Woo Hoo! I'm going to Dreamforce 2014, here's 5 reasons why you should too!

In case you've been living under a rock, you are probably already aware that Dreamforce is the hottest Salesforce event of the year. Every year Salesforce experts and enthusiasts take over San Francisco for a full 4 day conference. Every year the event get's bigger and better, with more breakthroughs, key announcments and cool platform features emerging.

I consider myself very lucky (and thank my employers Desynit) for letting me go to Dreamforce 4 years in a row now. I have previously written a blog post on my trip to Dreamforce 2013, so check it out if you want flavour of what the conference experience is like. But enough about the past, here are 5 top reasons why you should grab a flight to San Francisco and attend this great event this year:

1) The Keynotes

Every year, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff delivers a massive keynote to tens of thousands of attendees under the Moscone outlining the direction Salesforce is taking as a company, and the enhancements they are making to their product range. The session is always full of interesting case studies regarding companies who are currently using Salesforce to push the boundaries of what is possible.The keynote also highlights the Philantropic efforts the company makes as a whole, and being in such a massive room, you geniunely feel like part of something great.

But it's not all about the Benioff mega show, for the Developers, the Developer keynote provides the community with a view into what the future holds for the Force.com platform, Heroku and APIs. This session always includes some very cool demos of some of the latest features/tools. If you want to attend this session, better be quick on your feet, space is more limited than the main keynote, and it always fills up. I've even known people to be leaning against the theatre entrance door to try and hear the presentaion!

2) The Expert Lead Sessions

Got a problem you just can't get around in your Salesforce implementation? Want to know more about a new feature? Want to learn how to master an existing feature? Then the break out sessions are here to save the day. Dreamforce offers an every increasing array of excellent content from product managers and community experts. Here is the full list of  Dreamforce 2014 sessions .

<Shameless Session Plugs>While we are on the subject, there are two sessions you should consider attending this year. In Clicks vs. Code: Deciding how to build, Simon Lawrence and I will debating the benefits and drawbacks of declarative and programmatical approaches to create functionality within Salesforce. Also, if you are a developer and are considering taking some certification exams, or want some tips on how to successfully pass, you can hear my full personal journey through the certification process in my session called Salseforce Certification - A Developer Journey </Shameless Session Plugs>

3) Hands on Training

It's scientifically proven that people learn more effectively when they experience something first hand, rather than just being told about it. Dreamforce offer several expert led hands on sessions and mini workshops, where attendees can be guided through anything from building their first app, to best testing and batch processing code techniques. Any questions? One of the session assistants will be on hand to answer any queries or problems you have. I have attended these sessions in previous years, and I still refer to the some of the lessons I learned on a daily basis, I can't recommend them highly enough.

4) The Devzone

I maybe be *slightly* biased being a Force.com developer, but honestly the best thing for me about Dreamforce is always the Devzone. This is a slice of dev paradise, with constant developer sessions, hands-on workshops, mini hack challenges, and product demos all around. Everyone in the Devzone is really helpful and enthusiastic, I challenge anyone to enter the Devzone with a Salesforce development question and not have it answered by the time they leave. Just one thing though, remember to leave space in your suitcase for the crazy amount of free training books and swag you will want to bring back with you!

5) The "Dreamforce Glow" effect

Every year after attending Dreamforce, every attendee I have ever known has always returned to their office positively buzzing. The new skills you will have gained, contacts you have made and the sheer scale of the keynotes always gives you a sense of great positivity for the future and raring to start clicking and coding in the cloud all over again.

Any time lost or cost accrued in attending the event is quickly made up for by the new efficiencies you find in the way you work, and the found again mega-enthusiasm you will have for what you do.


Soooo, shall I see you there?

Bristol DUG Report - Accident Alert: A Summer of Hacks Story

Last night, at the Llandoger Trow in Bristol, the Bristol Salesforce Develoer User Group met up for another chance to chat code and talk about development on the Force.com platform.

The central theme of this latest event was hackathons, specifically the Summer of Hacks London event run by Salesforce last month. A presentation was given by the local Bristol team from Desynit behind the winning entry, an app called "Accident Alert". The app built at the hackathon used the Salesforce1 platform to provide users with the ability to record potential health and safety hazards around the workplace.

The open panel discussion included the three core members of the team (Matthew Morris, Shaun Holmes and myself), and covered how the team went about building the application, how we stayed sane through all night development sessions (coffee and chicken burgers),  and the lessons we learned about good application development.

This presentation wasn't just about the winning entry though, it was primarily about the experience of participating in hackathons, why they rock, the amazing people who attend and how everyone should sign up to them in the future. It's not all about technical expertise and being able to write code, it's all about identifying a potential new application or tool that is of genuine use to Salesforce users, and creating a prototype to fit that bill.

Here is the slide deck from the event:

Continuing on the theme of hacks and development, we were also honored to have a special project presentation by our youngest ever presenter Dara Morris, who presented a highly addictive jet fighter game he recently developed at a hack event. It seems the future of development is bright in the Bristol area!

Want to get involved and attend the Bristol DUG? Then check out the Bristol DUG Meetup page.

Not in the South West of the UK? Then check out the full list of Salesforce Developer User Groups.

Still no luck? Then start your own, add a comment to this post if you want to find out how!