Well Rested - Episode #108 of CloudFocus Weekly

Machine transcript generated in 2026 from the episode audio (Whisper speech-to-text with automatic speaker separation). Speaker labels are automatic and may be wrong in places. Timestamps shown every few minutes.

00:10 Jason Atwood: This is the 108th episode of CODFW for the last week of September, 2012. This episode is titled Well-Rested. CODFW is, your CODF experts. I'm your host Jason Atwood. Joining me across our one Mike, can you come here? You're gonna get a call. You shake more than a few hands. True. It happens. I've not come down with one, but that is not gonna work.

Justin Edelstein: It always happens to me, always,

Jason Atwood: They they they they they they they they they...,-

Justin Edelstein: I a the-., the I

Jason Atwood: If if if if if if if if if if Maybe this goes up today. Taking A, look at after math. Some what happened to dream for. that we're now that we're and now that we're a few days You know, thoughts? You know, I kind of go over a lot of stuff in here. Why don't we just break it into a conversation? You can go to blog.arcasinc.com to read those thoughts as they are and comment on them using discuss. But why don't you, what's your big takeaway? What's your big feeling from Dreamforce now that we're sort of a day out? Aside of the fact that it was really, really big. Yeah, that was my big takeaway.

03:27 Justin Edelstein: It was really, really big. It was enormous. It was so big. I got back on like midnight Friday, so I guess Saturday, early Saturday morning and you know, I was asked, you know, how was it? And I said, oh, it was exhausting. It's always exhausting. It's like, well, what was so exhausting? Like so much walking. It's like, what do you mean so much walking? You had a conference. I'm like, no, this conference is not a conference. It's a takeover of a section of a city.

Jason Atwood: You're like my daughter who goes through her first Yankees game and I ask her come on like you know seven-year-old daughter I'm like, hey, how was the game? She goes hot hot.

Justin Edelstein: I'm like really so much walking I'm like my feet hurt at one point. I had walked from Moscone to the Hilton to the Marriott back to the Moscow me to walk No, no, no, we walked back and forth the Salesforce offices like twice. Oh, yeah I was like to my back and forth from Moscone to the Salesforce off but aside from the big some from just the bigness and the complaining about walking so much I thought Salesforce did a really great job and pulling off Massive effort how big it is yeah, and it was just it just felt flawless It was so smooth not get to do all the things that I wanted to do, but who did I mean really, if you got to do all the things you wanted to do at Dreamforce, then you didn't plan your Dreamforce right.

Justin Edelstein: Well then you've cloned yourself. Yeah, or there's two of you or four of you because it's impossible to do everything you wanted to do at Dreamforce. Which is actually what's great about some of these, you know, I didn't go and get to see, you know, Richard Branson. I didn't go get to see... Imalt and Colin Powell. Well those videos are up. I can see them now. I can go look at them, them already and that's I'm happy about That because I wanted to go to those I just could not right didn't didn't make it into my agenda But but how how smooth it all went was was really impressive So so so I'm gonna put you on spot here Give me the best thing of the conference

Jason Atwood: And maybe you just said it the smoothness of it and give me the worst thing of the conference And then I too will give you the best and worst.

Justin Edelstein: Yeah, I mean For me the the worst was I already kind of said the worst it was it was just the sheer Magnitude of where everything was it was the geographical layout of everything and the timing between things because I know they tried to put in the right places, but I'm gonna say for people who love permission sets, right? There was a session about permission sets at the Marriott that ended and then another session about the permission set API at It was either it was from the need to get from the Marriott to Moscone West But that's like really hard because you're wrapping up the session you want to go to the next one and it's like you're gonna walk around so I wish that they could have done a better job of sort of like putting sessions that are, you'd think like, like, that are like others in the same area or zone.

