Dreamforce 2015 is Coming: Get Ready With Trailhead!
It's hard to believe it, but Dreamforce time has rolled around again (I swear I just left yesterday), which means if you've not yet convinced your company that you should be there, then it's time to really start pushing for it.
Not Just Sales
Dreamforce is not a conference focused on sales teams. The purpose isn't to show your clients a good time and close deals. It's not a jaunt for your CEO.
Dreamforce can be those things, but it's a conference for everyone in the ecosystem, users, admins, consultants, developers and everyone who's even slightly curious about the platform, the products, IoT, Heroku, marketing... you get the idea. It genuinely annoys me when companies only send their sales staff to Dreamforce as they're completely missing the point, and it suggests to me a mentality where development (as in developing people, not coding!) is not high on the list of priorities.
I've written in the past about why companies should send their developers to Dreamforce, and I'm not going to reiterate the points here, but it is a valuable and worthy investment. It is not an expense.
Preparing
If you've not been to Dreamforce before then frankly, prepare to be overwhelmed. It's huge. Luckily, just in time for this year, there's a brand new Get Ready for Dreamforce Trailhead module full of information about the conference and with a heap of tips for those attending. It's genuinely worth checking out, and hey, more points and a swanky badge (no, don't steal mine) to boot! If you've not even gotten started on Treailhead yet then now is the perfect opportunity.
My DF15 Tips
- Don't fill your day with sessions. You can learn just as much from networking, doing mini-hacks in the DevZone or talking to some super smart people in the AdminZone.
- Carry liquids and snacks. It's quite easy to get wrapped up in a conversation and miss lunch, I seem to manage it most days during the conference.
- Dress comfortably and don't lug around a laptop unless you really need to. Yes, it's old school, but paper is a lot lighter after 12 hours of carrying it around.
As always I'm looking forward to meeting not only my friends and familiar faces from the web, but also new people, because forging new connections and sharing knowledge is the name of the game. Proximity Insight will have a booth in the IoT Zone which is where I'll be found, I hope to see you there.