Hello all!

It's been a while since I've posted and I apologize.  As with many of us, my full time job gets in the way of this sometimes.

I've been back from Dreamforce for a week now and I think my head is in the right place to do this post.  Dreamforce is an amazing overload of information, but totally worth it.  I'm going to put a bit about my experience this year and share some of my excitement about it and the things that are to come over the next year.

Here are some of my pictures from my trip, some are pertinent and others are just because: Dreamforce Album

I arrived in San Francisco early Sunday morning.  I like to bum around the city a bit before the conference.  San Francisco is a beautiful city.  I got to my hotel, checked in and then walked over to Moscone center to pick up my 'stuff.'  The stuff usually includes a bag (to hold the stuff) and a bunch of marketing material as well as a nifty notebook and pen to take notes with.  The bag this year was quite spiffy.  We'll see how long it holds up under heavy commuter use.

I had lunch that day at Jolibee.  I'd seen it last year, but didn't have the opportunity to go in.  It's sort of KFC meets Asian fast food.  Tasty chicken, but surreal in general.

Salesforce.com started offering certifications earlier this year.  They allowed people to sign up to take the exam for free on Sunday.  I didn't manage to sign up early enough to get a spot, but they said to show up and we might be able to get on a waiting list.  This would be my only gripe about the whole conference experience.  The organization of the testing was not done well.  The first time you do something like this, it's expected to be a learning experience, and it was.  After about an hour of waiting around, I finally managed to take the test.  I'm proud to say that I'm officially certified!

The first night of the Expo is the best, in my opinion.  The vendors are fresh, it's not as crowded and you can spend some quality time with them asking in depth questions.  I would encourage anyone planning on going to Dreamforce to go for the Sunday night reception.

Keynote Monday morning was exciting as always.  Marc Benioff is an amazing speaker.  The big announcements were about the platform.  Force.com sites is the natural evolution of VisualForce and addresses my question as soon as they released VisualForce, "When can I use this for my customers?" Marc also announced integration with Facebook and Amazon Web Services(AWS).  This is pretty exciting too, one of the things that was missing in the platform was a way to run non-native code in the cloud and make it available to your organization (or with sites, beyond your organization).  With AWS, you can run almost any code on their platform and connect it to the force.com platform.

The developer sessions were deep and awesome as ever.  I've heard mixed reviews of some of the other tracks, but the developer sessions always seem to be full of good information.

Monday night was quite the party.  Foo Fighters were amazing in concert.  They had a gimmicky ice sculpture/martini server that seemed pretty popular, though the drink itself was syrupy and kind of lame (imho).  The food was excellent, lots of bite sized morsels to soak up the drinks. 

Tuesday morning, it was difficult to get to the "Unconference," but as a presenter, I kind of had to be there.  I really only had one person come to my session about Apex test coverage, so we went over some code and some of the tips that I had about it.  Not sure how to make this more successful, another first try at something.

I missed the afternoon keynote/appy awards unfortunately and spent some more time on the Expo floor trying to find solutions to some of my organization's issues.

Tuesday evening was a lovely dinner at Lulu's followed by a bit of a pub crawl.  I met (or re-met) some other people from the Seattle area as well as some cool Denver people. Props go out to my account rep for a great time.

I met with Pete Fife a couple of times during Dreamforce about how to improve the community in general.  If you haven't met Pete, just go to the main Dreamforce page (this also has all the recorded sessions and info) and watch the little flash banner there... He's the guy talking in the first clip.  He STARTED the community for Salesforce.com back in the day.  We are going to try to take it to the next level.  Keep your eyes peeled for fun and helpful stuff coming this year.  Some of the ideas we're batting around: Virtual User Group Meetings, Ideas for User Group Members, Social Networking Tools (chat, subscription based discussion groups, etc), and much more.

I think everyone had a great time.  Suzanne and I bumped into each other a couple of times, I saw Courtney House, Deb Weller, Alissa Harper, Lisa Hoesel, and the gang from Green River (sorry if I'm forgetting people).  Hope to see you all at the next meeting (coming soon).