Welcome to Dreamforce 2009 #df09 November 18th, 2009 by Jessica Tsai

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Some 19,000 people are expected at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce 2009 and we’re all filing into the conference hall awaiting CEO Marc Benioff’s morning, two-hour-long keynote.

I’m set up in the sweet press/analyst section where we not only have Internet connection but outlets! (After going to as many shows as we have this season using laptops with abysmal battery life, I think it appropriate to get excited about this perk.)

Anyway, if you’re tweeting, you probably already know that this year’s hashtag is #df09 and I welcome you to follow me as I live-tweet the event at @jesstsai. You can follow the coverage on the Dreamforce Blog or join their Facebook page.

This year marks the company’s 10th birthday and the sky’s the limit for this company. We recently published our November issue of CRM magazine covering the company’s past, present, and future. Let us know what you think!

Not surprisingly, CRM magazine’s been covering this company for quite sometime. Want to take a trip down memory lane? Trace the company’s growth across our stories from Dreamforce dating back to the conference’s inception in 2003.

2008:

Salesforce.com and Amazon.com: Superpowers Team Up in the Cloud
Dreamforce ’08: Salesforce.com cofounder, Chairman, and CEO Marc Benioff announces the cloud company’s foray into Web sites and its integration with Facebook and Amazon Web Services platforms.

Salesforce.com Doubles Down on CRM
Dreamforce ’08: The SaaS vendor ups research funds for CRM, declaring this a critical time to listen to and invest in customers and employees.

Cloud-y Announcements Surround Salesforce.com
Dreamforce ’08: Salesforce.com’s partners capitalize on conference momentum with a number of new announcements and product releases.

2007:

Dreamforce ’07: Highlights from the Salesforce.com Scene
Dreamforce ’07: A summary of what’s on display from Salesforce.com partners at the company’s annual convention.

Salesforce.com’s Soapbox Is the Platform
Dreamforce ’07: AppExchange says hello to its younger, bigger sister: Force.com, touted as “platform-as-a-service”; the family also welcomes a cousin: Visualforce, hailed as “user-interface-as-a-service.”

Pint of View: Things I Learned at Dreamforce ’07:
A few more takeaways from the fall’s big event.

2006:

Dreamforce: Wonders of the Business Web
Dreamforce ’06: At the annual Salesforce.com event, Colin Powell stressed the importance of the Web and how businesses can leverage it to for a competitive advantage.

Salesforce.com’s Dreams of Apex
Dreamforce ’06: Marc Benioff outlines the company’s new customization and programming platform, discusses community development, and announces Winter ’07.

2005:

Salesforce.com’s On-Demand Dream
Dreamforce ’05: Marc Benioff details visions of ‘the eBay of enterprise applications’ with Appforce.

2004:

Salesforce.com Unveils Winter Release Details
Dreamforce ’04: New customizing manager and customer service capabilities are key updates.

Salesforce.com Partners Introduce a Range of Integrated Applications
Dreamforce ’04: Dozens of software vendors are now tying their CRM capabilities to the on-demand CRM platform.

2003:

Salesforce.com Upgrades Its Flagship Products
Dreamforce ’03: Salesforce.com today unveiled major upgrades to its two main products at its first annual Dreamforce user conference.

Tags: #df09, behind the cloud, benioff, book, ceo, cloud, cloud computing, conference, CRM, CRM magazine, customers, dreamforce, enterprise cloud computing, Marc Benioff, Moscone, moscone center, salesforce, salesforce.com, San Francisco, sfdc, user conference, users

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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Josh Weinberger and Good CRM, destinationCRM. destinationCRM said: dCRMblog: Welcome to Dreamforce 2009 #df09: Some 19,000 people are expected at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce 2009 a… http://bit.ly/3pS9LB [...] Pingback by Tweets that mention CRM Magazine Blog » Welcome to Dreamforce 2009 #df09 -- Topsy.com — — November 18, 2009 @ 4:44 pm

