Meet the Finalists Who Competed in the First-Ever TechnoJam at Dreamforce
Dreamforce may be over for (almost) another year, but if you’re like me, you’re still thinking about all the fantastic things you experienced over the week. The best part about Dreamforce is that, even as a 16-year-old technology conference, each year brings new faces, passions, and progress.
One of the events that helped breathe new life into the conference and bring people together was the first-ever TechnoJam.
Okay, what’s a TechnoJam?
A TechnoJam takes the well-known game-show style Demo Jams to a deeper level — really aiming to scratch that technical itch. Partners to present their app with sufficient technical detail — tackling large data volumes, integration, deployment, governance, pliability, and security — all in 15 minutes or less.
To win their spot at the first-ever Dreamforce TechnoJam, AppExchange partners went through a tough assessment and evaluation process. Six finalists — Data Dwell, Learnsmarter, Mahalo Commissions, NativeVideo, Odaseva, and SalesTrip — went head to head in San Francisco. Hosted by Ladies Be Architects Founder Gemma Blezard and Maritina Tsembelis, founder of ISV Meetups, the TechnoJam gave attendees a real “look under the hood”, so to speak.
We caught up with each of the TechnoJam finalists to learn a little more about them, their app, and thoughts on the importance of Salesforce Architects.
Skarpi Steinthorsson — Co-Founder & CTO, Data Dwell
AppExchange partner since 2016
What inspired Data Dwell to join the AppExchange Partner Program?
Skarpi Steinthorsson: “In late 2015, we were approached by the ISV team at Salesforce about integrating our product into Salesforce. We had already been looking at other marketplaces, like AWS, but we didn’t find them exciting and the support was lacking. Once I started looking into Salesforce, I never really looked back and went ‘full force’ into SFDC in early 2016.”
Tell us about your app — what problems do you solve for Salesforce users?
SS: “We identified a business problem where sales, support, and customer success teams needed the right collateral/content available to them at the right stages of the customer lifecycle — and, ideally, only the best content specific to the customer’s profile and needs. We felt that a truly dynamic customer experience was possible, and our mission to make it simple for businesses to craft high-value, super-relevant experiences for their customers was born.
What interested you in the TechnoJam?
SS: “The audience validation and especially their feedback will be incredibly useful. It’s hard to get in front of a large technical audience of this caliber.”
Why are Salesforce Architects an important part of your strategy moving forward?
SS: “As a native app, our product goal is to deliver value across the Salesforce ecosystem and raising awareness both through technical and commercial audiences enables that growth. The features we design are intended to be interacted with by admins and architects. Making features flexible for this audience means they can increase the business benefits and user experience by creating flows and triggers tailoring them to customer specifics.”
Outside of work, Skarpi loves fishing in the Icelandic highlands, scuba diving anywhere warmer than Iceland, and playing board games like Terra Mystica. When asked what his favorite thing about being in the Salesforce ecosystem, Skarpi responded, “the community and energy around innovation, and always having access to new technologies to integrate with.”
Sean Dukes — Founder & CEO, Learnsmarter
AppExchange partner since 2011
Tell us a little bit about your journey.
Sean Dukes: “We were building a new app for training companies and wanted to include eCommerce. The biggest issue we faced was security. We thought that Salesforce Sites could be exactly what we were looking for and so we signed up. That was a great decision — although, we now use Communities, of course.
What’s a memorable moment from the early days?
SD: “Back then, we didn’t know much about the platform and concentrated on building our app. It’s embarrassing to admit that when the first customer asked us if we could work with the opportunities object, we had no idea about how to create an opportunity in Salesforce!”
What appealed to you about participating in the TechnoJam?
SD: “Being part of the Salesforce ecosystem has been an incredible journey. I’ve gone from knowing nothing to being an application architect and speaking at Dreamforce! I feel we really understand what Salesforce architects and admins are looking for now, and we had to build our new app completely from scratch with them in mind. The Technojam is a bit daunting, but since we built our app for the community, it’s great to get feedback on how well we’re achieving that goal, and some pointers about how we can improve that moving forward.”
And what is this new app?
SD: “A brand-new Learning Management solution for Salesforce customers that’s built 100% natively. Our roots are in managing the logistics behind instructor-led training and that’s a key part of the new app. But, what the app also does is work with Trailhead and myTrailhead. The greatest eLearning app on the planet is not designed to manage instructor-led training, so we enable customers to combine the two and do things like track progress on programs comprising courses and Trailhead or myTrailhead modules.”
Why are Salesforce Architects an important part of your strategy moving forward?
SD: “We need to think like architects from the very first app sketches we make all the way through the process. We expect some customers to have significant amounts of data — certainly millions of records — so understanding how best to manage that is essential. We work with architects on some of the largest implementations we do and being able to speak their language is a huge advantage.”
