Packed Dreamforce - Episode #225 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 225th episode of CloudFocus Weekly for the 2nd of December 2015. This episode is titled, Back to Dreamforce. CloudFocus Weekly will be at the end of the Alright well I feel like I'm already into this very early episode of GodFowls Weekly Weekly but it's me J.S.N.E.W.D. and joining me. Co-hosts barely awake Justin Edelstein how you doing? Still wiping the eyes. Yes it is We're doing, doing this at 8 30 a.m. on a Tuesday because this week is packed and because And we're podcasting all next week So we figured to get one out early and then you know, we'll see you all until next week. Keep you guys jonesin That's right. I mean you probably haven't listened to the one that we just published on Friday It was a whole weekend.

Jason Atwood: We could download, but, and the, the billions of years of experience in Dreamforce? Can't figure out if this is my seventh or eighth. It is your ninth. Is it my ninth? Because it is my eighth. Okay, and you know that for a fact.

Justin Edelstein: I know that I started going to Dreamforce in 2008, so eight. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. That would make this my eighth. So it's my ninth.

03:21 Jason Atwood: So it would be your ninth. So next year you get a badge. Next year I should get something.

Justin Edelstein: Probably won't. OK. So we'll show our should.

Jason Atwood: 17 years worth of experience. Correct. 9th and 8th, yes. It's really too early for math.

Justin Edelstein: And we'll talk about also using my fingers. Yes, I see. You were watching me use my fingers. Man. All right. Math with fingers from the Salesforce consultant.

Jason Atwood: Three days off and an early podcast equals... Comedy gold. but for some who don't know, Salesforce offers a, let's call it a training platform,

Justin Edelstein: Informational platform, I think it's a lightweight LMS. Yeah, lightweight LMS. That's fun and badges and points. Some are more in depth than others. These are more informational with some. Mm. multiple choice questions at the end. Others in Trailhead, just to take a little side step into Trailhead, have lots of rich content and I think the really great part about Trailhead and the thing that I think they've done really well is that it's integrated into the platform. log in to Trailhead using a developer edition version of Salesforce that you've already signed up for. And then you are logged into that Salesforce instance at the same time, sort of in the same window or browser or whatever. And at the end of certain trails or modules within a trail, you have exercises. So you're learning about workflow or you're learning about summary fields or building objects you have to go to your org and build the object or build the roll up summary.

Justin Edelstein: And you click check my work or whatever it says submit. And it actually goes out and looks at the org that you're logged into and sees if you've done the work correctly, which I think is a really nice automated automated No, Lightning has none of that. Well, now Lightning is more just to read this information, watch these videos, get immersed into it, and then answer three or four questions at the end of each module. They have different time. They'll tell you how much time it takes.

06:25 Jason Atwood: So again, you can kind of go deeper into it if you want. You can go lighter. later. But if you don't know anything about Lightning, and I think it's a great way, and I think Salesforce is going to go this way, go to, so it's developer.com slash trailhead. You can, again, you sign in there. You probably want to just go and use your developer account that you did to sign into Trailhead. That'll make your life easier, because you could log into Trailhead with one user ID, and then log into your developer, and then connect them to. Thank you. It's just kind of easier to have your developer account and login both. anyway, and there, there's four trails. I'm there's four tons of modules.

Justin Edelstein: There's four lightning experience trails, but then there's a slew of other. Lightning app builder trails, lightning component trails. But the new Lightning Experience, new Lightning UI has four trails associated to it with many modules within it. There's one for starting with the Lightning Experience. There's one with migrating to the Lightning Experience. There's one with using the Lightning Experience. And then there's a developer trail for the lightning experience. And they are, you know,

Jason Atwood: This is Salesforce's, they're not heavy. So don't think like they're tests or like certifications. They're not, they're very, very light. Haha. And they're very kind of, you know, the questions are kind of funny. Like what you do to roll out lightning? A, jump up and down in your room. B, you know, call. the president. I mean, see, organize a group of people who are going to be, you know, shareholders in the project. I mean, it's that type of stuff. And if the first question is all the above, always hit all the above. It's like, what are the five fun, what names are things that are fun about lightning? All the above.

Justin Edelstein: Everything. Everything is fun about it.