The Importance of Dreamforce I harbor an extreme detest for trade shows. They are a waste of time. They are for people that are more comfortable kibitzing around booths than being in front of customers selling. They are for nose pickers. Tire kickers. Trolls. Blueskyers. I believe that most people attend trade shows on a perpetual tour—hopping from venue to venue, Vegas to Miami, burning company funds, holding endless, useless, conversations, gorging on buffets and drowning in cocktails. All the while, they are ignoring their businesses, their kids, and their own personal well- being. There. I said it. Dreamforce—salesforce.com’s annual user conference—is the one, lone, exception to my stern conviction against trade shows. And before you call me a two-faced trade show detester, let me explain. Salesforce.com launched Dreamforce in 2003, in front of 500 attendees in the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco—hardly your typical tradeshow venue. At the time, salesforce.com was a private company, with very little revenue, and a grand vision for the “End of Software.” Little did we know what it would become. Its lore, since 2003, is both entertaining and telling. There was Colin Powell’s speech in 2005, referencing Europe as an “emerging” economy (entertaining); there was the morning keynote that year, when CEO Marc Benioff walked onto stage with an uncontrollable grin, having just learned that Oracle had purchased his nemesis Siebel (telling); there was George Lucas in 2008, warning the audience that we were doomed to be eaten alive by bacteria (entertaining); and, most philosophically, there were keynotes in 2003, 2004, and 2005 by Adam Bosworth, from Microsoft and Google, espousing the benefits of iteration and experimentation in software development, playing directly into the hands of the Cloud, where the cost of change is so much lower than that of traditional software (telling). My favorite Boswirth moment was his “Intelligent Reaction” keynote, in which he referred to old school software companies who “retreated to these places they called campuses, surrounded by lakes and trees, where they wouldn’t be bothered by the ugliness of the real world.” Four years later, his 15 minute discussion is still a highly relevant and important underscoring of the cultural and organizational shift that cloud computing is enabling across enterprises of all shapes and sizes. Have a listen: https://admin.acrobat.com/_a13852757/intelligentreaction/ Over the years, Dreamforce has launched Multi-Force (custom tabs), AppExchange, Apex, and just last year, Sites. These are all bold features and approaches that have come to fruition—they are never “marketing” initiatives that defy relevance—and it is for this reason that Dreamforce justifies its existence, despite all of the hype of the cloud. At Bluewolf, our customer’s use original Dreamforce visions on a daily basis. They are real; they are always groundbreaking; and if an enterprise is serious about Cloud computing, Dreamforce is the only venue where it all comes together. One last question solidifies Dreamforce as a “must attend” show: who else out there, with real Cloud Computing aspirations, has the confidence and commitment to host an annual conference of this magnitude? No one. Not Oracle (Larry doesn’t do Cloud), SAP, Microsoft, or Google; not even Netsuite, Sugar, or Rightnow. These organizations, in my opinion, do not have the fortitude or the risk profile to stage an annual event that broadcasts a future vision of the cloud’s role in enterprise computing. And don’t forget, salesforce.com has been doing this for seven years; they did it when they were private and small; and they are doing it as a billion dollar public entity. So, I will be there again, for my seventh year, in a few short weeks. And my colleagues at Bluewolf will be there again, for the seventh year, in a few short weeks. And we will listen and learn alongside our clients, looking for ways to leverage the Cloud as a means of conducting better business; selling more, servicing more, and doing more—all tenants to building growing, healthy, enterprises. Dreamforce is a venue that all organizations should leverage as they look for Clear Success in the Cloud. Just don’t get caught lingering at the booth with those perpetual trade show junkies. Eric Berridge is co-founder and Principal at Bluewolf, a global provider of Professional Services in the Cloud Economy. He is the co-author of Iterate or Die, a popular treatise on agile software development and the business benefits of Cloud computing. Eric has been recognized as an Ernst & Young entrepreneur of the Year and as CRN’s Top 25 Technology Executives.www.bluewolf.com Comment by Eric Berridge — Twitter: @BluewolfNYC — November 24, 2009 @ 5:23 pm

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