06:42 Justin Edelstein: And maybe they didn't, I just didn't realize it, but to me just having the need to walk, like I said, I went from Moscone to the Hilton back to the Marriott all within like a three-hour span. That's, that's kind of crazy. So while it was really smooth, the thing that I was most disappointed with was And that's it. I hope you enjoyed it. the size of it and the Non-existent shuttle buses that were supposed to exist like I was supposed to be able to get on a bus and get from one place To another I saw none of them.

Jason Atwood: They were not one. They might have been everywhere. Yeah Wait, wait as I was crossing a street. I saw a bus pass by with a big Dreampost logo on the side. Maybe that was it. And I thought the name of that was it. Maybe it was just an advertisement though.

Justin Edelstein: Yeah, who knows. Alright, I don't know. That was like my worst and if that's the worst thing, you're so big that you're too big, then you did a good job. It's hard to put a point on my favorite thing. But I'm gonna ask you. Yeah, I know you are. I really I always really just love the expo floor I just love it. I love just walking around aisle to aisle there's a lot of excitement there's a lot of energy and There's a lot of big things happening and even small like the smaller vendors have interesting stuff there's so many interesting things to see and hear and do on the expo floor and I I got to walk around with one of our clients who had never been to Dreamforce before and I said hey I want to walk with you around the expo floor right for an hour Let's take an hour and walk around the expo floor and she was so appreciative because she was like Lost yeah, this being force five for me the expo floor is like Just the cool, it's cool.

Justin Edelstein: You walk around, you let them scan your badge, you're like, ooh, partner, who cares? You know, they're looking for that customer one, the little iPad blows up. Yeah, the little iPad's like, no, don't want this one. But I just love walking around the expo floor. I get a real kick out of it. Even though after doing all that walking, it's like, I don't want to walk anymore. But the expo floor makes it a little more fun for me. Yeah, my favorite part, definitely the favorite part was, I was

Jason Atwood: Gonna say expo, I was gonna say the expo. I actually really, I spent a lot of time on the expo. It felt more vibrant this year. I don't know, last year it felt like there was just times where there was just no one there.

Justin Edelstein: That's how you could tell how many people were there. Because it was just always bumping. Always. Yeah.

Jason Atwood: But having said that, you know, I was just really, my favorite part I guess, part of it is that they pulled it off. I was so worried that things like Wi-Fi or things that, But it kind of coincides with my worst. It's just, and as I said this in my blog post, great, the arms, the pissing match with every other tech conference is over. You win, you got it. MB, take a bow, you won 95,000. I don't think it makes it better. I don't think bigger is better in this case. I, I thought bigger was bigger, bigger was more. were. The bigger wasn't better. I don't feel like I felt very stretched out. I felt like I had to really pick and choose my sessions Because I was flying over and I don't I don't really think there's that many sessions I was thinking like if they just if they could boil down the good sessions I feel like they'd be much better than having a lot of Okay sessions, so it's like a lot of B sessions versus just a few really good a sessions But having said that you know there's some things I thought would done really great I thought bringing back I said this in blog post bringing back nonprofit into Moscone West.

10:40 Justin Edelstein: Yeah, good job Don't don't put a an entire vertical into some other place. Well, they did that with FinCerv.

Jason Atwood: Well, they did that last year too, at the Intercontinental. But having non-profit back I thought was good. I thought the registration process, the scanning thing was good and bad. I loved it for the registration, like standing it up. The registration was great. But the going into sessions,

Justin Edelstein: Not to, no one knew how to operate those. No one knew how to operate the iPad. You know what it is? They have them. landscape mode they're sitting there in landscape mode and the cameras not on the top right so like you're screwing people up because the camera just needs to be on the top so here's the thing I was forced turn it

Jason Atwood: Sideways here's the thing you know what's cheaper than an iPad and has a camera on it let me guess an iPod touch oh yeah they're half the price They're small, they fit in your hand. They're the thing that Apple uses in their stores. Yeah, go get those. To check them out. And then you know what, you can also put little batteries on them and they'll last all day long. And anyway, but you know, and then really the cheesy favorite part, my cheesiest, is just seeing people. I just love walking around with 95,000 people. I was still walking the streets and seeing people I hadn't seen in a year or two years. I'm like, hey, hey! I just saw people all the time, bumped into them, friends, people's I've known for years out of Salesforce, old clients, like it was just, I just love that feeling being in this foreign city basically, walking around and just meeting people and saying hi and then having some real chance to catch up.