Jason Atwood: So it's a good way. So try that out. If you haven't tried Trailhead, you should. The points, the badges, it's quite fun. I mean, there's a trailhead for Dreamforce. So there you go. There's a, I took that one. I'm ready. Dreamforce ready. DF-15 ready. You can take that one and get that badge. And I could see Salesforce really using this farther and farther and farther and farther along. It'd be interesting to be able to bring Trailhead as I just think about this. bring Trailhead, be able to customize it for your organization, build your own learning stuff like put your own content together and then have that Trailhead work into their badges and profile on their profile in Salesforce. That would be fun. Right? Because right now it's very separate. Like my badges in Trailhead don't have anything to do with my badges in my main org.

Justin Edelstein: Norges. Nor do the trails that you've taken have anything to do with the business process that you facilitate.

Jason Atwood: They are separate. I'd love to be able to build my own trails. Yeah.

Justin Edelstein: That'd be cool. Arkus trails. ABC, baby.

Jason Atwood: All right. So next up, we'll put together our apparently. eight and nine years of Dreamforce experience and give you the listener tons and tons and tons and tons or maybe like three tips and tricks and things that you should do. We'll go back and forth. We'll pick them out and we'll go until we get tired. Okay. And I always go first.

09:44 Justin Edelstein: And you always go first. I was your first. All right. My main dream force tip and trick always every year that I'll tell everybody. Yes. Is to load up on. I think what? No. Load up on. Whatever it is that prevents you from getting sick. I thought you're gonna go there. That's funny every year so I've made this mistake early on in my dreamforce life and Every dreamforce I would get so sick because you get so run down right you are up early You are up late. You don't get much sleep You are running around from here to there. You're moving a lot you're meeting with hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands and 150,000 people just spread out all over the place right San Francisco in and of itself. Sorry people It's not the cleanest city in the universe Sorry But there's lots of germs.

Justin Edelstein: Okay, let's just put it that way. Yes and your body is You know, running on empty by the end of it. So you want to get as much of whatever it is that helps you. I want you to tell them what you do and then. So what what I do is I load up on emergency. Right. So starting probably this week, Wednesday or Thursday. Wednesday, really? I will go to the store and I will buy like a box of emergency. and I will start down an emergency every day. And then when I'm at Dreamforce, I will do emergency every morning, right? And maybe sometimes sneak in a little at night, but it usually wants a day. Now if you do vitamin C pills, great. Go get some vitamin C pills and double up on it, triple up on it, you can't take enough of it, whatever.

Justin Edelstein: If you're a green vibrance person or one of those probiotic drink things, go do that, load up, load up on it. Mix the two together, put some emergency in your green vibrance. You're good to go. Just make sure that you load up on that stuff because it's inevitable that you're gonna get sick in the same vein I tend to take to leave every morning Okay, so basically your tips are to a drug to take a lot of drugs All right, I take to leave every morning cuz there's a lot of walking around And I want to get ahead of that pain.

Jason Atwood: I mean, you are 75 years old and my feet really hurt a dream for us. I mean, there's a lot of guys get better shoes would. Would be the one that I would know that there's a lot of walking.

Justin Edelstein: Yeah, a lot of a lot of walking.

Jason Atwood: So I'll just two little. So while you're at this, actually your tip, and I won't do this one, but do mine on top of my tip. No, I'm not going to take it. I'll do my tip and then I'll come back. I suggest because one of the things that you really when you travel gets you sick and gets you worn down is dehydration You don't have access to easy to get water like you do when you're home or whatever So I suggest and I do first day where we stay there's always there's the CVS right across the street Yeah, I go over and I purchase massive amounts of those massive water jugs. I think we all do that. Yeah, even if the hotel gives you free water or whatever, still go, cause it's just easy to walk in and see this huge thing of water and just start chugging it.

13:13 Jason Atwood: And it's like a dollar fifty. Yeah, just and chug it. And I drink, drink tons of water at night, tons of water in the morning. Staying hydrated is. Again, it's like because when you travel and this is not just Dreamforce When you travel you just don't get to as much water as you normally do because you don't have access to it. It's hard It's you have to pay for it. You have to buy it. So that's a side trip my first tip is Sinking calendar the calendar. So this is new Actually someone in Arca's pointed this out and I set it up so you can now sync your agenda to your calendar So you go into Dreamforce You go into the Dreamforce app, you log in, you go to my sessions or my agenda, and there's a button on the side that says sync to calendar.

