened in the community over the past year, and some of the new features being rolled out for the success site in the coming months.
If you’ve been to a community keynote, you’ve likely seen me doing my thing, helping people who are late find seats, passing around swag, and just generally walking so that my ADD doesn’t make me fidget in a seat for an hour. But one thing that caught my eye was one of the employees who help scan people in and such.
As I said, I’ve been at the community keynote since 2009, and one lady who once again manned the doors for it looked very familiar. I went up at a quiet time, and introduced myself and said “I apologize but you look really familiar; how many community keynotes have you been to?”.
The poor lady’s eyes teared up, and said “it’s so nice that you remember me. I remember you and so many other people here. I’ve been working the community keynote since 2009. You guys are just so nice, I just keep wanting to come back”. She then gave me a hug, and quickly got herself back to the door.
After the session ended, I introduced her to a couple of people on their way out, and when she was helping to clean up some of the extra beach balls (yes, we had beach balls…make sure you come next year to see what crazy we do!!!), I made sure to introduce her to Erica, and once again I could tell that I was slightly embarrassing her.
Later on in the day, I went back just to say hi again, and apologize if I had put her on the spot at all (I am Canadian, after all). She gave me a big hug, and told me she always asked to be on the community keynote just because “you people are all so nice”. And that made my day.
Donna’s request, and my long experience at Dreamforce (I’ve now run out of fingers to measure my attendance) just solidify to me what Dreamforce truly is. While yes, it’s a technology conference overall, the people who flock to San Francisco to attend (and those who work to make sure it goes smoothly) are hands down some of the nicest, most caring people on the planet. And it’s my pleasure to call you all colleagues.