Jason Atwood: We had a couple of events, we went to some things and really getting to catch up with clients. And then my last my last favorite thing was really watching our clients speak And having them just their excitement about it. So I said this in the last podcast But I'll say it again It was just I think back and like it was so exciting to hear And I know it is for everybody and even if you you know, just were part of any implementation it's just nice to see that people are using it and happy and everything's good and they're really they're We get kind of biased because we've been in this business for a long time. So you get kind of biased to like the power of Salesforce. So when you implement someone who's brand new, like they're still in that kind of like wow, log a call.

Jason Atwood: Damn yeah, log a call. And they're happy and you're like yeah, log a call. You know, true to the core. Where's where's many who? Like you know you get it all caught up in the other stuff. But they're still kind of excited by the big shiny lights or whatever. That was my favorite part. I actually, I didn't get to go to any keynotes other than the main keynote.

Justin Edelstein: I didn't get to go to the brands. So that was about to say, so interesting is usually my answer to what was your favorite part is the keynote. Right. The main keynote. The main one. The Mark Benioff first day morning keynote.

Jason Atwood: It's the product keynote. It's still wonderful and it's still fun a not as is become less about the truth. or it's become less about the reality and more about the vision. We said this in the other podcast. I love the vision, but I'm looking for more reality. I'm looking for more, I'm a product guy. I wanna see, I went and I read over the press releases from the Dreamforce. It's like availability, 2013, availability, pricing and availability to be determined, 2013. I was like, yeah. Yeah. I guess I just have to change my mind and just say, I don't care, that's fine, I'll read release notes instead. But I feel like you miss a moment there to really wow people and to get the true people, the people who are really invested in the platform, very excited by saying,

14:08 Justin Edelstein: This is out next month. Well, the difference between Salesforce today and Salesforce two or three years ago. I don't think they would have done that two or three years ago. I'm gonna let me let me retract two to three. Let me go back four four five four five It was like because before chatter before chatter. It was like yeah, those were the big things. Things and it was like yeah, this is Let's show you what you can do Today because we because there's no upgrades you just do this today because it's available when you walk out the door Yeah, which will be out in a week or whatever.

Jason Atwood: And they used to try to surprise with that. They used to really, they used to leave announcements. They used to leave announcements that were in a future release out of the release notes and kind of say, here it is, right? And oh, and you're going to get this in two days or in two weeks. And it became very exciting.

Justin Edelstein: And it's an auto thing and you're going to get it. And people, I guess, take that for granted now. It's like, yeah, of course I don't have to upgrade my software.

Jason Atwood: I guess that's the other thing, the cloud evangelism is sort of gone and now it's the social evangelism. The other thing that I'll point out was I thought chatter was played a lot, which I liked. Totally downplayed. Which I really liked. I liked that they didn't just try to make it about, you know, chatter 12. Like it was really, they pushed it down a lot. It's much more about social and social. chatter fixes into the social, but I thought they really, it wasn't like just chatter everywhere. It was like, oh, okay, it's just part of our products, one of our products, so. So it kind of leads this to the next article, which is from ZDNAP. Really, you know, it's a debate you're saying. It is a debate. And it's, is Salesforce.com tread just sort of not being able to put out any real products, are they just sort of, you know, not moving forward, treading water in the swimming sense.

Jason Atwood: You know, I quickly scanned over, I must say I didn't have much time to read this article. I get it, I get what they're trying to say.