Jason Atwood: This is new and this is like the second to most awesome thing ever because the most awesome thing is when you can put in your own events, but you can't do that yet. But now if you can sync it to your calendar, at least you can put your own events in your calendar and you can see where you need to go. So my first tip. is to sync your agenda to your calendar. It will make your life easier than trying to figure out where your agenda or having to go into some app or something because your calendar is your calendar. And then you can throw your other stuff, like you other meetings and things you wanna do on your calendar and you can look at it, like I am this week going, oh crud, I have too much stuff to do.

Jason Atwood: Right, I had to start to pair back, which is my side tip to this tip, this is a double tip. You've already done two by the way.

Justin Edelstein: I've done three. So keep going. Well, don't overload yourself.

Jason Atwood: Leave time in your day to go do things that are not sessions because you're going to find yourself pulled in a million directions. And I've made the rookie mistake, I guess a long time ago, of trying to pack myself through of like... event, event, event, event, event, event, event, or like session, session, session, session. First of all, the sessions are all over the map now. It's hard to get to them. Second of all, you want to leave time to like, have a conversation. You might want to go get a coffee with somebody.

Justin Edelstein: It's like, put some good sessions in there. They're also on YouTube very rapidly.

Jason Atwood: And I think, you know. I think they're even recording them video. Pick a couple that you're really interested in and let the other one slide like. it. You know,

Justin Edelstein: I'm not gonna say that all sessions aren't created equal, but they're not what's your what's the session that you're most looking forward to? This year. Oh, cuz I have my calendar synced. So I have mine. Oh sitting up in front of me I don't know now. I gotta go look I'll go mine first. Yeah, you just guys I'm really looking forward to It's on Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. Okay, good job. It's called strength in numbers. The Golden State Warriors culture and philosophy. Wow. What a thing to go to at. a tech conference.

Jason Atwood: That's pretty cool. Yeah, I'm really interested in that. I actually, I have a lot of sessions I've signed up for because I'd written blog posts about them. And so I have to go back and actually put in the ones I want. I will say one of the ones on my calendar right now, although it. It looks like it's 8am. Can it really be 8am at Pacific time? Could be. Yeah 8 a.m. I think 8 or 8 30 is the earliest. You've changed field audit trails and the Salesforce time machine.

16:28 Justin Edelstein: You're looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to that. I love of course the Marc Benioff keynote. Yes well the keynote. All right, so next tip from you. Oh next tip for me. All right, so It's gonna be about packing. Okay, so pack light, leave room in your suitcase, because no two things. One, when you pack, everything's folded nice and neat and crisp, but on your way home it doesn't end up that way. And you, generally, end up picking up a few extra little things here and there that that have to go in the bag. So make sure... that if you're going to be there from, say, Monday through Friday, and you can afford it or handle it, maybe a little pack so many things that you maybe pack half and do laundry once at the hotel.

Justin Edelstein: That way you're packed a little of lighter. You're going to want to bring two pairs of shoes. You're going to want to wear your shoes that you're going to wear during the day, and then you might want a pair of sneakers. speakers. to walk around in when you're not actually at the conference, a little more comfortable on the feet. If you're going to exercise, which, which you should try to do it, get your body flowing in the morning, bring some exercise clothes, like all the stuff takes up space in the suitcase. So, part and partial with that tip of trying to pack as light as possible is I do wear undershirts underneath my. my button down shirts that I wear every day. I will typically not pack those and I will go to the CVS or whatever it is out there in San Francisco.

Justin Edelstein: And I will buy a three pack of jeans undershirts. And I will oftentimes just leave them there. They're like $10 for three. And I'll just be like, the casualties of the war casualties of the war.

Jason Atwood: Just, yeah, we used to do that tip and I like that tip, but I usually buy them here. because I'm concerned if I go there and they're not there, I'm gonna be mad.

Justin Edelstein: Then I gotta stuff the gym. Sometimes I buy them here, sometimes I buy them there. Depends on the situation. I have the last two years bought them there. Done the same thing with a few other things. Also know that lotta hotels these days. You know if you forget toothpaste not the biggest deal They just give it to you if you forget like your toothbrush right ever a comb that kind of stuff but Tip is is to pack light Try and get everything in a carry-on I know a lot of people where it's like their whole mission in life is to get every piece of swag ever So they just They bring a bag for swag. Right. I don't recommend that, but if that's your thing, if you have like five kids and you need to give them toys when you get home, great.

