Louise Lockie's Letters from London

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...

Scheduled just three weeks after Dreamforce 2018 closed, InspireEast  shared some of the qualities of the world's biggest tech conference, but differed in just as many ways. Dreamforce offered 2,000+ sessions, and 171,000 attendees, while at InspireEast we had a choice of 4 or 5 sessions for every time slot and the numbers were into 3, rather than 6, figures. I have attended Dreamforce four times and you may think that an annual trip to San Francisco is enough conferencing for one season but I find so much value in these smaller community conferences that I was keen to jump on the train to Cambridge as soon as my jetlag had passed. Here is why I attended InspireEast and have previously travelled to Surf Force , French Touch Dreamin , my local (and favourite) London's Calling , and even the further afield WiTnessSuccess . There is time to have real conversations with fellow attendees, not just snatched pleasantries. Dreamforce is often called 'one big family reunio...

I am sure everyone is bored of me telling them that May is my favourite month, but it is, and here is why: The sun comes out in London and life feels slightly lighter. In the UK we get two extra days off work (two Mondays no less). It is my birthday month (read as an excuse for meeting up with friends and family). It's when the Salesforce World Tour road show hits London. World Tour in London is a big deal.  A rather small percentage of Salesforce users and professionals, even employees, from London get to attend Dreamforce, the cost of flights and accommodation involved make it a tough sell. This means that World Tour becomes to the main event of the year. It sells out weeks in advance, before we even get to May. As an active member of the London community for a number of years now my World Tour week (yes the fun spreads over the entire week) is always chock-a-block. I am asked to be involved in a number of ways and I am only too happy to say yes to everythi...

We now have just a month until Dreamforce 17 is upon us and agenda builder is set to go live next week so I know that everyone's planning is well underway. As we all work through the sessions bookmarking enough to fill twice as many time slots, here are two more to add to the list - Wednesday 8th November - 1.30pm-1.50pm - Admin Theater  Bring Users With You on the Trail to Lightning Lightning is the future of Salesforce. New features and functionality come to Lightning every release that aren't available in Classic, so it is time to make the switch. We have to form a plan to move our users to Lightning, including long-time Classic users. Join me as l share how to build out a change management strategy with Lightning in mind, including some key takeaways to help you convince your most reluctant users to embrace the change. Wednesday 8th November - 3pm-3.40pm - Breakout AppExchange for Admins: Apps Every Admin Should Know AppExchange is an admin's secret we...

Last week I travelled to my first international Salesforce event outside of San Francisco. Though I have been lucky enough to attend Dreamforce for the last 3 years, I haven't been able to stretch to attending any other event outside of the UK. Don't get me wrong, I have travelled to plenty of events within the UK, including Scotland, Wales, Leicester, and at least one London based event per month (normally more) but international travel is expensive and involves more time out of the office and so has been challenging to swing. I had to miss both the first edition of both French Touch and Dreamole due to work commitments and so when the dates for the 2nd FTD were released I blocked out my work and personal diaries and pledged to do all I could to attend. This was made easier when my session submission was successful, I was able to take this to my employer and use it to obtain the green light to attend. When seeking the permission, the funding, or the justification to att...

The Salesforce road show has been to town and after a few days' recovery time, I can reflect on what was another awesome day (and tiring, did I mention tiring?) It was my first official event since becoming an MVP and so I wanted to be sure to catch the keynote from the reserved seating section. This meant that I headed straight to the main room (through full security) upon registration. It was worth it, not just for the view, and being able to sit my my fellow MVPs, but because the seating, being front and centre, was also next to the some VIPs. There was part of me that felt a wee bit sorry for Tony Prophet, who was prevented from taking his seat when he inadvertently walked past a gang of MVPs who couldn't resist the photo op  - Guilty as Charged!  Probably controversially I have to admit to not being a massive fan of a keynote..... I have missed both at the last two Dreamforces and may have skipped last year's WT one if I hadn't been due on stage to ...

It is that time of year again - May. It is my favourite month, the British weather tends to be brighter (comparatively speaking), we get two extra days off by way of bank holidays, it is the month of my birth, AND , it is the time that the Salesforce World Tour comes to town. Last year's World Tour was a special one as I was invited on stage pre-keynote and given the #AwesomeAdmin award, this was the highlight of a jam-packed and wonderful day. Here are my thoughts from the time - 10 Things I Didn't Do at the Salesforce World Tour London All this means that 2017's event has a lot to live up to. I am hopeful it won't disappoint though as I have another busy day planned PLUS it is the first big Salesforce event which I will be attending as an MVP. I am looking forward to getting a seat up front for the keynote and seeing my name on the thank you slide. Last year I was on Trailhead duty from 8am and it wiped me out for the rest of the day so I have given myself a...

In my last post EMEA Analyst Summit - EMEA Business Update  I talked about how I was lucky enough to be invited to the Salesforce's EMEA Analyst Summit and what I learnt from Miguel Milano, President of EMEA's opening session. In this post I talk about what I learnt from the rest of the day, which was jam packed with another six sessions following Miguel's. Starting with Scott Ivell, Senior Director of Product Marketing, who presented the 'State of the Product Clouds' Scott presented the capabilities of the Intelligent Customer Success Platform which is now much more comprehensive and layered than ever before due to acquisition and development. He told us that Salesforce has the ambition to be the leader in every space. With the new Commerce Cloud largely made possible through the purchase of Demandware, the addition of Quip as an additional collaboration tool, and Einstein's AI technology, the suite of products available to customers is now on a co...

I was recently invited by the Salesforce Market Strategy Team to attend the EMEA Analyst Summit. I didn't know that such a team, or indeed such an event, existed but I was happy to accept the invitation and find out more about both. My role was to network and be available to the room full of analysts if they wanted to learn about the platform from a customer's perspective (as I do indeed work for a customer as opposed to an ISV or SI), or to enquire about my experience of the company and community as an MVP.  The event was held at The Haymarket Hotel in London, in the glamorous Shooting Gallery and last Wednesday morning myself, 11 Salesforce execs, and 33 analysts settled down with a cup of coffee and a smoked salmon bagel and waited for the event to begin. John Taschek kicked the day off with introductions and then Miguel Milano, President of EMEA delivered the the first session - EMEA Business Update. Miguel painted an extremely positive picture ...

London's Calling has been and gone for another year and I am sad. The day flew by and as I still can't clone myself (most inconvenient), I didn't get to do and see all I wanted to. The mark of a great event is very much when your attendee's only complaint is that they couldn't choose between all the great sessions, and catch up with the 350 odd community members who were lucky enough to secure a ticket before it sold out, and speak to the sponsors in the expo, and score a new badge in the Trailhead room..... the list goes on. We were spoilt. The festivities actually started for me on Thursday evening with a party for MVPs, User Group Leaders, and London's Calling speakers. As a presenter and user group leader I secured two invites and duly went along. It was a great opportunity to catch up with some members of the London community as well as meet some of the many international visitors in a more intimate setting than the main event. It also enabled u...