This is my first year attending Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference and I am very excited. As a first timer, I wanted to make sure I was prepared, so I turned to Twitter and Dreamforce Chatter to find out the scoop on what to expect. Here are the top 10 tips I’ve compiled to help you (and myself!) get ready for Dreamforce 2012.
1. Wear comfortable shoes, this is the most talked about recommendation on social media right now! You spend almost all day on your feet, so take care of them. High heels may look great on Day 1, but your body will regret it on Day 2 if you can barely stand…
2. Bring an extra battery! From session hopping to coordinating meet ups with your iPhone you are bound to lose battery power. Make sure to bring your charger (there will be charging stations) or buy an extra long battery to ensure you aren’t without power halfway through the conference.
3. Flag that full session! Didn’t get to register in time for a session you are dying to attend? Don’t fret, Salesforce is now allowing you to go to the Agenda Builder and “flag” each full session. If you flag the session in the Agenda Builder, Dreamforce will notify you when they add an additional session. For example, to find out more information on how to flag the hot GE Capital “360° of Excellence” ROI session, do so here.
Another option—just show up! Most likely there will be some “no-shows”. Go early! It’s first come, first serve.
4. Stay out late and meet people! There will be a lot of cool, interesting people at the restaurants and bars around the Moscone Center ready to chit chat. It’s a great way to network and learn about new products.
5. Don’t overload on sessions! There are tons of great sessions you are dying to see (like FirstRain’s, of course!) but scheduling back-to-back sessions will leave you with very little time to explore the expo. Limit yourself and be mindful that sessions are at different buildings.
6. Party time! Interested in checking out the social scene after the Moscone Center closes? Check out this App for up-to-date events happening at Dreamforce.
7. Bring Layers! Never been to San Francisco before? SF is a layering city. September may be one of our warmest months, but depending on the micro-climate on that particular day—or of that exact block—you may experience a whole range of temperatures. Bring a sweater (or two).
8. Take advantage of San Francisco’s coffee and donuts! Blue Bottle Coffee is just a couple blocks away and Philz isn’t too far. SF has a Starbucks on every block, but these coffee houses brew each cup individually. Caffeine is a necessity to keep yourself energized throughout the conference. And If you are planning on staying out late, make sure to visit Bob’s Donuts on Polk street. They are open 24 hours but make donuts fresh at around 10pm. You won’t be disappointed, they are fantastic. I’m a regular!
9. Be organized! Map out all the sessions you are attending and the booths you want to visit. This year, a lot of the sessions are held outside of the Moscone Center at nearby hotels. Familiarize yourself with the area prior to the conference.
10. Make sure to check your social media and talk to DF alumni! Stay active with #DF12 and Dreamforce chatter for new recommendations while the conference is happening. As well as reach out and talk to DF alumni! Many of the FirstRain team are Dreamforce veterans and are helping me get #DF12ready.
And for those of you attending Dreamforce12, you can check out the full thread where I compiled all these great ideas, if you want even more great tips (and special thanks to Jeff Grosse for so many terriffic suggestions).
If you’ve been following our @FirstRain Twitter feed, you’ve heard how excited we are to be sponsors of Dreamforce 2012! Dreamforce is Salesforce.com’s annual cloud computing conference held at San Francisco’s famous Moscone Center. Last year the event brought in more than 270 exhibitors and attracted over 45,000 people (plus an additional 35,000 who tuned in virtually). This year’s event will be September 18-21st and is expected to be the biggest Dreamforce yet. It’s centered around the theme: “Touch the social enterprise” and aims to focus on how more and more businesses are now going social.
Key headlining speakers include Jim Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, Former Secretary of State General Colin Powell, Angela Ahrendts the CEO of Burberry, Sir Richard Branson the founder of the Virgin Group, and a musical performance by the Red Hot Chili Peppers!
Natutally, FirstRain is in the midst of planning some awesome events for Dreamforce—however—we’re (almost, but) not quite ready to share them yet! In the meantime, make sure to follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our blog Market Mine for more information and updates on `FirstRain at Dreamforce‘.
If you plan on attending Dreamforce 2012, reach out to me on Twitter @justineleviand let me know!