Justin Edelstein: I think I disagree. See you next week. I think they're, I think they're being- What's to, disagree with? It's a debate. One person's on one side and one person's on the other. You either agree with one or you agree with the other. I disagree, I disagree.

Jason Atwood: I don't think they're treading water. I think they are moving forward. I don't think they're moving forward in necessarily the place I exactly want them to go as Anat would, but I- Definitely think they're moving forward in a lot of spaces that I'm gonna find It's not slowing down, but there are no products we can test or see now. Right. They're in the future. They're in 2012-2013 availability and pricing to be seen, but that doesn't mean they're not developing. It just means that some of the things they're doing are big issues and or they're still figuring them out. I mean, Salesforce... This is where agile and building things on a, you know, in three releases a year hurts you. Because you can't, you can't plan a year ahead and say, I know what's gonna be out.

17:26 Jason Atwood: I know when that's gonna hit. You have to say, here's when I think it's gonna hit and I'm gonna try. But I, we could not make it. We could, you know, it could fall out of the scrum. It could fall out of the thing. It could, we could not have enough time. We could run in some roadblocks. So, I just think, for me, I just have to flip my head around and, say, they've got vision, they know where they're going. It will be quicker than I think it is, like it seems like it's far away, but I'll wake up like every week. I always say this, winter 13, I feel, hey, is it here already? And it is, it's like next week or two weeks from now. So it's like. See you next week. It's coming, right?

Jason Atwood: So we'll, we'll walk around in six months, we'll be like, oh man, we got this new thing is released and this new things. And I think Salesforce wants to be more in the sale, in the PR cycle. So they want to be more like Apple in that. Apple doesn't release one thing a year. They don't go, here's our one release a year, see you in a year. They're like, we're going to hit you every two months. comments. And every two months we're going to give you something. Here's iPhone 5, here's iOS 6, here's the new iPad, here's iPad Mini, here's a new version of OS X. And we're going to hit you like every, maybe every three months. But they keep you in the cycle, so you're always kind of going, great. This is this they're going to spread stuff out throughout the year.

Jason Atwood: And they'll make splashes again when they launch Wark and they'll make splashes again when they launch Wark.com, when they launch Chatter for partners, when they launch the Social Key, when they launch all that stuff, they'll make another splash.

Justin Edelstein: I'm on your side of the debate as well, although we're in the minority, I'll have you know. 54% believe they're treading water in 46%. believe they're not at this very moment. You know, there's a lot of questions in this in this article. It's on it's on ZD net. It's a debate. you can probably Google is Salesforce.com treading water and find it and read it yourself. We're not going to read it. You know, Jason just did a pretty good job of giving his opinion on the matter. I happen to agree at this point, you know, the company is shelling out vision and And Dreamforce is the place where they do that. And now we're going to get a whole nother dose of it in about a month from now at Cloudforce and here in New York, because we're here in New York.

Justin Edelstein: We're basically going to get the same keynote. And then two hours, some mini breakout sessions. And that'll be that. I mean, I didn't even go to the product keynotes, which. Thanks so much. I feel like probably would have been the most beneficial thing to go to because that's where you get the deep dive Yeah, less vision more reality. Yep But I think their vision is like you said, it's not necessarily precisely what I'd like to see but it It says something that you have one right like there is vision there and they see a future in Just like they did 12 or 13 years ago, I don't think they could have said where they- where they were going to be today, but which we saw at Dreamforce.

20:26 Jason Atwood: Cool. Well, that that wraps it by the way, next Dreamforce. Dreamforce 14, 15, 16. Let's do it. 2013. So yeah, 14 months to get ready. Oh, we'll talk about Cloud Force when we get there. Yeah, I feel like Cloud Force is like that.

Justin Edelstein: So what? There won't be a lot of people there. Oh, yeah, a lot of people, but it's not. It's basically everyone in New York who couldn't go to Dreamforce plus. Everyone else who really wants to just see it again for and it's on a Friday. So it's easy to be like yeah Friday I'm going to a conference.