Sean also shared that he raced in the Brompton World Championship this year. For those that don’t know (like me) Bromptons are “the coolest folding bikes.” “I’ve done a few triathlons in the past, and next year I’m racing at Blenheim to raise money for Leukaemia,” said Sean. “My nephew, who will be racing with us, is a survivor, so that should be a special day.”
Doug Christ — CEO, Mahalo Commissions
AppExchange partner since 2019
While in his first year as an AppExchange partner, Mahalo Commissions’ CEO Doug Christ fell in love with Salesforce as a user in 2007. “I began to ask our internal developers to build some custom fields, and I really enjoyed the process of adding customizations to make my life easier, and our sales process more efficient. In one meeting, a developer showed me some APEX code they wrote and my mind was blown.”
What appealed to you about participating in the TechnoJam?
Doug Christ: “I’ve done a few Demo Jams this year, and while these are a fun and quick 3-minute pitch, I wanted to showcase some of the more technical features of our app. A lot of work goes into building a great app — 90% of which your end-users will never see.”
How’d you learn about the TechnoJam?
DC: “Mahalo Commissions was sponsoring Northeast Dreamin’ and I saw a tweet from Ladies Be Architects calling all AppExchange partners. I’m so thankful that our community shares so many great opportunities with each other.”
Give us an overview of your app.
DC: “Most sales professionals have to wait weeks after the month ends before they see their commission calculations in a spreadsheet. Mahalo Commissions provides real-time commission estimates, before the sale even closes, to keep the sales team motivated to hit their goals. We wanted to reduce the complexity of downloading and formatting Salesforce reports and provide a seamless and native experience for commissions.”
How are Salesforce Architects part of your strategy moving forward?
DC: “I want to collaborate with Salesforce Architects that are working on large projects, so they don’t have to recreate the wheel when trying to build a custom commission application. Also, their feedback is extremely important because they’ve seen the compensation plans at large companies, and they are able to help shape the features we need to include in our product.”
What’s your favorite thing about being in the Salesforce ecosystem?
DC: “Collecting stickers for my laptop, meeting awesome people, and of course, going to Dreamforce every year!”
Outside of work, Doug shared he enjoys riding his Peloton bike, surfing at his local beach in Santa Barbara, and enjoying time with his wife and one-year-old puppy. Her name is Zoe.
Nick Tassini — CEO, NativeVideo
AppExchange partner since 2018
When asked his favorite thing about being in the Salesforce ecosystem, Nick Tassini of NativeVideo echoed something we’ve heard a lot: “The people. Being part of the Salesforce ecosystem means that every day you will have the opportunity to interact with some of the most ambitious, courageous, bold, energised, and smart professionals that you can meet!” Being a part of the ecosystem for more than eight years, Nick worked on ambitious projects with top consulting firms, including Accenture, before co-founding NativeVideo.
How did the shift happen from consulting to AppExchange partner?
Nick Tassini: “[My experience] enabled me to identify a gap and an opportunity to bring to the #1 CRM platform in the world an underrepresented native extension — video. I partnered with my co-founder, who also has deep experience in the Salesforce community and ecosystem via having worked for Salesforce during his career, and took on the challenge.”
Tell us about NativeVideo.
NT: “By bringing video as a native functionality to Salesforce, we solve three main problems. First, we enable stronger, personalised, and more meaningful connections via video messages in the Sales Cloud. In the era of marketing automation, following-up with an email which includes a video is 3X more likely to engage than one without. Second, we take compliance and auditing to a whole new level, via capturing and storing video against any object in Service Cloud, e.g. a Work Order in FSL, and with speech-to-text, we make field visits even more efficient and effective. Finally, we help streamline pre-screening of candidates at scale with automated micro-interviews, enabling recruitment teams to manage large volumes of applicants and focus only on the best ones.”
How did you find out about the TechnoJam?
NT: “We found out about TechnoJam thanks to the ISV community in London and the great evangelical work done by Maritina [Tsembelis] and Gemma [Blezard] to warm up all its members to the opportunity to take part in various events…in this case, the top one — Dreamforce!”
Why are Salesforce architects an important part of your strategy moving forward?
NT: “Salesforce architects bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to the table, and are involved in the largest, most complex, and exciting projects in the Salesforce ecosystem. Our solution is designed to solve top Enterprise problems and therefore the opportunity for us to engage and be known to the Architect community means that we can be part of the early stages of the design of the solution and play a central role with our Video technology to address crucial parts of the plan for the Client.”
How do you spend your time outside of work?
NT: “I enjoy skiing, music, traveling, good food, and spending time with my wife and our two little monsters. They keep us busy.”
