Dreamforce 2007 Trip Report
great conference, man
From: Evan Callahan <IMCEAEX-_O=NPOWER_OU=NPOWER_CN=RECIPIENTS_CN=EVANC@npowerseattle.lan>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:05:15 -0700
To: __Seattle Team <seattleteam@npowerseattle.org>
Cc: "Dave Shaw (Personal Account)" <dshaw@h4consulting.com>, Richard Saunders <richard@gaiaict.com>
Subject: dreamforce trip report
Hi Team,
I attended Dreamforce, the Salesforce.com conference, in San Francisco this week. In attendance for the NPower Network were:
- Simon, Lisa, Sonia, Anand, and Marc from NY
- Pierre, formerly with AZ, now subcontractor for NY
- The newest NY NPowerite, Sonny Cloward – an experienced Salesforcer who has worked with Swift River and others
- Mike from Indiana
- Dean from PA
- Me from Seattle
We had a booth in the conference Expo, and we talked to many visitors and logged them as leads into a Salesforce instance. Most visitors were nonprofits who've already selected Salesforce and were looking for advice or help. I met one person from Seattle whose organization is interested in help from us (Northwest Interpretive Association).
The big announcements at the conference were:
- force.com: The Apex platform and API is now called "force.com" – the idea being that you can build anything, not just sales-oriented applications. ("Apex" is still the server-side language.) For-profit organizations can subscribe to force.com for a bit less than Salesforce.com if they don't need CRM. We already get force.com for free, so not much of an announcement – ripe for Star Wars jokes, however.
- VisualForce: The Flexible form designer for Salesforce, which will allow you to:
· Design your own interface using any components or fields. Use your own stylesheet, or automatically inherit the Salesforce one.
· Design forms that work with more than one object.
· In combination with Apex code, you'll be able to do really flexible apps, such as a custom wizard for complex operations or a single form that creates multiple data objects. This will make custom interface design a LOT easier.
· Forms work on non-PC devices, like tablets and iPhones.
· I believe this is all available next summer, limited release earlier.
- Salesforce Content: Supercool document and knowledge management. Not clear whether nonprofits will get this free – probably yes, although storage will presumably cost something.
- Appy Award: A social-impact measurement application created by Exponent Partners (Rem Hoffman) for FSA of SF (www.fsasf.org <http://www.fsasf.org/> ) won the nonprofit "Appy" award. (I sure would love to win that award next year! Perhaps our Provail implementation?)
- Apex code (server-side triggers) is only available in Unlimited Edition, which nonprofits don't have. However, we received a promise that free nonprofit access to Apex is forthcoming. Don't know when, maybe January. GREAT news, although a bummer that Apex was the *BIG* announcement at Dreamforce *last* year and we still don't have it. Apex will mean huge improvements for our nonprofit template – and hopefully the ability to get back in sync with the nonprofit template that the foundation supplies, because One/NW and others (me) will probably redesign the template for the foundation.
My other takeaways:
- More nonprofits are looking at Salesforce than ever. However, many are still skeptical and don't understand what CRM is all about or how to do it right. We have a big opportunity to help here.
- I met with the VP for Public Sector at Salesforce, Kaveh Vessali. The company doesn't have a big footprint in government, and they'd like to. He was encouraging us all to consider ways we can get public money to pay for our work, because government has deep pockets. At first, I said, "But we only serve nonprofits." Then I realized that we actually have two big clients who are government – City of Seattle (OED) and King County (4Culture). We should talk about this – more I think about it, the more I like the idea of partnering with local government to build cool things that benefit our nonprofit space. I wonder if we couldn't use our contacts on these projects to network and find similar opportunities.
- In January, Salesforce will release the "Metatdata API" which will allow us to create objects and fields using code. We saw a SWEET tool that lets you create a Salesforce instance from a Google spreadsheet containing field names and types. Big time saver. Other possibilities include creating a custom interface to help users add their own fields – might want to do this for the 4Culture grant application app, for example.
- I looked at a bunch of great stuff that is available on the Appexchange:
· Conga is mail merge and labels for Salesforce. It is VERY nice – if anyone needs to print letters, create PDFs, merge any sort of spreadsheet or document, this is what we should use. Costs money, but discounted for nonprofits.
· Vertical Response is releasing a much improved UI for Salesforce. No new features, but a lot easier to use. Not sure when it comes out.
· The DemandTools people are working on a neat tool that will alert you if you create a duplicate contact or account. They donate to nonprofits, so we'll probably get it.
· Someone needs to install ClickTools and check it out. Powerful survey engine for Salesforce. I spoke with the developer, he's going to set us up a free account. I think we should do our own surveys and evaluations on this.
- I'm talking to Steve Anderson about building a Paypal donation lead creator. Every time you get a Paypal donation, it automatically shows up in Salesforce. I think One/NW might do this, or we will.
There is a lot of momentum throughout the NPower Network for collaboration and for building a nationwide CRM practice. The NY team intends to lobby Barbara and the Executive Committee hard for support – they have ambitious plans, including standardizing methodology, sharing resources, collaborating on projects, publishing applications on the Appexchange. We had a network meeting where we discussed ways to move this forward, such as creating screenscasts to show off some of our best work. What's more, the Network wants to host a 2-day meeting of all NPower Salesforcers this spring. They are thinking Philly, or DC, or Indiana. The network will pay travel costs for all attendees. Crazy.
Although it is tough to justify the time when we are so busy, I believe in the long run this collaboration effort will be the right thing for NPower Seattle and our customers. I have a few action items in the short run, such as creating an email template that we're going to send out to everyone who visited our booth.
Let me know if you have any questions about any of this.
Best,
-Evan
