Over four incredible days San Francisco was transformed into a Salesforce playground, from the Customer 360 expo below ground level, to the Dreamforest in San Fran’s converted streets. From the APAC on Tour Lounge on the third floor of the W Hotel (where some of our fave APAC Ohana met each day to relax and share what they’d learnt from the more than 2,700 sessions), to 326 metres above San Francisco on Salesforce Tower’s Ohana floor where anyone who didn’t have a little height-fright could gather to network, reunite and take in the views.
For us, the absolute highlight was seeing over 50 speakers from APAC share their stories, generously lend their experience and give their expertise – we are incredibly proud to have hosted each and every one of you, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for giving your time and knowledge back to the community.
Other highlights were numerous. We saw Good Return share its mission in the Financial Services Keynote, NAB give insights into how it built a new finance broker platform to help brokers better match borrowers to loans, RMIT provide advice on how to use Marketing Cloud as a lead engine, Barack Obama talk about how to identify leaders and empower them to become leaders of leaders.
Two of Thankyou’s founders spoke with our own Barry Dietrich on Salesforce Live, a panel of astounding international fin serv leaders spoke about earning trust and keeping it, the Down Under Dreaming Sydney team’s Simon Gascoigne and Alek Gokiert had a huge win in the inaugural Dreamin’ DemoJam, and Chris Strydom showed superhuman stamina in three daily demos of the eTimesheets app that’s saved Fulton Hogan $3 million – we’ll admit we only watched one of the sessions – at the Apple experience.
We even met the new and improved – very much expanded – Einstein Voice and saw him in action.
“Einstein Voice is transforming how things work together,” crowd fave Principal Mobile Architect Qingqing Liu said in the Opening Keynote’s demo. “It’s not just for sales. It’s not just for Mark and Parker – it’s for everyone.”
We heard inspiring announcements of new capabilities including:
- Customer 360 Truth, which helps companies unify all their data across all touchpoints to create a single source of truth about their customers. Companies can now connect customer data, authenticate identity, govern privacy, segment audiences and personalise experiences.
- Expansion of our AWS partnership that meshes the power of Amazon Connect into Service Cloud Voice, bringing together phone, digital channels and CRM data into one console for superior customer service. We’re also bringing AWS content into Trailhead.
- Einstein Voice, our customised, voice-activated interface for Salesforce apps. Einstein Voice applies natural language processing to call transcripts and automatically delivers insights that make customer experiences smarter and more efficient.
- An all-new Salesforce Mobile App for iOS, with a powerful new user experience enabled by Einstein AI, advanced analytics, including Siri shortcuts and Face ID.
- Trailhead GO, the mobile app for Trailhead, which empowers learners to skill up anywhere and any time with more than 700 modules covering in-demand business and tech skills. We’ve already downloaded it and we’re on our way to Ranger!
- The new Salesforce Mobile SDK, optimized for Swift and iOS 13, which enables Salesforce developers to quickly build and deploy native Salesforce apps for iPhone and iPad.
We learnt about how we – individuals and businesses – can embrace the 17 Sustainable Development Goals from Executive Director of UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Richard Curtis CBE, Project Everyone Co-Founder Gail Gallie and Robin Wright.
“It used to be governments trying to push companies to behave better,” Curtis told the full theatre. “But actually, engagement with the goals and a really profound understanding of how business can effect the goals in the way that it behaves, has meant that businesses are now putting more pressure on the government to actually change the rules that are stopping them doing the best things that they want to do.”
We also heard from Megan Rapinoe, Emilia Clarke, Deepak Chopra, David Beckham and Apple CEO Tim Cook. We saw Beck, Alicia Keys, Eddie Vedder, Fleetwood Mac and Crowded House belt out a few tunes. We saw (and got into a little audience participation at) the Customer 360 in action in the expo.
We spotted ANZ Trailblazers Rebecca Aichholzer and Anna Loughnan in the crowds, chatting with international admin icons – but we didn’t dare interrupt the reunions!
It was nearly impossible to choose five highlights. We’ve done it anyway. Find us on social to disagree – we’d be so happy to hear opinions, because there was far too much action for us to see it all!
Here goes:
Catch up! Stream Dreamforce sessions at Salesforce Live.
