I've had this in mind for some time now, it's now 2 months after our second dreamOlé and I haven't found the right time to put together a few words about my experience as a dreamOlé organiser this year in Barcelona. Fortunately, my project load is enough to keep me busy and I'm struggling a bit to get some time for my blog... But even if this event was some time ago, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to share my experience.
As you can imagine, these community events require a lot of effort and coordination. We've had some wonderful months of weekly morning calls amongst the dreamOlé team; checking every single detail so that everything went smoothly on the event day.
After last year, when we had power cuts and some WIFI problems, nothing could go wrong this year...
What a surprise it was for us to discover that, after all that effort, there was a pilot strike planned for the weekend of dreamOIé in Barcelona!! OMG!! Really!! What could we do? That was out of our control... But we warned everyone to double check their flights. One of our sponsors couldn't make it in the end, and I myself was affected with a really long delay... But I finally got there on time for the speakers' welcome!
It goes without saying that we had the most amazing venue that we could ever have. Look at these views!!
That was a really good start to our event, and it was only the kick off to what would be a great day in Barcelona, with almost 250 attendees.
It was amazing to find out about the local Salesforce community, and how well they embraced the concept of our community events, bringing all their enthusiasm to our event and making it a wonderful day.
This post is mainly a thank you post to everyone that made it possible.
Thanks very much to our sponsors, because none of this would have been possible without your support and enthusiasm.
Many thanks to our great selection of speakers, with amazing content that made our event very appealing to all the attendees. You can check all our sessions here.
Special mention to Holly Firestone, who was our opening keynote speaker, and told us all about the Salesforce community and the #Ohana spirit that wraps everything we do. The only thing she asked for was to have "tapas" alongside her talk, and by the looks of her surprise face I think we delivered!! ;)
Thanks very much to Christie Fidura and the Trailblazer Community for bringing great content to our event. We need to make a bigger effort our end to make this more visible, and it's a great honour to have your support.
Second special mention to Joshua Hoskins, this digital nomad that flies more than a pilot... hahaha and my amazing #DemoJam co-host, the real star of the show, what would have I done without you!!?? Thanks very much for bringing your Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve and Talent to our lives!
The next special mention goes to Zayne Turner, for bringing inspiration to the room as part of our closing keynote; telling us about what drives innovation and having lots of fun playing with code!! High five to all of those Developers out there!!
And last, but not least!! Thanks very much to each and everyone of my co-organisers for making this adventure so special and for becoming part of my #Ohana! Inés García, Alba Rivas, Pablo García, Laura Díaz, Agustina García, Carlos Campillo and Carolina Ruiz. You are all an amazing bunch of people, and I can't wait to start the arrangements for next year!! Check out the multiple skins of our logo!! It's lovely!!
I couldn't resist to add this final picture, which shows one of our strong points, our #AfterParties are becoming a ritual, and this year we ended up going to the beach amongst other activities.
Stay tuned for announcements, as we are still in the process of deciding the new location for dreamOlé '19, but we'll let you all know once it's chosen.
THANKS!!
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!
What a surprise it was for us to discover that, after all that effort, there was a pilot strike planned for the weekend of dreamOIé in Barcelona!! OMG!! Really!! What could we do? That was out of our control... But we warned everyone to double check their flights. One of our sponsors couldn't make it in the end, and I myself was affected with a really long delay... But I finally got there on time for the speakers' welcome!
I couldn't resist to add this final picture, which shows one of our strong points, our #AfterParties are becoming a ritual, and this year we ended up going to the beach amongst other activities.
