Dreamforce ‘17 was another conference for the books! We hustled our way through San Francisco, holding meetings and panel discussions and presentations while meeting people at our booth throughout the day — and being part of two unbelievable parties at night. (Some of us are still catching up on sleep.)

Amid the frenzy, it’s hard to find time to reflect — but we wanted to share our version of Dreamforce’s best moments, before our nostalgia gives way to planning ways to make DF18 even better.

Here’s the good stuff, chronologically:

Monday

From the moment we hit Howard Street in San Francisco, like cowboys on a journey in the Wild West, it was all systems go. While you may first notice the massive, field-spanning sign welcoming Trailblazers in the below tweet, we were chuffed to see our C|S logo loud and proud at B Bar (on the upper level of the photo), soon to be the venue for our much-heralded Star Bar party on Wednesday night. It was time to get to work during the long conference days, so we could fully enjoy the festivities!

The conference kicked off strong with the Salesforce Partner Keynote “Winning Together in the Salesforce Ecosystem”. We shared our notes and takeaways about what it means on the AppExchange in this blog post, but if you only have 30 seconds for insights, here are the notes on the notes:

  • The Salesforce economy is growing! In 2020, IDC predicts: $895 Billion in new revenue for the ecosystem, 3.3M new jobs, and for every $1 a Salesforce customer spends with Salesforce, they will spend $5.18 on the ecosystem.

  • The Partner Program is more friendlier than ever

  • The Lightning Experience and Einstein AI offer new app opportunities which will increase innovation and decrease attrition.

Later that afternoon, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff presented his keynote, showing Trailblazers the vision for the coming year with a broader look at the Salesforce ecosystem and Ohana. Salesforce has a deep dive on Benioff’s 90-minute keynote, but a big announcement was a strategic partnership between Salesforce and Google that holds HUGE potential in data and analytics. It was standing room only in the Partner Lodge (the best keynote viewing spot), with all of our fellow partners coming together to watch the livecast on the big screen.

Tuesday

Tuesday was jam-packed with CodeScience thought leadership!

On the technical side, Salesforce MVP and CodeScience rockstar developer Mohith Shrivastava dropped some serious knowledge on how to use the Snap-ins SDK to incorporate a two way video chat button in a native iOS swift application. Check out the photo below or, watch the video here.

Our big launch was the State of the AppExchange Partner report, the fruit of months of research learning about the strategies, tactics and businesses of hundreds of Salesforce Partners. To kick this off, we compiled a rich panel of seasoned AppExchange Partners, discussing their experiences in driving opportunity through the Salesforce Ecosystem. We were thrilled to have Trisha Price, EVP Product and Development of nCino, Falon Fatemi, CEO & Founder of Node, as well as both Sarah London, Chief Product Officer, and Melissa Laake, Director of Strategy & Design from Optum Analytics. Watch the session video here.

Later that afternoon, we presented a session tailor-made for those exploring becoming an AppExchange Partner for the first time. CodeScience CEO Brian Walsh and Product Manager Kevin Houk appeared in conversation with Scott Voigt, CEO of FullStory, sharing how FullStory was able to shrink their AppExchange development down to just 2 months. Attendees learned that with the right approach and partner, the go-to-market process on the AppExchange doesn’t have to be long. Watch the session video here.

We weren’t involved in this one but it’s just too cool not to mention: Three startups built on the Salesforce platform competed “Shark Tank”-style in Dreampitch 2017 for a $250,000 investment from Salesforce Ventures. The panel included will.i.am, former Black Eyed Pea and founder and CEO of i.am+, Chris Sacca, founder and chairman of Lowercase Capital and frequent “Guest Shark” on Shark Tank, Shahrzad Rafati, founder and CEO of BroadbandTV, and Guy Oseary, talent manager to the stars for Sound Ventures.

Huge congrats to Loop and Tie — excited to see how they make the most of the big paycheck.

Wednesday

Mohith was back on stage, this time presenting an introduction to Einstein Analytics SDK with Lightning. Salesforce developers always want more “Mo,” and we love sharing his expertise — glad to have him on our team!

We also had CodeScience Global Alliance Manager Erin Murray sharing tips over a catered lunch. This session was a deep dive on much of the same content as our pre-Dreamforce webinar, Spearfishing in the Salesforce Ecosystem: How to Rev up Your Deal Flow. We compiled notes from that in this post, so those of you who missed the webinar and couldn’t break bread with us should check it out.

But let’s be honest, the highlights for most people were the killer parties following a busy day of learning. (Can a conference be all work AND lots of play?)

We had hundreds of people turn up for our Star Bar themed party, ready for liftoff. There were cowboys, astronauts, and all sorts of luminaries packing B Bar (check out the galleries here to relive the night). The rain was held off by our branded bright orange CodeScience umbrellas – did you get one?

We also were a co-sponsor of the subsequent AppBash, which was more than a ton of fun. Wish we could hold on to that fee-eee-eee-ling.

Thursday

We rallied to say a proper goodbye to Dreamforce, truly one of our favorite weeks of every year. I wonder what the DF18 cowboy shirt will look like…

So what’s next? Quite a bit, actually. We’ll be globe-trotting for Salesforce world tours and upcoming conferences like December’s NYC World Tour and February’s SaaStr Annual (back in hopefully sunnier San Francisco). Slides and notes from some of these helpful sessions are coming soon. And stay tuned for some exciting thought leadership and insights heading into 2018! We’re interested in new opportunities to help partners build something great on the AppExchange, so please reach out to us and we’ll see if there’s a fit for you to become our next big success story.

About the Author: Stefanie Gesiorski
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