Justin Edelstein: I take as little swag as I can. I try and grab a t-shirt, like a Salesforce one that I like. You put my tip. Usually at the Dev Zone, they have cool t-shirts.

19:29 Jason Atwood: My tip is avoid swag. Oh, well there you go. Go right into it. Because, and here's why. There is something in the air of a conference that when you're walking around and looking at stuff, the swag looks so good. But I'll tell you, there's three levels of swag. There's the swag you see in the conference under the lights, and it's like, oh, that's a good swag. And then there's a swag that you get back and you see in your hotel room. You're like, oh, swag. And then this is stuff you see when you get home. It doesn't look the same. There's something about it. You take that pen that looks like the coolest pen in the world and then you take it home and it looks like crap. And you're like, I have a thousand of these.

Jason Atwood: So I have for years, I don't take swag. I just don't. There's nothing in it I need. Yes. Have I broken down once or twice for a kid, I think, for the child for the two years ago, there was the. Last year you broke down for the The skateboard skateboard thing.

Justin Edelstein: Yeah, I mean and that was no pain. You know like amazing that skateboard was No, what company gave that skateboard out I don't know that's how great it worked Yes, good job skateboard company. They're known as skateboard companies keep Like I don't know so even I and as someone who was walking around those skateboards and it meant nothing and it's someone who gets swag

Jason Atwood: Created like we build swag and we bring swag and you know over the years We've bought we've done really low-end swag and we've done high-end swag and we've you know Again, if there's something, you know, there are things you get that are high-end and you're gonna be like Oh, that's really something special. But even the things that I thought were like really nice and I used my swag lens and I went, okay, is this a real thing? Do I really want this? Am I gonna get home and want to put this somewhere in my house or have this? I still get home and I'm like, why did I take that? Really? So anyway, I would just say avoid the swag. completely avoid this lag. It's just you're gonna get home, you're gonna go half of it.

Jason Atwood: So if or maybe just avoid half of it. The other thing is don't take stuff you don't need. I know a lot of people who like take everything and then just leave it in their hotel room. It's like don't do that. Like don't take everything you don't need. If you don't need it, don't take it. And I know you get caught up in it. I get caught up in it too. But just try to like... Can you see yourself in a month using this thing? Now, yes, if it's a t-shirt, sure, you're going to wear a t-shirt. There's a few things I've brought back that I probably still use. But avoid it, mostly. Next one. We'll do one more. Last one.

Justin Edelstein: Leave Friday open. Friday's still part of Dreamforce. To me Friday is I'm wearing jeans, I'm wearing sneakers, I'm wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and I'm fairly awake. And usually I fly home on that Friday. We are flying home that Friday, like one o'clock. There is a session that I did sign up for that's at, I'm trying to do the math here, 9.30. So I may, actually go to it. We'll see. Might not work. It's the future seen through the eyes of a science fiction writer. I think that that's really interesting. But I generally try And Friday bec extremely, extremely light, leave it open. I met during the week that says, hey, do you want to grab like breakfast? I'll say, hey, Friday, let's grab breakfast on Friday, or something like that. Which I'll sort of parlay into just 3.5, which is try to meet five new people.

23:19 Justin Edelstein: Five new people. People you didn't know, people you knew of because of the community. Try and shake their hand. Meet them. Meet us. Hey, come over, say hi. Is your 3.5 tip is to come meet us? Well, no, it's to network and meet people. That's what the event is all about. It's not all about just being there and seeing Mark Benioff and Coca-Cola up on stage. It's about meeting. I love my drone delivered Coke. Me too. But still, it's not all about. that stuff. It's about meeting people in the community. So try and meet five new people, people that you didn't know before and after Dreamforce you can say, hey I met that person. Right.

Jason Atwood: Mine, my last one is, I'll go I'll a little bit of my GTD world to do this. But..., everything. So could be. Oh, yeah, I met this person and we talked, I should follow up with them. And then you can look at the star because you actually follow up with them as opposed to the people say, Oh, I'll follow up with you. And they don't. B'i We're not bring your own equipment or bringing like no SD card. I don't know how they're gonna sound I don't know how I'm gonna do them publish them. Whatever. I'm gonna do my best We're not sure

26:58 Justin Edelstein: I would think you'd have a better wifi at the hotel than you would at the conference. But I, that means it's not gonna get done till the next day. I ain't coming home at night after a day of Dreamforce. Be like, let's do some podcasting editing. Like one of your little, how about you do it? One of your little tips that you don't mention is you don't, you melt. You melt that a a a.' and,-. the,,, you, I,,' I I'll be done. The Wicked Witch of the West over there. That's right.