Jason Atwood: Yeah Next up again was the piece of news is Google Plus for the enterprise So again, this was almost a month ago Google announced on their enterprise blog that they are launching and watching the enterprise- the enterprise as a sort of Pre release premium premium which is like

Justin Edelstein: Premium with the P in front of it Someone who's sick you just spit over me.

Jason Atwood: Sorry about that Which is really releasing a couple things Google Hangouts for the enterprise and Google Plus with really the ability they've had Google Plus for the enterprise which you had on your Google app But now you can sort of just use it internally So you can have internal posts. I can post something. I just tried it before this, just to see. And yeah, you can say, just post it within Arkus.

Justin Edelstein: And I was like, oh, okay. They're kind of like out ahead of people with this. They are where, you know, chatter communities and those types of things want to be. They're there. They have the ability to, in one huge, enormous social network, post to just your company and and and just publicly post something that that's that's there start a quick video chat I mean I didn't see that at at Dreamforce did you and it's I don't see it in the release notes either unless I totally missed it I didn't see that in the winter 13 screen share. Where is that? Like Google Plus has this stuff now. And you're already doing all your email in there, too. What I'm happy about this is because this is one of my predictions

Jason Atwood: For 2012, which is that video conferencing goes free. Basically, it has no more value anymore. Well, Google Hangouts for Enterprise, basically free. I mean, of course, they'll put a price around it eventually.

Justin Edelstein: But they're so close to saying, hey, you Yeah, but that's like so it's not free, the Webex is $50 a.00 a user per month. Okay. Well, that's a standalone product I think it's basically going free.

Jason Atwood: But anyway Do you think this puts you do. Do you think that puts Yammer and chat we ever now owned by Microsoft and chatter on notice totally Totally because it it

23:35 Justin Edelstein: It has that thing that that chatter doesn't have yet and I don't think Yammer has or may never will now that they're owned by Microsoft. It's that one place but many places at the same time, but don't you think that that's sort of

Jason Atwood: Do you think it's like one of those things that maybe you don't want to have your peanut butter and and and jelly together? You want them separate because like why you do launch peanut butter

Justin Edelstein: Jelly together, but who doesn't want peanut butter and jelly

Jason Atwood: I went to and I was like, I think of Google Plus, not only is there sort of a bad connotation now with Google Plus, it's a little bit like, oh, well no one's there, there. Now it's like, oh, it's Google Plus. So you can be in posting your friends and your girlfriend and then you can instantly turn around and post about your, the sales numbers at your company and boy, if you hit the wrong number, you're posting one to the other. Of course you can always go delete, but I. Okay. As for IT and I worked in IT for a long time, I'd be like, yeah, we're turning that off We're not even gonna make that available That's what's nice about chatter and I think Yammer too. It's like it's a closed community Like people want it to be closed because I want to know that it's a walled off community and I'm more free with My speech inside that closed community.

Jason Atwood: You have a half-open community. It's like, oh, I don't know

Justin Edelstein: That's where chatter is going these communities these half open communities so be ready for it and you'll be able to turn them off and be ready for that you'll be able to turn them off be ready

Jason Atwood: It i'm ready well they'll just turn them off all right let's get to our cloud folks have picks of

Justin Edelstein: The week i see you have one it's just the best i have one i have one this is you know my dream force pick because i the door. Quite quite a bit and I decided to just choose like it's not the flashiest thing in the world It's just the thing that when I went and got a demo of it impressed me the most with What it does is very simple and what they say they do they do well............,...... I've integrated your product, but I haven't done it in about a year and a half. I want to see it. I want to know, you know, what it looks like today and has it changed and this and that and the other. Yeah, we're not here to give demos. I was like, well, what's that screen for?

