London Salesforce Women in Tech User Group


I am extremely proud to be one of the leaders of the London Salesforce Women in Tech User Group.

Jodi Wagner held the first 'soft launch' group meet up in August 2015 and I was one of only 4 attendees. I nearly didn't show as I was daunted by it being held as part of the London Developers UG. Jodi persuaded me that they weren't that scary and so along I went. We started off as Girly Geeks London as it was just before the re-branding and at this first meeting we met and discussed the direction we would like the group to take. Lots of ideas were captured.

The next meet up was in October and by then I had got to know Jodi a bit more as we had met up at Dreamforce. This time the meeting was a collaboration with the London Admin User Group and a 'getting to know the community' speed dating night. Great fun.

Other commitments (mainly London's Calling) meant that a few months went past without a meeting but during this time I spoke to Jodi a number of times about the group which lead to myself and Freya Crawshaw officially joining Jodi as co-leaders in March.



It turned out that Jodi had an EPIC event planned for the next user group and so Freya and I rolled up our sleeves and pitched in.

On May 5th we hosted An Evening with Ladies who Salesforce at Salesforce Tower London. I was one of the panellists and to say I was in good company is a huge understatement. The rest of the panel consisted of Eileen O'Mara, Doina Fagurel, Gemma Davies, Jenny Bamber, Alejandra Sivori, and Adam Seligman PLUS we had a keynote from Anne-Marie Imafidon, Head Stemette.


The evening was a huge success and very well attended.


You don't need to take my word for it though, here are a few blog posts written by the attendees.

Bob Buzzard (Kier Bowden) - Salesforce - It's not just for Ladies

Jenny Bamber - Women Who Salesforce

Katrina Holmes - My Experiences of an Evening with Ladies who Salesforce

Freya Crawshaw - Storify of An Evening with Ladies who Salesforce

We now have more than 100 members of our success community group and have great monthly events lined up.

It has been amazing to see how well the group has been received in the community and it continues to make me both proud and privileged to be able to give back by co-leading the London WiT UG.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Customising the Help Menu!

Image
Who knew?  I have to confess that I was late to this party and did not know this was an option until this month (May 2020). So if I have been tragically unaware of this feature, then maybe you were too. Consider this post an attempt to rectify that. Why Customise Your Help Menu? Why should we care? Why is this worth reading about I hear you ask, and I will answer. In my experience the number of users each Salesforce Admin or Helpdesk Exec has to support does not leave them with the capacity to quickly respond to every user's questions. There is often a backlog, and cloning machines do not yet exist. We also know that users getting stuck and feeling frustrated can kill adoption, which is the enemy of a successful Salesforce implementation. Now I know that every good Salesforce Admin has spent a lot of time and care creating detailed user guides for their colleagues, but how many of these users remember where the guide is saved at their time of need? Not many..... which is why it is
Read more

Trailhead: The Salesforce CPD Scheme

Image
Many of the industries my company works with have mandatory CPD schemes for their qualified practitioners. In order to retain their status as a licensed Accountant or Solicitor individuals must show that they are continuously developing their professional skills. One reason for this is to prevent said professionals from getting rusty, to keep that grey matter active, but another is to encourage members to stay abreast of new developments in their field. Those of us who are certified Salesforce professionals have similar obligations. Three times a year we need to pass the maintenance exams of each track in which we are certified in order to retain our certification. But as Salesforce has never been the kind of company to leave its community to fend for themselves, Trailhead was created to aid and encourage our continuous development. Trailhead isn't just there to help us pass our exams though, far from it, Trailhead is for the whole ecosystem. Trailhead is used by empl
Read more

Preparing for Community Events

Image
I am a big fan of a Salesforce Community Conference, I have so far managed to make it to French Touch Dreamin' (twice), WiTness Success, InspireEast, Surf Force, and each and every London's Calling. I already have my ticket for Southeast Dreamin' later this month, and both Yeur Dreamin' and Yeur Leadin' in June. Unlike Dreamforce community conferences are short, normally one or one and a half days. This means that time is precious and so a bit of planning is required. Here are my recommendations for your pre-event preparation: Do Your Homework Take the time to review the schedule before the day. Both London's Calling ( here ) and Southeast Dreamin' ( here ) publish their sessions and schedule a month or two out. There are often 5 or 6 sessions per time slot. The organisers will have tried their best to offer something for everyone in each slot but that doesn't mean that your choices are already made. Take the time to pick out the sessio
Read more