2016: a look back at my year of Salesforce passion!
Back to January 2016… And the year started with a good news from Salesforce University! Indeed, I had the chance to take an exam on December 2015: the Salesforce.com Certified Marketing Cloud Social Specialist Beta Exam Summer 15. And in the early january, I received an awesome message…
“Congratulations! You have successfully completed the certification exam to become a Salesforce Certified Marketing Cloud Social Specialist – BETA – SU15. Welcome to the Salesforce.com worldwide community of Certified Professionals!”
My first certification on the Marketing path… and at this time, it was my fifth certifications.
After few modules, trails and projects, I have to thank the Trailhead team :-) In February 2016 I received my limited edition Trailhead sweatshirt after a challenge! We had to complete five new modules by the January 31, 2015, 11:59pm PST (yes deadline is a serious thing).
In March 2016, we had a Developer Group event with the Swiss Community to introduce the Best of Spring ’16 release, managed by Gnanasekaran Thoppae and Raphael Wulff. And I remember a specific discussion we had on the Person Account and the data storage. The funny thing is that I had a similar discussion on Twitter my Fabrice Cathala few weeks before. And talking about Person Account and data storage, you can still vote for this following idea: Person Accounts Shouldn’t Require Double Storage!
During April 2016, I attend another Developer Group event with an amazing trendy topic: Lightning Design System or how to build custom applications with a look and feel that is consistent with Salesforce core features.
April 2016 was also an important month because it was the official creation of the Geneva Switzerland Salesforce User Group, with my two co-leaders Hicham Tabbak and Mehdi El Bilali.
We cannot talk May 2016 without mentionning the Salesforce World Tour in London. This event… bigger and bigger! And always a super opportunity to meet some Salesforce fellows, such as Fabrice Cathala, Kerry Townsend, Francis Pindar, Jodi Wagner, Matthew Morris, Phil Walton, Jean-Michel Mougeolle and so many more…
June 2016 was quite busy too… We also had our first User Group meeting; the “Awesome June Meetup” to share knowledge on the best of Summer ’16 release, and also to share tips by Jean-Michel to increase Salesforce user adoption.
We of course had the TrailheaDX Keynote live viewing party, for the first joint-event with the Geneva User Group and the Geneva Developer Group! Real start of the #SwissForce Community ;-)
Another great experience in June was my involvement in the Salesforce World Tour Paris. As Salesforce specialist and Trailhead Expert, my role was to help people in the Trailhead Zone, to complete their first Trailhead module, with an introduction to Lightning via Trailhead.
During this Salesforce World Tour, I also had the chance to help in evangelization at the Salesforce User Group Booth. With some other Salesforce User Group Leaders, my role was to explain the functioning, dynamics, objectives and advantages of the Salesforce User Groups.
And on top of the User Groups events, we took the opportunity to communicate about the new Dreamin event in Europe : FrenchTouch Dreamin in Paris, an event for the community by the community.
Oh and what about this glory moment : I was part of the famous #Salesforce25 ;-) Thank you again Phil for this highlight on the 25 people to meet at Salesforce World Tour Paris!
During summer 2016, it was holidays for some of you, but on my side I did my homework! And I passed two new certifications in July 2016: Salesforce.com Certified Platform App Builder and Salesforce.com Certified Marketing Cloud Email Specialist.
I bring another certification home during August 2016: the Salesforce.com Certified Advanced Administrator to hit now 8 certifications.
To be honest, I actually passed this certification only for the Salesforce University Challenge ;-) Be one of the thousand to pass a certification in August, in order to win a very limited edition of the Salesforce Certified Professional Medal! After the challenge, I just had to be patient… waiting for the precious medal… And yes I received my swag medal #394/1000 ;-p
The second Geneva User Group meetup occured in September 2016. This Awesome September Meetup was all about Leverage Sales Efficiency with Salesforce with 2 main topics: Sales efficiency powered by the Sales Console, and the Quote-to-Cash business processes powered by Apttus.
