Goodbye 2016!
My Salesforce Year in Review
Winding down the final hours of 2016, it’s a great opportunity to reflect on all that’s happened during the year. It’s been a crazy-busy Salesforce year, with a ton of hard work to improve my Salesforce skills and give back to the community. In no particular order, here’s my top list of Salesforce accomplishments.
#1 Becoming a Salesforce Certified Administrator. I’ve been in IT for nearly twenty years, working with Microsoft and Cisco products and taking MCSE and CCNA classes. Not once, though, have I actually pursued certification. What’s the difference between Salesforce and Microsoft/Cisco? The community. Through the coaxing of my Salesforce Ohana, and, let’s be honest, a little friendly competition between friends, certification was something I finally wanted to do for myself. The Admin certification is just the start, and hope it pays dividends down the road.
#2 WI Salesforce Saturday. While studying for certification, I started noticing all these tweets about something called #SalesforceSaturday. Events organized by Stephanie Herrera were happening in Austin, TX, and I was reading how Kristi Guzman was starting events in her area. I was worried about how I’d maintain my education after certification, as well as making sure I took my Release Exams. I needed to be accountable to myself. At first, I said out loud, I wish somebody would start a Salesforce Saturday in our area. Then, I realized, I was some body. At the same time, my certification study partner, Jen Bowen was thinking the same thing.
Jen and I put our heads together and started Wisconsin Salesforce Saturday. We’re a small group, meeting the third Saturday of each month. We’re pretty excited about the opportunity to give back to the community. It turns out, our Ohana has been looking for ways to stay accountable to themselves as well!
Some of the goals people accomplished at Salesforce Saturday:
- Multiple Release Exams Passed
- Study time for the Dev II transition certification
- Completion of the entire Flow Workbook
- Progress on a personal Lightning Components effort that’d been put off for months
- Completion of the #AwesomeAdmin #LightningChallenge
- Studying the Identity Connect Implmentation Guide and planning a future user group presentation on the subject.
- Many many Trailhead badges earned
#3 Salesforce Community Volunteer Day. Personally, I’ve never been much of a volunteer for nonprofit orgs, but that’s mostly because I don’t want to be volunteering alone; I’d rather volunteer with friends! Inspired by Salesforce’s own 1:1:1 Model of giving, I thought what a great opportunity to rope in some friends. Working through the Wisconsin Salesforce User Group, I organized a day to work with the Dane County Habitat for Humanity.
Habitat for Humanity uses a volunteer workforce in new home construction and home revitalization for low income families. On our day, we were assigned a home revitalization project. Owned by an elderly lady, our home was formerly covered in lead paint. Habitat had safely stripped the paint, and we were tasked with repainting and landscaping. As you can see from the smiles, we were full of pride in what we were able to accomplish, and how much it helped the owner!
I’m hoping the Wisconsin Salesforce User Group is interested in doing a couple of dates in 2017.
#4 Becoming a Salesforce User Group Leader. With the kick off of WI Salesforce Saturday, organizing the Community Volunteer Day, and a few contributions/presentations to the Wisconsin Salesforce User Group, in October the leadership asked that I join them as a group leader. I am completely humbled and honored to be recognized for my contributions. I’m excited to be able to offer more to our Salesforce Community, and already have started a list of new topics we can cover. I’m also very interested in learning what other user groups are doing and how we can apply their successes to our group, as well as getting more feedback from our members.
#5 Dreamforce 2016. There’s a lot to be said about Dreamforce, and I’ll probably write a separate blog post about it someday (probably right before Dreamforce 2017 the way my schedule is looking). This being only my second Dreamforce, I was delighted with the opportunity to help Jen Lee out with her presentation on process mapping. I wasn’t planning to be on stage, but happy to fill in when an additional panelist was needed.
It’s easy to get burned out in any job, including working with Salesforce. Dreamforce is a chance to get reacquainted with why you fell in love with the software in the first place. There are so many stories of how this piece of software has changed someone’s life, saved a business, helped power a non-profit, and improved a community. When you come back from Dreamforce, if you aren’t recharged for the Salesforce Platform, you weren’t paying attention. My two most inspirational moments were listening to the pre-Dreamforce Women’s Network #WiT Event and the inspiring stories of women leaders; and an event with Stephanie Herrera where we talked all about Salesforce Saturday, at a time when Jen and I were really doubting that we could successfully kick off such an event.
Dreamforce had such a major theme on using Salesforce for process automation. I’ve long been an advocate for this, that traditional IT is just not valued by any business. Until there’s a major issue, no business places value on running a database, patching servers or operating the network. Sure, you can use Salesforce to track your leads and your customers, and know the sales pipeline. But you know where real value is at? Automated processes that reduce waste, reduce expense and increase profits. Salesforce is the platform that can deliver. If you are tuned in to delivering process automation, your business will value you.
#6 I started writing. This is my vulnerable moment. I wrote a lot in elementary and middle schools, and aced the Technical Writing classes in college. Somewhere along the way, though, I stopped writing. So this is my blog. My way of putting myself out there; telling the stories that I see. What you will find are personal anecdotes of working on the platform, leading teams and projects, more moments of weakness, and maybe a little bit about working in the public sector.
That about wraps up my major 2016 milestones. I want to wish my Salesforce Ohana a HAPPY NEW YEAR. 2017 is going to be great! My goals are more certifications and a dive into the developer’s world. What are your goals for 2017?
