What Happened at Dreamforce 17

Dreamforce is a happening, to say the least. About 170,000 people converge on downtown San Francisco for four days of sessions, networking, and learning on the Salesforce platform (and parties, of course). Dreamforce also embeds what CEO Mark Benioff called the largest nonprofit conference in the world. Salesforce.org and its many customers and partners (like us!) filled the Westin with immeasurable beneficence. Karen and I did—and learned—a lot last week at Dreamforce; here’s just a sample!

For nonprofit admin and engagement superstars, some neat tech emerged:

• Philanthropy Cloud: Salesforce.org announced a snazzy new platform for employee engagement. Coming soon!
• myTrailhead: Customize everyone’s favorite Salesforce learning environment for your users.
• Form Assembly: We were thrilled to tour their new Salesforce connector, including drag & drop builder and on-the-fly field creation! Coming later this year; we can help in the meantime.
• Time for timer: The new Time custom field type (beta) has a lot of possibilities. Thanks to Beth Breisnes for the tour!
• Lightning is dynamic: An enticing update to Lightning is dynamic layouts. Now you can change what your users see based on what’s in the data. Your users will love this one. The report builder is coming along, too.

Power to the people:

We were happy to sponsor the popular and inspiring annual breakfast for nonprofit and higher ed tech’s women, nonbinary and transgender people, and their allies. Once called Girlforce, it’s now Amplify!

We also joined in a fundraising Mindshare Meetup and an activity management Circle of Success. At the latter, I particularly liked the tip of adding a “significant” checkbox to Tasks, to hone in on activities that move supporters up the engagement pyramid.

Finally, the best part of any conference is hanging out with our amazing clients. It was great to spend time with and get the latest news from Stand, Center for Action and Contemplation, GO Public Schools, WEC/WCV, and Sacred Heart. We look forward to more great conversations next Dreamforce!