Community Power: Down Under Dreaming

The Australian Salesforce community has gone from strength to strength over the years, and this can be seen in the fact that we finally have a large community-organised conference coming up in Sydney: Down Under Dreaming on the 29th of August. The reason this is of particular interest to me is that it's probably the first Salesforce event in Australia that won't have a sales component to it; from the official side of things here everything has always leaned on the side of marketing over content and this is a good chance to do something different.


One of the most exciting aspects of this is that it'll feature some great speakers including Andrew O’Keefe (author of Hardwired Humans and The Boss), the ever-interesting Peter Coffee, the original gangster Erica Kuhl and all-around super-nice guy Jeff Grosse.

Rather than blabber on about it myself, I'll let you hear about it from my good mate and ever-present F1 companion and drinking buddy, ~Farrod Bunt~ Jarrod Hunt.

We're classy people

The Origins

As Salesforce User Group leaders we are really looking forward to this event! We've seen the growing popularity of community led events such as Midwest Dreamin', Tahoe Dreamin' and London's Calling, and we really wanted to put on a similar event for our local Salesforce community.

It was a pretty daunting prospect at first. None of us are event coordinators so initially we really had no idea what we were doing, but one of the best things about this format of event is it is truly is a collaborative process. It's an event for the community, by the community. Of course Salesforce themselves are very supportive and helpful, but we've had full control of the entire days agenda, which is great.

From an initial brain dump of "here's what we think we need to do" we had people putting their hands up from all across the Salesforce ecosystem to to help out and soon enough the ball was rolling!

We've been fortunate to get logistical support from Andrew and his fantastic team at CAPITAL-e, who really are the glue helping us to piece together the coordination of this thing. Without them this event would still be a bunch of scribble on a piece of paper. Along with leaders from other ANZ User Groups, some Salesforce MVP's and other very committed individuals we have a passionate and driven organisational team, who've all done amazing work to get this thing off the ground.

The concept for us was really validated when we went to market looking for sponsors. We sent out a sponsorship prospectus on a Friday afternoon and within five days we'd locked in 90% of our sponsorship! We've had to get inventive and come up with other ways to get sponsors involved because we've had such high demand.

The Event

When you look at the agenda for the day it really is incredible to see the calibre of presenters and keynote speakers. It's going to be a jammed packed day full of great content and opportunities to learn and network with like-minded professionals. We're also hosting it at one of the most iconic venues in Sydney, Taronga Zoo, and if we're lucky we may get a visit from some of the locals who call the zoo home.

We've got a few other fun things up our sleeves so if you haven't got your ticket already, you really should, it is going to be a great day.

I hope to see you there.

Jarrod Hunt

Sydney Salesforce User Group Co-leader