London's Calling 2018 - My Highlights

First time at London's Calling! First time!

We all love first times (well, not always...), and this one has been a great first time for me. I just came back from #LDNsCall18, and I'd like to leave my impressions after such an inspiring event.

London's Calling came at the perfect time for me this year. After having been involved in quite an absorbing project over the past few months, I really needed the inspiration and update boost I had as an attendee to this event.

It all started with London giving us a really nice day. It was so nice and sunny! That could only mean that we'd be having an amazing day, and that's exactly what happened.

Desynit sent a good representation to the event. Some of us veterans and some others were newbies, including a few developers and admins. There were even a few former members of the team giving talks or just as attendees. So this was all very promising and a good guarantee that this event would be very enjoyable.

So the event started, and I had already planned my sessions. I had a delayed flight, so I took the opportunity to builde my schedule:

-  Become a Salesforce Security Superman!, by my amazing dreamOlé colleague Alba Rivas. I learned a lot about good and bad practices in all aspects of the Force.com platform when it comes to security. A very comprehensive list of ideas to make it all more secure

- Search other systems right from Salesforce – the easy way, by Martin Humpolec. This was a very interesting talk about federated search; with practical examples showing the journey to make it all work. This is something I will be giving a go when I find a gap, as it was really interesting

- Lightning Data Service: Forget about Apex in your Lightning Components developments, by Fabien Tallion. This was a good run through the new way of accessing Salesforce data being introduced at the moment. Again, something I need to catch up with sooner rather than later to be ahead of the game

- How connecting a Robot to Salesforce will make it the perfect Sales Assistant, by Filipe Freitas. A very nice talk on the integration of robots with Salesforce. This is probably still a bit far for me to try, but still a very interesting talk to find out what others are doing with this!

- After this was the break for the demoJam, run by amazing Jodi Wagner and Francis Pindar. A good number of apps were shown. It's amazing what people can do within Salesforce! And just after the demoJam, the lunch break, which was a great time to get to know some newcomers like Esteve Graells and his partner. Very nice chats around some lunch, exchange of first impressions; it's always good to meet great people

- Male Allies in Tech – Why we need you and how to be one, by Angela Manoney and Keir Bowden. This was a very inspirational talk about the role of men in gender equality. We all have to get involved!

- Confessions of a Visualforce Dinosaur, by my good friend Christopher Lewis. It was great to see his points on the journey from Visualforce to Lightning Components, and how Visualforce is still a technology we need to keep up with

- If You Can Write a Formula Field You Can Use a Command Line, by Salesforce evangelist Peter Chittum. Peter always gives really good talks, and this was no difference! Really good to encourage everyone to not be scared of the Command Line. Again, lots of things I need to start using myself on a daily basis

- No Connection? No Problem!, by Keir Bowden. Some good guidelines on how to optimise your offline time. Even being Cloud technology, Salesforce has something to offer offline

- Closing Keynote – If I can do it, so can you, by Dr Sue Black. Keynote time came and Dr Sue Black's experiences inspired the whole audience. It's always a good time to NOT GIVE UP and fight for what you believe in. Well done!

After Party Time!

The after party time was a good time to get to talk to more people. It was great to catch up with one of my current clients; this was their first community event, but I think they are now getting the "Saleforce bug" and I'm sure I'll be catching up with them in future events...

It was also great to spend some real-life time with my dreamOlé colleagues Inés García and Alba Rivas; after so many online meetings, it's always good to be able to have some real contact with them! We made some good connections for our next dreamOlé event in Barcelona 2018. And we also had some fun in the photo booth!

And this is also one of my favourite times at Salesforce events, because you also get to know all the "Twitter Celebs". I finally met Zachary Jeans and exchanged some interesting words with him. I also met Kristi Guzman and Stephan Garcia. I also bumped into Fabrice Cathala for the second time in a couple of events, and we only got to shake hands, but I know he'll be coming to dreamOlé this year, so I hope we can finally catch up there! Then, in the after-after party time, I also got the chance to talk to Skip Sauls, although at that point, Salesforce wasn't the main subject anymore... but that's also very interesting, there's still life behind Salesforce!

Finally, I would like to mention the organising team and the hard work they put together to bring a successful event to the Salesforce community in Europe. Well done every single one of you! Kerry Townsend, Jodi Wagner, Amanda Beard-Neilson, Francis Pindar, Simon Goodyear and Todd Halfpenny. 

So this is the first time I go to London's Calling, but this was the third edition of the event. I've been lucky to attend Dreamforce 3 times so far, a couple of Essentials events, as well as many local user and developer groups, like the one I run in Seville, or the one run by my colleagues in Bristol. On top of that, I'm one of the organisers of dreamOlé, the community-led event in Spain; so I'm building up quite a substantial amount of stickers and t-shirts that I'm a big fan of.

But most importantly, through these events I've met incredible people that are now my friends! And I can see this happening even more as I keep attending new events, so that's why I'm loving it! I love a world without boundaries, and these events that bring people together are a good way of getting rid of boundaries!