26:59 Justin Edelstein: Like you have a monitor. Black like why do you have that even here? They're like no we feel like demos are best if we like get your use cases and like show you specific Yeah, like things tailored to you and this and that I was a little turned off by it But. But I contact had a great little demo took him three minutes. Just walk me through show me some really nice functionality for Setting massing all the pricing works. I'm looking at the price and I'm kind of like yeah, it's very variable He couldn't really give me a good sense of it. It's volume based Subscribers for $14 a month.

Jason Atwood: So subscriber means people I'm sending to know I think I don't think you're looking

Justin Edelstein: At the pricing for the Sales I There's it's a separate Add Okay the pricing is not available. Yeah you gotta contact eye contact. It's not too crazy. It's like if you want to send thousands and thousands of emails.

Jason Atwood: Mine is I tried to figure out how to wrap this around a dreamforce. So when you're a dreamforce, what you want to do is you want to have the ability to see how your website is doing.

Justin Edelstein: I could have sworn I picked this up. You mean the ROI on your website that you've been putting on your booth?

Jason Atwood: Yeah, no, you know Walking around there. So I feel like I picked this but I feel like you did too. I searched what I couldn't find it. Okay. I feel like you picked this or at least told me about it. Maybe I told you about it but I haven't picked it. Anyway, it's picking it again then. It's called analytics and it's a dollar 99. It's for your it's for the iPad iPhone and. What it does is It basically, you put in your Google account stuff, and then it reads your Google Analytics and puts them on your phone in a nice little way, and gives you some high level stats. So we're looking at the Arkus website. And there we go. So you can see like, you know, it's just a quick way to see like, oh, I want to check the stats for today and what's going on.

Jason Atwood: And I think you can go to this. Can we go to last week? No, it doesn't do like oh, it does you can do this it has a little little line chart, yeah, you can do some stuff and like you can look it's basically like basic very big Chrome user base We have basic information like youing go six months whatever but it's it's not like the full because analytics at this point Google Analytics is so into here you can hold it It's so in-depth and so much data. This is just like high level. You wanna see high level? Great. You flip it on its side? You get to see monthly. You flip it on the thing, you get to see something else. Like it's just a nice, well presented, well thought out way of showing some analytics from Google Analytics.

Jason Atwood: You can support it for five sites. $1.99. If you have a Google and if you use Google Analytics, this is worth it. It's it's two bucks. It's a really nice app So check it out. Very surprised.

30:09 Justin Edelstein: It's both and Analytics with a K not an S very surprised by like the mobile views Over 10% of the views of our website or mobile devices.

Jason Atwood: That's pretty interesting You know, like how much percentage yesterday versus today how much came from Twitter how much came from Google how much how much versus last month. I mean, just basic stuff. Which is what you want. You want basic information. You want to dig in, you go to the full website and you can run reports six ways sideways. But just sort of check and on your phone quickly, nice little app., all right, well that ends the CloudFocus Weekly. Remember to go to blog.arcasync.com. Follow us at twitter.com slash arcasync. Follow us at r-twitter.twitter.com slash arcasync. Just Edelstein, follow us on Twitter.com slash Jason M Atwood. And remember to go to the, remember even though Dreamforce is over, there's still the Dreamforce portal, I think it's gonna remain open for the rest of the year.

Jason Atwood: Why wouldn't it? Well,

Justin Edelstein: You never know, they changed their mind. It's been open for two years.

Jason Atwood: Yeah, hopefully we'll be able to flip back to the old view now that it touches out. generally they'll soon. Doubtful. That thing's gonna stay the way it is. I figured out a workaround and I now have it linked. Yeah I know how to get out of it too. It's great. Get me out of this. But we have a group in there. We once our stuff comes back from Dreamforce we will be doing our for the contest listeners. We will be doing the contest. thing once it comes back. I saw the fishbowl. There were some cards in there. That was fun. Meeting all the fans, by the way. Thanks for stopping by. It was really great. And that's it. Until next week,

Justin Edelstein: As we always say here, enjoy those cloudy days.