When something ends something else can start … well, will see what happens now.
Three years ago I was honoured to be accepted into the very first batch of Salesforce Champions. This first batch could even choose whether they want to be Activation or App Dev Champions or both. Of course I applied to both.
First years were really good. Not just for the nice hoodie I got, but also for the semi-regular calls with product managers where we could learn more about the longer term future. Also we were a bit more involved in demos at Dreamforce or manning the booth.
Besides that it was all about creating content on our own or being guests in content prepared by Salesforce. I already forgot they hosted me at admin podcast some time ago, but this screen shot from the wrap party confirm it.
What never happened to me was the peer-to-peer part of the program, where the idea was to help end customers with getting ready for the switch.
And then came the time when everyone was on Lightning or at least it wasn’t topic anymore. So we were renamed to Platform Champions but what we did never really changed. Actually it was pretty good as suddenly even the blog posts about flows counted as activity.
Speaking about activities that was the part I started to hate about a year ago. Of course we had to report them, so the team can prepare such nice statistic as the one above, but I realised I don’t really want to do this paper work, I want to promote, speak and write as I want. Mixed together with the – logical – requirement of what is the minimum number we should create on quarterly basis to stay in the program. And the fact that I run out of idea or half of the things didn’t count under the program as they were part of my job/community leader.
Time to quit, especially as I got a feeling I’m not getting much in exchange. All that feeling even stronger due to Covid lockdown.
Farewell
And then we got the news – the Platform Champions program closed down, good job everyone. Some had hard feelings about that, some felt like they will miss something, some others (as me) didn’t really care and fully understand the decision. Keeping the momentum must be super hard.
So we had a wrap party and it was really great, especially the memories and take aways people shared. How they got a job because of their involvement. How they met new people. How they learnt new things. How they became better at presenting.
At that was the moment when I – again – realised how happy I was being part of this force. It was great experience and thank you everyone who made it happen. And who knows, maybe I’ll become part of another Champions program, as there are a few of them still running.
At least I hope – where are you Marketing, Analytics and Quip Champions?