DREAMFORCE: DAY TWO
Another day has come and gone, and we are at the halfway mark of the 2015 edition of Dreamforce! The lineups seemed to go a little quicker today, people seemed to know where things were a little better, and smiles were still in great abundance.
The main highlight today was the Dreamforce keynote. Kicking things off for the keynote was the traditional Hawaiian blessing, and then a surprise musical guest of Stevie Wonder, playing three songs (including my personal favourite ‘Superstition’ before introducing Marc Benioff to the stage.
As is tradition, Benioff highlighted a nonprofit organization that has worked with Salesforce, but this year was a slight deviation from the past. This year’s highlight was the Athena Wisdom Study, who are hoping to use the Salesforce platform to complete a study with 100,000 women in 2016 to find the best practices in breast cancer screening. To read on how you can help, Salesforce has a great post on the Athena Wisdom Study.
The big announcement of the year was two fold – Lightning, and Thunder. With the Lightning Experience being rolled out with the Winter 16 release of Salesforce, the world received a sneak preview at user group parties all over the world in late August. The big announcement to accompany this during the keynote (and shared from a very finely dressed Parker Harris) was the unveiling of Thunder – the new Internet of Things platform, allowing Salesforce to process and act on data from any IoT device, including Microsoft Azure Event Hub and Cisco Networking Equipment.
Along with Lightning and Thunder, Salesforce IQ was also shown to us, an extension of the Relate IQ application previously purchased that allows users to connect their Salesforce, email inbox and calendaring system together and have the data merged so that your day’s actions becomes easier. The Salesforce IQ application is available for all Sales Cloud users to try.
Along with the keynote, Benioff also hosted fireside chats with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
The only other big surprise was the introduction of Cloud Man at the Cloud for Good booth and throughout the Dreamforce area. I must admit, there was something familiar about that man…if you have any pictures of Cloud Man throughout Day Two of Dreamforce, feel free to tag them to @Cloud4Good!
Any highlights from Day Two that you had? Let us know! And hope you had lots of rest for Day 3, and the evening Gala that follows!
