Bristol DUG Report: January Trailhead Smash!

The Bristol Salesforce Developer User Group had its first meetup of 2016 on Thursday 7th January at the BE offices building in central Bristol. In this meetup, we took part in a "Trailhead Smash". The premise was simple, log into Trailhead, the Salesforce learning platform, and complete as many badges and gather as many points as possible as a group within 2 hours. 

The points started flying in think and fast, with the newest trails proving the most popular (If battle stations were built this quickly in Star Wars, the films would have been over in 5 minutes!!). For some developers, it was the chance to try out something completely new, while for others it was the opportunity to go back and complete some of the existing modules and earn those precious badges.

A few hours, drinks and pizza slices later, our members had managed to rack up a fantastic 8 new badges, scoring over 11,000 points on challenges. A superb effort in such a short amount of time. After a brief wrap up and prize giving for most points achieved, everyone left full of enthusiasm and Trailhead badge fever. I must admit, as soon as I got home, straight away I fired up my laptop and finished the module I had started during the DUG. Hooked!!

I'm a massive fan of Trailhead and really enjoy going through the modules, particularly the practical exercises. However, I had never tried using it in a group context. Throughout the meetup I found it really fascinating to see the different approaches that developers had to completing the challenges. This became especially visible during the advanced formulas module, I saw functions used in ways I never thought possible!

Make sure to check out Trailhead if you haven't already. Also, take a look at my previous blog post for a deeper exploration of some of the more recent badges, particularly focusing on the Apex integration module, one of my favourites, a must for aspiring and expert developers alike.

Finally, while on the subject of User Groups, if you are UK based (or fancy a well worth it trip from elsewhere), then check out the LONDON'S CALLING full day event on 5th February in London. It's a unique Salesforce event, completely organised by the Salesforce community for the Salesforce community. It will be a day full of great content; Erica Kuhl and Peter Coffee are the Keynote speakers at the event, alongside experts from throughout the community ready to share their real life experiences and tips. Not to be missed (unless you booked a stag do in Bulgaria on the same date D'OH!).

If you use twitter, you can follow the event through @LDNsCall

See you at our next meetup, details on the Bristol Salesforce Developers group page

Thanks to everyone who came along, Happy Trailing!!! 

PS. Photography and pizza ordering credit to Simon Lawrence, thanks! :D

Bristol DUG Report - Lightning Developer Week!

On 11th March, the latest installment of the Bristol Salesforce Developer User Group was held at Desynit HQ in Bristol. The meetup formed part of Lightning Developer Week, 9th - 15th March, a series of worldwide events offering developers to opportunity to get hands on with Salesforce1 Lightning.

Lightning is a component framework and set of tools specifically designed to rapidally speed up the app development process for developers, admins and analysts. After a brief introduction, Force.com MVP and DUG co-organsier Simon Goodyear provided a great overview presentation of the different key aspects of Lightning, and the business problems they solve.

Following on from Simons presentation, I jumped in to provide a live demo of each of the core features and how they can be used in conjunction to make powerful app functionality quickly. This was followed up by a slightly deeper exploration of Lightning component code structure (we devs do love a bit of code after all).

After the tour, developers were then given the opportunity to get hands on with some tutorials. If you are interested in getting hands on yourself, here are the links for the different exercises:

• Lightning Connect
• Lightning Components
• Lightning Process Builder
• Lightning App Builder

 

 

A really great meetup, plenty of good questions, successful tutorial completions, swag, and ideas about the future of SF development. I'm looking forward to the next meetup already! Make sure to join our meetup group for announcements of future meetings.

PS. I just hit the 100,000 pageviews mark! Thanks to all who have viewed my blog, here's to the next 100,000!

Bristol DUG (FxFW) - New Year? New Salesforce Certificate!

On Wednesday 8th January, Bristol held it's first developer user group event of the year. The theme of the event was certification. As we start the new year, many developers are looking for ways to improve their skills over the coming year, and what better way than taking the challenge of gaining some official Salesforce certifciation.

There were two presentations during the night. Fellow Desynit developers Simon Lawrence and
Julio Fernandez (both certified Force.com developers) provided a guide to the Force.com Developer Certifcation. The talk included an explanation of the certifcation format and process, alongside their own personal experiences. Copies of the slides for this presentation and more information about the Force.com Developer Certifcation are available on Simon's Blog, and also Julio's Blog .

Following this, I took to the mic and presented my section of the "I passed the advanced developer certifcation" panel session I co-presented at Dreamforce 2013 . Again this presentation was a combination of background information about the certification process, with some practical advice and insights from my own experiences. A video of the full presentation from Dreamforce can be found on my Dreamforce Diary post.

After the presentations, group discussions began, at first focusing on the certifcation processes and aims for this year, but topics eventually spread and evolved into change sets, single sign-on, the metadata API and preferred development environments amongst others. 

I really enjoyed the event, it was a great chance to catch up with the local Force.com development community. There is a real feeling of enthusiasm for the coming year ahead.

I'm really looking forward to the next Bristol DUG, scheduled for Wednesday 5th March. Richard Donkin, CTO of Cloudfind, is going to providing a session on Salesforce Canvas. So if you fancy learning about integrated external apps or talking Force.com development over a free beer, please sign up to our Meetup group.