Dreamforce ‘16 was by far the best Dreamforce in 13 years. If you were unable to attend this year, or even if you attended and missed out on some of the fun experiences, fear not! We at Zenkraft are here to fill you in on all the great adventures we experienced, so you’re prepared and raring to go for Dreamforce 2017.
We saw Dreamforce turn 13, launching new spectacular products, with around 2,700 informative sessions, and bringing together around 170,000 people from all across the world. Dreamforce connects industry enthusiasts for four days of events, activities and thousands of live solutions from the world’s largest cloud ecosystem, to share and present life-changing technology and knowledge to those within the industry. Whether you’re a start-up of 1 person or a Fortune 500, Dreamforce is inclusive to all and will undoubtedly enhance the way you run your business.
Keynotes speeches, including Marc Benioff
This year the bar was raised, with some of the world’s most influential entrepreneurs, guests and -of course- Marc Benioff to start the whole experience! Every year the most anticipated event at Dreamforce is when Benioff takes the stage to deliver his opening keynote speech.
Benioff kicked it off by taking us on a journey, describing Dreamforce as an annual “family reunion”, expressing his gratitude and thanking everyone for joining him again this year. He expressed his delight over the millions of users across the world which Salesforce has helped and will continue to help.
Benioff, alongside Harris Parker and Shubha Nabar, announced the newest Salesforce feature, Einstein AI, presenting the potential impact of this feature to the Salesforce Ecosystem. Zenkraft are excited to combine Einstein with our logistics app, to provide real-time predictions into logistics data.
If you’d like to watch the keynote in its entirety click here to watch it all!
Cloud Expo – Moscone South
This year, as Bronze sponsors, we had more fun than ever before, being exposed to more events, conferences, and face-to-face engagements. Our booth #2208 was always covered by the Zenkraft team ready to demonstrate the benefits of our shipping apps.
Giving ‘swag’ is a ritual at Dreamforce, attendees walk around speaking with companies and going away with their hands full, a great way to get your hands on your year’s supply of pens, notepads and technology information!
Over the 4 days we were there we provided more than 50 demos of our native apps, communicated with clients and formed new connections for future business. The ability to interact with a range of consumers and to hear their feedback allowed us to understand our consumer database and the networking experience was next to none.
Happy Hours, Parties & Dinners
With more restaurants per capita than any other city in the United States, San Francisco is everyone’s culinary dream. The streets of San Francisco are filled with Dreamforce goers and Trailheads going out for dinner and happy hour, and when food and drink is in abundance, it’s hard to resist the temptation.
Each evening, events were hosted by partners and Dreamforce enthusiasts all around San Francisco. With a variety of different events to attend and join, it was hard to pick our favourites, but to point a few: The People’s Party at Temple Nightclub, Cirrus Insight Happy Hour at Thirsty Bear, B2B Marketer’s Bash featuring Flo Rida at The Warfield and AscentERP annual get together at The District. We also have some great memories at our ‘team building’ time dinners at the Trou Normand and PABU.
Dreamfest – U2!
Every year brings with it a performance from amazing artists and bands, so when we heard that one of our favourite bands will be performing at Dreamforce 2016, it was a no brainer. We just had to go to see one of the most famous bands on the planet,U2!
To get to the stage we hitched a ride with the on site shuttle bus, which took us from Moscone Centre to the Dreamfest stage at the “Cloud Palace”. The atmosphere on the shuttle bus was an experience within itself! Once we got there, we found our way towards the front of the stage where U2 played some of their greatest hits, and also raised awareness for the amazing work carried out by RED, showing his support and encouragement. We’re excited to see what Dreamforce 2017 has in store for us!
Talks, Sessions & DreamPitch
Over 2,700 topics were discussed at DreamPitch, all insightful and interesting in different fields of technology, and this year Dreamforce welcomed on to the stage early-stage startups that have built apps on the Salesforce App Cloud, to present in front of esteemed investors and entrepreneurs.
By far the most exciting experience for us was when Zenkraft was featured in one of the Dreamforce talks. The ‘Connect Everything with Apps’ session was presented by Salesforce’s Solution Engineer Laura Durrance, with Eric Edelson and Cleo Schiff from Fireclay Tile speaking about the big difference our apps have made within their business. Eric, Fireclay Tile’s CEO, spoke about the difficulties and problems they faced before they used Zenkraft’s solutions. They discussed the benefits of both using pre-built apps already available on the AppExchange, and the benefits of building your own apps.
Overall we had an amazing experience at Dreamforce 2016, and we’re so excited to attend again next year! Hope to see you all at Dreamforce 2017!
