Dreamforce '24: Day-1
Today was the first day of Dreamforce. I don’t think I was prepared for just how massive, busy and overwhelming Dreamforce is. At TDX turning up 30 minutes before the keynote is fine. At Dreamforce you’re in an overflow viewing situation with pretty poor streaming in an other building! We’ll get to that. But before that the most important thing: the swag. Gone are the days of a fancy backpack. Now you’ve got to complete the quest to get a recycled cotton tote. Here’s my Day 1 haul
I started the day at 8:30 with the Build Innovative ISV Apps with Agentforce. I mostly did this to meet people I’d only ever talked to online in person. I didn’t learn much about building apps - I’ve already done this for real. However the forward looking roadmap and the conversations after the session were incredibly valuable.
This session ended 30 minutes before the keynote. By the time I got out of the session (which was not in the Moscone Center buildings) and down the street to the Moscone Center the main keynote room was full as were most of the overflows. The overflows were suffering from poor streaming. I watched some of the keynote then ditched it to go down to the main Trailblazer forest and knock out some of the activities there. Hopefully my best time will stand and I’ll get some cool prizes. I am not ashamed to say I did the beginner level just to post a fast time for the swag!
During the afternoon I attended various Agentforce sessions. I’d say nothing particularly interesting was shown. Certainly the detail around other channels, proactivity and the more advanced features was not yet revealed.
I also had a very interesting discussion about Data Cloud One at the booth. This really seems like a bit of a gamechanger for multi-org Data Cloud bringing all the functionality that has been made available on the home Data Cloud org to other connected orgs.
I’m sure I could write more but I’ll leave you with some more pictures from around Dreamforce
Dreamforce '24: Day-0
It’s the day before Dreamforce. I’m in San Francisco and the sun is trying to shine. Amazingly for a work trip I have relatively little to do and can enjoy the day 🙂
Happily by arriving at the hotel quite late on the previous day I was able to sleep. Not as much or as well as I’d like but starting the day with 6 hours sleep at more or less the correct time is a great way to start getting over that 8 hour time difference. However with the hotel charging almost $40 for the breakfast buffet (and it not being included despite the ridiculous room rate) I thought I’d head out to get something.
A short walk around the Ferry Terminal and there were some choices but I settled for Boudin bakery. Despite the fame for Sourdough their breakfast menu did not have any! I settled on the breakfast burrito. But no coffee as they don’t serve decaf! It was fine, certainly filling but they don’t open early enough for tomorrow so I’ll be trying somewhere else.
After a brief return to the hotel I headed out on my “California pilgrimage” to get an In-N-Out burger. It’s about a 40 minute walk round to Fisherman’s Wharf to work up an appetite. I got to In-N-Out at about 11:45 and got my double-double animal style, fries and strawberry milkshake just before the queue got insane. Delicious!
After that I met up with some fellow Trailblazers to walk the Golden Gate Bridge. I had crossed a couple of years back on a double decker bus so knew to expect the wind (actually not too bad) but had not really anticipated the road noise. Still it was a good walk and great conversation.
Then Uber back into town to collect my conference badge. With Express Badge it was super fast. Quick face scan to match with my previously supplied selfie, flash of government ID and it was mine with a strong warning to not lose it as it’s $150 to replace!
To round out the day I headed over to Fogo to hear the wonderful Joe Thomas talk about AI and Analytics and have a few drinks.
Dreamforce '24 : Day -1
Day -1, or two days before Dreamforce, saw me travelling to San Francisco. I live in the lovely spa town of Harrogate in the north of England. Which is a great place to live but not exactly well connected! So my plans were: Taxi to LBA, fly LBA->AMS, AMS->JFK, JFK->SFO then Uber to the hotel. All in all I expected this to take something about 22 hours.
And so it was. I arrived pretty much as expected! I am writing this from my room in the Hyatt Regency (very nice) overlooking the Ferry Terminal building in SF. Despite my first plane being late enough that I though I would miss the connection, immigration in JFK taking 45 minutes then a farcical situation where they let us queue for security only to decide we then need to be two floors down and having to gate check my bag I made it pretty much on time.
