TrailheaDX: 5 things no one told you
Salesforce’s TrailheaDX conference is an (intimate) 10,000 person affair, especially if you compare it to their better-known flagship Dreamforce, which boasted over 170,000 registrants last year. Unlike Dreamforce, which caters to a much wider audience, TrailheaDX focuses specifically on developers and admins — the builders and designers behind the future 3.3 million-person Salesforce job market.
Here’s what I learned while doing product research for our app at TrailheaDX:
1. It’s like Disneyland for Salesforce geeks
… or Jungle Book to be more precise.
Is that a waterfall?
“Did a giant bear just walk by?”
Such were the thoughts running through my mind as I meandered through the theater turned full-on forest, in keeping with the Trailhead theme. Never before have I attended a conference that felt like a theme park, complete with rangers (the host team), life-size dancing mascots, a massive lego train set, waterfalls and selfie-enthusiasts.
The result: An ambience that put people at ease and transformed what could have been a dry and buttoned-down atmosphere into something fun and engaging.
2. It pays to pick your sessions carefully
With 150+ sessions to choose from, I suppose it’s inevitable that the content and audience will vary considerably. While all sessions are marked as “technical”, many of them, especially the shorter 20-minute ones, felt more like promotion for products such as Einstein. If you’re someone like me who was there more for product research and to discover features and best practices for your existing tools, you probably want to stick to more interactive, hands-on, 30-min+ sessions that tended to fill up very quickly — so get there early! The promotional demos you can get anytime at the various kiosks.
Here’s a snapshot of my favorites:
- Small group round-tables on “Decluttering your Salesforce org” that felt like fully subscribed group therapy sessions
- “Build a Lightning Component” — an interactive session with actual Salesforce developers on-hand to help bring your idea to life
- “Banish the Bugs: Apex Debuggers to the Rescue!” — a session on code fixing, the line for which ran longer than the queue for lunch.
3. They’ve mastered gamification
You can score some serious swag, but they make you work for it.
- Want a fluffy Einstein for your kids.. or your own collection? Watch a demo and take a quiz first.
- Eyeing some of those Astro kittie toys? Learn how to make a custom TrailMix for your company and redeem the points for swag.
- Been doing some user research? Answer questions at the design station to get a beautiful card-set of Salesforce personas straight out of a UX designer’s fantasy.
You can also track your entire “journey” to swag points via their Salesforce events app.
Oh, and you get a backpack just for showing up (like yours truly).
4. The star-studded speaker line-up alone is worth the price tag
Ever wonder how Luke Skywalker reinvented his career? Well, in his final keynote, Mark Hamill shared how he transitioned into doing voice-over after years on the big screen.
Need some inspiration to make it through a tough day? Attend the fireside chat with the extraordinary Betty Reid Soskin, the 96-year-old, oldest active National Parks Ranger and Civil Rights era activist.
Want to know the secret behind the Salesforce co-founders’ longstanding relationship? Listen to this candid chat with CEO/CTO pair Mark Benioff and Parker Harris about their history and journey to building a multibillion dollar empire.
And the cherry on top of it all? None other than Stevie Wonder performing his greatest hits to a crowd of Salesforce enthusiasts.
5. The Ohana is no branding ploy
Now this was the most unexpected part.
Usually when big tech companies brand their user “community”, my instinct is to assume that they’re adopting a very loose definition of the word. The Salesforce Ohana (Hawaiian for “family”) can, on paper, sound like the usual hollow marketing gimmick.
On the ground, though, was a palpable feeling of camaraderie — almost as if you’d walked into a college reunion. Conversations were happening everywhere and they weren’t your typical small talk. Many people already knew each other.
Right in the opening keynote was Zack Otero, a golden hoodie holder from Missouri who switched careers from factory worker to 3x Salesforce certified admin to support his family.
From a large “gratitude tree” hung hundreds of individually written messages by attendees expressing their thanks for the Salesforce Ohana. For the skeptic reading this — I have photographic evidence.
The conference’s theme of equality in the workplace also permeated throughout, with speakers reiterating the message of “equal pay for equal work”. There was also a full night dedicated to their annual Equality Awards.
I have to confess, when my cofounder Melanie first insisted that we start by building our hybrid data dictionary/training tool specifically for Salesforce users, I was a little skeptical about the potential size of the market. Attending TrailheaDX and witnessing the high level of user engagement first-hand, however, has helped me shake any doubts I had about Salesforce’s ability to create a $859 billion economy by 2022.