Jason Atwood: I've made it up. Well this year, because we're going out Monday this is gonna be tough cause Sunday night we have a game here we'll be watching with a friend and then Monday night we're going out and we're going to something on Monday night that's gonna go long And it's late.

Justin Edelstein: Because it's the first week. Podcast. Salesforce One Mobile. I just picked it. Listen, spring 15. This is just as bad. No, it's not. It's the Dreamforce 15 app. It's free. It's from Salesforce. Put it on the iOS. It works great. It shows you your agenda. You can get to your feed. So it's got a nice map location.

Jason Atwood: I just went onto my phone and I pulled up my Dreamforce app. Yeah. Is that not it or is it Dreamforce 15 app the Dreamforce 15 app? What's the diff?

Justin Edelstein: So did it load like this? Nope. Yeah. So you don't have the right one. So I have ideas. No, I have groups. You have your agenda. You have session map. You have a discover tab, which uses your location, a sponsor's tab, which just lists out all the sponsors, and then you have the feed. So then you have the whole feed of basically the whole community. So you're telling me it's not the same app? It's not the same app at all. No. I mean, check out this discover tab. This is really cool. So it has all these things at the top, like how you can maps and transportation and all that. And if you click on. By the way, they got to work on their SEO.

Jason Atwood: I just typed in Dreamforce 2015. Yeah, I know.

Justin Edelstein: Nothing came up. That happened to me when I first went to download the app. I was like, I don't want party force. I want Dreamforce. Anyway, the app is really well done. It hasn't crashed on me yet, which is good. That is good. What are you signing with you, success community? I believe I signed... No, I signed up with regular old my credentials. Well, which I guess are the same as the success community. So, yes. Okay, thank you. Cool. Downloading now.- You don't have to re-login. Like once you're in, you're in. That's nice. I will enjoy that.

Jason Atwood: Mine is going to be, this is I think a repick, although I think I made a pod cut, a blog post about this. I was going to pick actually an app called Flight Track Pro. But I went to try to find it, and while it still works on my phone, it does not exist anymore. They've now, it's like another one called Flight Track Pro. So I'm going to trick another app that does roughly the same thing, which is called Trip it. And it's an app and a website. So you don't use TripIt and you fly and you travel more than once a month, you are missing out on your life. TripIt is a free service. You sign up for it. They then give you a, actually they don't give you, they say, here's an email address, plans at tripit.com.

30:27 Jason Atwood: Whenever you get a confirmation from your hotel, from your Delta, from your rental car, you just forward it off to TripIt. TripIt builds your agenda for you. And then on the phone, you can go down and it has everything else. All your confirmation numbers, it's everything in one like little place called TripIt on your phone. And then other apps can sync to it. It's like Flight Tracker syncs my TripIt. So it tracks all my flights. It tells me that there are delays. Now I will say, I've been using this for years and years and years and years. Now the apps for the... Flights, the airline apps have become better. Like JetBlue and Delta, they both have better alerting.

Justin Edelstein: They'll tell you, they'll text you. I think the Delta app's fantastic. It's pretty good.

Jason Atwood: It's better. But Trip is nice because it keeps more than just your Delta. It keeps your hotels, it keeps your hurt. It keeps your... Car rent hotels or sink and stuff are allowing

Justin Edelstein: You to add your reservation to your passbook. Yes, which I love. That's nice. That is just in my past book.

Jason Atwood: So I just like it because TripIt has its one place. I a know it's on my phone. It actually syn, it's in multiple places. You can get it online. So. Try a TripIt. But TripIt. It's free, it's TripIt.com, enjoy. All right, so we'll see you next week. If you wanna see us beforehand, you can follow at JustEddleston, follow at Jason M. Atwood, follow at Arca Sync. We're on Facebook, we're in the a success community. That's a good place to go find out our podcasting studio. It, it's in the success community, in our group. It's also in the Power of Us hub. In that group as well, we've put- our schedule of where we are podcasting and when. Admin Zone, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. We're on LinkedIn, Google Plus, Yes. And we'll see you next week live, kids.

Jason Atwood: You guys can stop by and throw things at