For more information on Dreamforce please visit: http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF12/
And if you would like to attend Dreamforce, you can register here.
“Only the strongest professions have the strongest associations“ - 2012 SLA Hall of Fame inductee Susan Fifer Canby
Chicago in July is hot, even with the lake breeze you can’t escape the concrete jungle heat. So I learned that the key to my personal success in attending the annual SLA (Special Library Asociation) conference was:
Two weeks ago, I attended the SLA 2012 (Special Library Association) conference as an attendee, not as a vendor staff person as I have for many many years (although, I always made sure I was able to sneak away and go to some sessions that I really wanted to go to— often negotiating booth time slots with my coworkers). This year, my focus was on attending as many interesting sessions as I could and to meet as many information professionals as possible that had similar interests.
Here are some high level themes I came back to California with:
- Throughout 2011 I kept an eye on the SLA Future Ready Project, a project that Cindy Romaine, SLA President 2011 had led with the goal of finding and sharing information about how information professionals had to get ‘Future Ready’. Many of the sessions and conversations this year were focused on what and where the professions of ‘Special Librarians’ were going. I had numerous conversations on value (perceived and measurable), extension of roles (where else in the organization to embed oneself) and identity (what is a special librarian, what is the role of information in the enterprise, etc.). The general consensus I heard was that as a profession, information professionals feel that they are or are on the way to being ‘Future Ready’.
- I attended a session on collaborative insights that highlighted some new information professional roles. I thought these roles were great role descriptions for the skills and experience that come with being an information professional in an enterprise including:
- In more than one session and conversation, the topic of ‘delivering information to users where they are’ came up. Mary Ellen Bates in one panel, made the association that it is not only about giving users the ability to ‘search’ but being able to proactively ‘alert’ within context of what they are doing, regardless of what device they are using.
- The rise of internal enterprise app stores and the opportunity for Information Resource Centers/corporate libraries to become front and center to that new enterprise ecosystem. Being first in line to delivering valuable enterprise applications within these new platforms would raise awareness of the services provided and direct value to the enterprise.
- Types of collaboration skills to develop as an information professional includes ‘Horizontal Collaboration’ within organization— IT, HR, and very importantly rainmaking with C level executives.
- In regards to collaboration, I really liked this reminder from Mary Talley : “collaboration requires intimacy“. - The shift to self service and self curation and the changes in how end-users use and consume information was another popular topic heard in many sessions— unlike the ‘clients’ of the past, the skills AND the tools available to end-users enable self access (and success with it). Information professionals MUST understand and become champions of these tools.
- Very popular sessions: 60 Apps in 60 minutes conducted by Scott Brown of the Social Information Group and Joe Murphy who highlighted the need for information professionals to have a good grasp of tools readily available so they can make recommendations, compete effectively and become part of the app culture that the corporate enterprise is now embracing.
- Guy Kawasaki— gave the keynote, focused on Enchantment (that is the name of his newest book). Although I wish Guy had focused a bit more on addressing the actual audience of information professionals (something he talks about being a requirement to enchant!)— his core message can be applied to pretty much any profession that is responsible for providing services and products: Enchant people and build something DICEE - Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Empowering & Elegant.
- Last but not least on my list, Lee Ann Benkert (@LRBenkert, pictured above) spontaneously organized an ‘un-conference’ session during lunch. She asked people to join in the social media lounge and self-organize into small groups to talk about topics that were top of mind to them. It was a new thing for many of the attendees, and it was great to see their excitement. I have been to many un-conference events, and honestly, the group session I was in was just OK (it was about one’s identity as a special librarian, e.g., what should the title really be, etc.). But the classy part was that Lee Ann managed to include the expo vendors who might have complained that this was taking people away from the expo floor booths during the time when attendees had free time to visit by coordinating a ‘flash-mob’ visit to the vendor that best included themselves in the process of the un-conference organization—well done!
There were many other sessions which you can view here, many have slide-decks as well (click through the session title) and there is also an eventifier conference overview that has aggregated images, tweets, slides etc.
Thank you SLA for another excellent conference and thank you to all my old and new friends that I got to spend time with— see you next year in San Diego!
Note: This post was originally posted on my personal blog, chitchating about information delivery.
