An interesting article was pointed out by Randy Gower, Account Executive at Salesforce.
Cloud Computing in a bubble economy

More and more articles are appearing in trade journals that highlight the advantages and also the hype surrounding Cloud Computing.
Please visit Oracle and Salesforce Development site for more articles and links on this topic.

Another great meeting that covered a lot of ground -

Model Metrics Salesforce Certification training
Anastasia Lianakis gave a very informative session on classes offered by Model Metrics.
They will have new classes for developer and consultant certification later next year so check back with the site regularly.

A special webinar is also available -

Webinar:  Get More from Salesforce with Education & Change Management
Presenter:  Shannon Cunningham, Practice Director-Education Services
Duration:  23 minutes

Please visit the Salesforce Certification site for how it helps you and your business.

Winter 09 new features
Kevin Smith presented an overview of some of the new features in Winter 09. These included -

• Workflow

Approval on recall actions.
Workflow on many-to-many object relationships

• Formula

Ability to use formula across objects including parent objects.
Easier syntax.

• Tagging and Analytics

Ability to tag dashboards.
Schedule and email dashboards and reports.

• Connect for outlook

Lots of enhancements so it is important that you ensure your users have the latest version.
Setup > Desktop Integration

• Calendar

Ability to click and create events.
Drag and drop is also available.

• Call Center

Ability to assign Case Teams that can then be notified.
Workflows can be enabled on Case comments.

Pleas see the release notes for more detailed information on these and all the other new features.

DreamFactory Snapshot
Our first remote demo featured the appexchange product SnapShot from DreamFactory.

Release Management and Migration – Migrate applications, security changes, etc. across orgs
Test a new app in sandbox, then move it into production
Push apps, objects from a dev org into a customer’s sandbox or production org
Change Management – Track, Record and Compare changes to an org over time
Take weekly snapshots to track changes over time
Compare snapshots to determine exactly what change occurred
Troubleshooting – Compare orgs and profiles within orgs to find the source of a problem
Why does the app work for this profile but not for another profile?
Why did this work in my sandbox, but it’s not working in my production org?

For developers, this provides the same functionality and piece of mind as source versioning systems like CVS and Subversion.

Community
Dreamforce sessions are available on the community site.
We are also planning a more technology focused session for your IT staff as well as your Salesforce developers and admins. Please leave comments if there is any particular technology or problem you would like to see covered. More details to follow.

Please keep your comments and ideas for topics coming.

The user group community and the meetings are a great source of inspiration and also give you the chance to see how expansive and flexible Salesforce and the Force.com platform really are.

For the admins out there, put your skills to the test and have a chance to win with the Salesforce Admin to App Builder challenge

Visit the Oracle and Salesforce Development site for more articles.