In October 2016, it was Dreamforce! My first Dreamforce! As a newbie, of course I made some mistakes… The biggest one was to overbook my agenda with sessions! Hopefully, I also planned to go the Dreamforce Newbie “Reunion” Breakfast, organized by Eric Dreshfield and Zachary Jeans. It’s a morning meeting to gather Dreamforce Newbies (and veterans) to share a breakfast, create some new friendships and share the experience that is Dreamforce. And it was also a good opportunity to raise some funds that will be donated to Project Night Night.
Another tip as Newbie? Join in the Success Community the Flyin’ Solo group managed by Misty Jones, if you’re looking to meet new people and make new connections, with this group your Dreamforce experience will be enhanced!
My first Dreamforce was a full week of innovation, knowledge sharing, networking with Salesforce experts, amazing discussions with Salesforce hereos, a full week of #Ohana! I should not start the listing exercice of amazing people I met, because of course you were too many and I will forgot names, but here we go: thank you Erica Kuhl, Holly Firestone, Sofía Rodriguez Mata, Puja Deverakonda, Alex Pisani, Chris Duarte, Peter Coffee, Shannon Howe, Geraldine Gray, Kristi Guzman, Phil Walton, Amy Oplinger, Toya Gatewood, Stuart Edeal, Amanda Matczynski, Jennifer W. Lee, Adam Olshansky, Daniel Peter, Shivanath Devinarayanan, Selina Suarez, Kenneth Wagner, Annie Shek-Mason, David Liu, Jennifer Davis, Hamza Abib, Kerry Townsend, Shaun Holmes, Francis Pindar, Maria Belli, J-Michel Mougeolle, Mohamed El Moussaoui, Fabien Taillon, Anne Podunavac, Stéphane Kalpakjian, Jean-Luc Antoine, Daniel Stange, and many more… and Salesforce SaaSy and Astro ;-)
In November 2016, I had two main rendez-vous, both in Paris. The first one was the Salesforce User Group Leader State of the Union for European leaders, rocked by the amazing team Holly and Alex! We learned a lot on the User Group program, and we also had the chance to share our insights.
After having discussed with Sergey Erlikh and some others Nonprofit User Group Leaders, I realized how useful are Nonprofit User Groups… And as we have a lot of organizations in Geneva, I committed during this event that a Geneva Nonprofit User Group will born in the coming months… To be continued…
The second one was the French Touch Dreamin, Salesforce Community event in France. I came with pleasure to meet again the Salesforce community and to feel the #Ohana atmosphere after Dreamforce. I could attend most of the sessions I planned… The only I missed was the one of Daniel Peter, because I had my session on the same slot ;-) Indeed, I had the priviledge to deliver a session on Salesforce Marketing Cloud: How to supercharge your marketing campaigns with personalization and dynamic content.
And for the “proud instant”, I had the honour of being nominate in the #Salesforce25 of 25 people to meet in FrenchTouch Dreamin! Thank you again Phil :-)
Something fun also started on October after Dreamforce; what the community choose to name the CubeForce! Grab a CRM Science guru in a Salesforce event and ask for a Cube to join Eric Dreshfield, Sandy Hubbard, Christina Moore, Ami Assayag, Mike Katulka, Amy Oplinger, Bill Powell, Tim Lynch, Olivier Jannini, Nick Johnson, Chris Neal and others, or just follow #CubeForce on Twitter ;-)
In December 2016, I had the chance to be a speaker in a Salesforce & Wide Agency event in Geneva for a trendy topic: Dreamforce Highlights and beyond – Marketing Automation & Artificial Intelligence. After an introduction by Salesforce on Artificial Intelligence with Einstein, I took the stage to talk about Marketing Automation and Predictive Intelligence with Marketing Cloud.
Ho, and the last news for 2016… We committed during FrenchTouch Dreamin, and we are now proud to announce a brand new Geneva Switzerland Nonprofit User Group! Thank you to Sonia Karkare and Gnana Thoppae for having this group set up so quickly, with the first meetup in February.
#SwissForce Community have now a User Group, a Developer Group, a Women in Tech Group and the brand new Nonprofit User Group.
I can’t wait to discover what my Salesforce 2017 will be!