I have a day to get over the jetlag and prepare myself mentally for Dreamforce. More on that in my next post. I’ll leave you with some terrible pictures
Dreamforce '24 Plans and Schedule
Dreamforce is fast approaching. The Agenda Builder has been live for a week or so. The session list is overwhelming! I also have the added challenge of speaking slots that are non-negotiable blocks. And of course there is Dreamfest too!
Let’s start with my speaking slots. I am speaking 3 times on Wednesday (and then relaxing at Dreamfest!). Here are the times and locations if you want to come see me speak. If you are hoping to grab me for a chat that’s cool but perhaps not after the second session as I’ll be running (quite possibly literally) to the next one
Wednesday 18th, 09:00-09:20 - 5 Strategies to Make Your Business AI-Ready with AppExchange - Moscone West, L1 Forest, AppExchange Theater
Wednesday 18th 15:30-15:50 - 5 Strategies to Make Your Business AI-Ready with AppExchange - Moscone South, LL, Content Pavilion, Stage 7
Wednesday 18th, 16:00-16:20 - An ISV Story: How Certinia Is Building Scale in Its ALM - Moscone West, L1 Forest, AppExchange Theater
If you’re not coming to Dreamforce then you can also look forward to the second running of the “5 Strategies” session coming to Salesforce +!
Mostly my schedule is packed with Gen AI, Agentforce and Data Cloud sessions. Agent Force is clearly going to be the main topic of Dreamforce and I’ll be in about 7 sessions on this trying to gain as much knowledge as possible. But there’s still time for the perennial favourites of keynotes, True to the Core and general developer topics
I’ll also be sitting the AI Specialist certification and will report back after the fact on that one.
Dreamforce 2024
I am incredibly excited to be able to say this year I am attending Dreamforce. And more than that I’ll be speaking!
Right now I am speaking in a single session: An ISV Story: How Certinia Is Building Scale in Its ALM. The agenda is still being settled so I can’t say which day this is on or even too much about the session other than it should involved Scale Center and Apex Guru.
I am hoping for additional speaking opportunities around Gen AI, Copilot and Data Cloud but even if I only have one session it’s incredibly exciting. If you are going to Dreamforce I might see you there!
Dreamforce 2023
Read about the two demos I’ve been working on from Dreamforce this year
Dreamforce is fast approaching. As much as I’d love to be there I won’t be. Not this year. Maybe next year. But some things I have been working on will be. In future posts I’ll write a bit more about them, and maybe I’ll be able to share some videos. For now I’ll just say a little about the demos I’ve been working on building and where you can see them if you are lucky enough to be at Dreamforce
The first demo I’ve been working on is a Data Cloud demo. This demo showcases how our CS Cloud product can work with Data Cloud ingesting data from multiple sources that can be on platform or off, work with that data at scale and then use that data to drive intelligent action within our product running on platform. This demo also showcases our ability to use Data Cloud to drive AI models to predict future states.
My part of this demo is the Data Cloud part. It’s been fun working in a novel environment although it’s fair to say that Data Cloud still has some rough edges from a developer experience point of view. I’ll write about the various parts of building a DC solution in future
The second demo is part of a very small closed pilot group that we as a company and I personally have been lucky enough to be part of. This is a demo of how we could incorporate Einstein GPT into our products. Again we are using CS Cloud as our demo product. The demo shows how we can use EGPT to summarise text coming from records inside or org to drive generation of application specific objects in a a number of ways.
This demo is very exciting and shows how easy it is to incorporate GPT into your apps using the Salesforce APIs. And this is with some very early APIs that will be totally re-built for wider usage after Dreamforce. Even with these early APIs I was able to achieve good results in a very short period.
You will be able to see the EGPT demo at the App Exchange landing in Dreamforce. Our Data Cloud demo will be presented twice on Thursday at 1:30 and again at 2:00. I hope you can catch our demos and see the exciting work we’ve done with new parts of the platofrm