Southeast Dreamin’ 17 – A Community Event w/ a Sprinkling of Southern Hospitality

Southeast Dreamin’ has brought me to Atlanta, Georgia for the first time. And my first experience with southern hospitality. The people are so sweet, polite and super nice. It’s quite refreshing.

I was excited to have a travel buddy, fellow MVP Matt Bertuzzi, for the trip to and from Boston to Atlanta. It’s always nice to not have to travel alone.

Altanta welcomed us with its warm 80s weather. Already loving it. (Note: It was 40s in Boston.)

Thursday, March 30

I met and caught up with Amy Oplinger over sushi lunch (YUM!). Those in Twitterland know her as the famous #GifSquad’s @SalesforceAmy. Ask her about the Beehive drink.

From there, we went to the Trailhead-athon. It was in the same room as the Hackathon. You can hear a pin drop in the ballroom as people were busily working away on their laptops completing Trailhead badges. Every hour, Chris Duarte would announce the top Trailhead-athon leader and award them with Trailhead swag. Who wouldn’t like that? I had joined the Trailhead-athon late, but felt the pressure to get my name on the leaderboard so I completed, I think, 3 of the new Trailhead badges released a few days before.

Chris Duarte, I and another judge watched the three groups present their solution for to address several non-profit requirements for Hackathon. One group was really innovative in their solution to the requirements, so they were awarded the champion and winner of the $500 award.

Next, Matt Bertuzzi presented Lightning Sales Ops: Building Salesforce for Sales Development Teams, promoting his brand spanking new book Lightning Sales Ops. Attendees received a free copy. Here is his keynote.

Right after his presentation, he emceed the Demo Jam.

Then, we were off to the SED WIT and SaaSie Tech Social at the Career Builder building nearby. This event was open to WIT and their allies. There was a great turnout. It was a fun event where we played BINGO and went around the room talking to/meeting people to see what box can be checked by them. Thank you, Jessica Murphy and Rachel Watson for organizing the event! I scored three raffle tickets and won with 2 out of 3 of them. Very surprised since I NEVER win anything with raffle tickets.

Can you guess how many of these BINGO boxes apply to me?

Friday, March 31

This was the official day of Southeast Dreamin’.

Activities started at 8:30am with the SED organizers onstage to open the day’s activities with SED cat herder, Kristi Guzman (far right), and (left to right) Stephanie Foerst, Kate Vickery, Phillip Southern, Patrick Connelly, Amber Boaz, Chris Whitehead and (not shown) Chris Zullo and Bryan James. Props to the SED organizers!

Salesforce’s IOT guy, Charles Isaacs, gave the opening keynote. Charlie showed us how to configure IoT in Salesforce and demonstrated it via the use of electronic device taped to beach balls.

Charlie’s keynote that was livestreamed…

I attended new MVP Rebe De La Paz’s session “Innovate How You Educate Your End-Users.” It was very informative. Users forget 70% of the content they learned in 24 hours and 90% of the content within a week of a training! Wow! Rebe gave us the ingredients to her secret sauce for keeping users engaged with their training and it was up to us to make our own training recipe. Use the time you spend with users to feed them little tidbits of how to do things in Salesforce and award them for retaining information. Who doesn’t like a free gift card?!

After lunch, I attended Amy Oplinger‘s session “Are You An Imposter? Own it!” I heard a lot about this session she gave at Midwest Dreamin’ so this was a must attend for me. She shared how she experienced Imposter Syndrome. I think we all feel it at one time or another where we think we are not good enough, who are we kidding? and when will we be found out. It was good to hear others share how they have imposter syndrome and hear Amy’s words of wisdom and encouragement in response.

Catch Amy’s session on Periscope.

Next, I attended Michelle Regal‘s session “Formulas Are Your Friends!”

Learned that you can add comments to your formulas to explain what is going on and it does not go against your formula character count and tips on breaking down a complex formula so it’s easier to follow.

I also learned about the cool Chrome Extension Salesforce.com Enhanced Formula Editor that is color coded. How cool!

I was up at the 3pm session to present “So, You Want to Go With the Flow but Don’t Know How?” Thank you, Amy, for coming to my rescue with your laptop. Here is a portion of my session via Amy’s Periscope. I will post the session recording when it’s made available.

Session deck

Salesforce’s Trailhead Editor-In-Chief, Chris Duarte, ended SED17 by giving an inspirational closing keynote “It’s Better to Neither Burn Out nor Fade Away” and getting personal. She gave us tips that have worked for her in avoiding burnout, especially those of us who are givers: Focus; say no and make it count when we say yes; and manage your energy. We need to know our boundaries and give within them. Take care of yourself before you take care of others. Make time for yourself, establish that work-life balance. Great way to end the conference! Chris Duarte, you are MY hero!

Chris’ closing keynote was livestreamed. (Note: Starts 10 mins into her keynote.)

No Salesforce conference is complete without #Ohana! Another reason why I made it a point to attend more Salesforce events this year, especially Dreamin’ events, is to see my Ohana. It’s the people I talk to on Twitter and other venues.

My #WiT ladies, Jessica Murphy and Rachel Watson.