Sovan Bin — CEO & Founder, Odaseva
AppExchange partner since 2012
Former Salesforce employee turned founder, Sovan enjoys playing chess, watching science fiction movies, and blazing trails…for real. He was the very first Certified Technical Architect (CTA) in EMEA, one of the first 10 in the world, and has dedicated his career to helping others along their #JourneyToCTA.
Tell us about Odaseva. What has the journey been like for you?
Sovan Bin: “I was working as a program architect with Salesforce in 2012 with a very large Salesforce customer. Odaseva was born out of these very complex requirements, particularly around data governance. We offer enterprise-class data governance as a service for Salesforce customers. Odaseva is a complete platform that provides data protection so that organizations can backup and recover data at scale, leverage high performance archiving and benefit from advanced and predictive monitoring of their data assets. Odaseva also delivers data compliance and data privacy automation to meet the requirements of regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, industry-specific regulations, as well as any compliance-related data retention and archiving. Finally, Odaseva helps you accelerate data release management thanks to the most complete Data Ops solution for Salesforce integrated with Salesforce DX.”
Odaseva has an interesting name. What’s the story behind that?
SB: “The first part of Odaseva starts with Oda, from the French word ‘audace’ which means boldness and daring. The second part of the Odaseva name is seva, which is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘selfless service’ or work performed without any thought of reward or repayment.”
Why did you want to participate in the TechnoJam?
SB: “As a CTA, I love the opportunity to give back to the larger community and help others learn to ‘think like an architect’. Plus, we’re big fans and active followers of the two inspiring women behind the TechnJams, Gemma Emmett (founder of Ladies Be Architects) and Maritina Tsembelis (founder of ISV Meetup).”
Why are Salesforce Architects an important part of your strategy moving forward?
SB: “The requirements we solve are the same sorts of challenges that architects face every day in the real world working with enterprise customers as well as the same areas that the CTA exam evaluates candidates against including security, data governance, development lifecycle, LDV, and integration.”
Another interesting fact: Sovan convinced his sister Constance to make a career change and join him at Odaseva. She went from Veterinarian to Product Manager.
James Melville — Salesforce Architect, SalesTrip
AppExchange partner since 2019
Tell us a little bit about your journey and what inspired you to join the AppExchange Partner Program.
James Melville: “I joined SalesTrip at the beginning of 2018, well over a year before our company’s official launch this year. I’d been in the Salesforce ecosystem for years and the opportunity to design and build a product for an industry that hasn’t changed for over 30 years was once in a lifetime. For us, there was no question about joining the [AppExchange] Partner Program, it is so critical to our ongoing success. Salesforce is the pioneer of cloud computing and its ecosystem is one of the largest in the world. This not only helps us to leverage the best technological innovations for the benefit of our customers but it also helps us to build awareness of our travel and expenses app amongst a huge community of global businesses.”
Tell us about SalesTrip. What problem does it solve for users?
JM: “SalesTrip is a business travel and expense management system for companies looking to better manage, govern and justify their employees’ corporate travel. When you consider that travel and expenses are the second-largest overhead after payroll for a business, you’d expect to know what return you’re generating from all that spend. By bringing trip search, booking and expense submission inside the CRM, businesses get instant visibility of all spend and, crucially, the impact it has on their bottom line. So users can easily manage their own travel at the opportunity, account or campaign level, whilst finance leaders are able to understand the ROI of that travel.”
Why did participating in the TechnoJam appeal to you?
JM: “For us, it is the best way to validate the technical depth and strength of our product. And ultimately whether it can stand the test of time for our current and future customers. We’re striving to make business travel better for businesses and employees alike — and what better way to test this out than in front of the whole community of CTAs. And at the largest software conference in the world!”
Tell us how Salesforce Architects are an important part of your strategy moving forward.
JM: “Architects are important across our entire business. Whether it’s within our product engineering team, designing a feature which will make our customers more successful; with our sales team, validating the scope of a proposed implementation; or implementing the product for a customer, partner or our own internal team, with an eye to best practices and ongoing scalability.”
What hobbies do you have outside of work?
JM: “Cycling, skiing, and sailing — all less frequently than I’d like, though.”
What’s your favorite thing about being in the Salesforce ecosystem?
JM: “It’s a surprisingly small and tight-knit ecosystem, especially in the UK when I first got involved many years ago. It’s the people and relationships you develop that really make it what it is.”
SalesTrip was also awarded a 2019 Appy Award at the Dreamforce AppExchange Partner Keynote. So, really, an all-around great week for the organization.
Did you attend the first-ever TechnoJam at Dreamforce? What were your thoughts? Drop them in the comments or tweet us @appexchange.
