London Called and the Community Answered

On 5th February 2016 the London’s Calling Salesforce community event took place in, no prizes for guessing, London. The first event of its kind here and the largest Salesforce community event to be held in EMEA. An event by the community for the community.

Not One but Two Keynotes

The day was bookended by keynotes from two Salesforce heavyweights. The day started with a talk by Erica Kuhl, Vice President, Community:

and finished with one by Peter Coffee, VP for Strategic Research:

These were different to talks I’ve attended from these speakers in the past - I’ve always seen them at events run by Salesforce, so the focus is very much on Salesforce. This time everybody in the audience was familiar with Salesforce to some degree, so there was no need to keep banging that particular drum. Erica’s talk was on the general aspects of building a community, while Peter’s covered a number of areas, but mainly with the theme that disruption is always coming so you need to be vigilant to keep ahead of the competition.

28 Community Led Sessions

Outside of the keynotes, the majority of sessions where community led training sessions, introducing new technology and techniques or refining existing best practice. There were a couple of things I really liked about the sessions.

• it wasn’t the same old faces that we see at World Tour and Dreamforce events. While there were plenty of old stagers (like me, for example!) there were a number of people taking their first steps into the world of public speaking, and from what I saw and heard everyone did a great job.
•  large number of speakers were presenting in their second language. Given how nervous most of us are when we start presenting in our native language, I can’t imagine what this feels like, but its certainly impressive.

As I said before the big day:

The good news is that all of the sessions were recorded, so we’ll all have access to everything once the editing is done in a couple of weeks. The slide decks will also be published on slide share, so make sure to keep an eye on social media for the latest information.

A Word from Our Sponsors

I was pleased to see people making good use of the Expo and a packed out keynote room for the demo jam - these kind of events are only possible with the support of sponsors.

Sold Out

Tickets sold out at such a pace, you could say that they were selling like hot cakes. The numbers were increased a couple of times, and each time they sold straight out again. Impressive, given that this was a paid event.

Awesome Organizers

The whole thing was put together by four sleep-deprived people who probably had no idea what was involved when they floated the idea at Dreamforce 15:

So take a bow, Kerry Townsend, Simon Goodyear, Jodi Wagner and Francis Pindar. Hopefully it hasn’t put you off, as we’re looking forward to next year already!

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