French Touch Dremin is over, but you can buy tickets for next year already!
It was my first time to France and first time in Paris. I arrived a day earlier and in the evening took a quick stroll through the through the area around Sacré-Cœur. And it was exactly as I imagined France. Small streets, restaurant next to restaurant or cafe, all of them full of people. Just awesome.
Morning couldn’t come any sooner, quick breakfast and then metro to the city center, just next to Eifel Tower. The metro is awesome as well, line 6 runs some old cars with doors you have to open manually and it doesn’t run on rails but has normal rubber wheels.
I didn’t see anything from the Eifel Tower, it was completely hidden in fog, so I went straight to the hotel, met first friends and got my page plus agenda. Coffee time, chat with first few sponsors and key note was here.
Not a friend of motivational speeches, but Leah did a great job, her story was really inspirational and catchy at the same time. Don’t just have a great days, be sure to make them. Nurture your connections, which is as simply as having coffee with them time to time (remind me of the Never eat alone book).
And then we were off to separated rooms and short presentations full of information:
- Cyril did a great job of summarizing limitations of Marketing Cloud. And they were extremely sad, most of them you just expect – share journeys between BUs, sandboxes, great synchronization with Sales Cloud (after all they sell it as one platform);
- Jon spoke about Commerce Cloud. Really curious what will future bring, as the situation is same as with Marketing Cloudu and Pardot, which is part of MC but totally different product. So Commerce Cloud is ex-Demandware, but CloudCraze is under this umbrella as well and totally different product. To develop on CC you need to be a certified developer, there is a plenty of resources on github and there should be also an integration with Service Cloud. Typical implementation is about $250 000, which is … makes it interesting to learn. And you need to know a tons of technology to be able to do something;
- Utility bar is awesome new feature in Salesforce, but I typically don’t have enough usecases for it. Ankit wrote a perfect component, which will remind you to stretch or take a walk after specific amount of time or completed cases(!). Plus you can make your coffee remotely and have it ready by the time you get to the kitchen 🙂 Hopefully he will release the code, so we can all use it;
- I didn’t see Szandor’s and Daniel’s presentation about Salesforce DX, but I saw the draft version. We need to push this product more not just between developers but to admins as well, because there are benefits. Christian had similar session and showed one simple example – you can login to any instance with one short command, which might be reason alone to learn the basics. And it is easy! Or you can use EasyDX, the installation should be easy as well;
- Marek and Richard and their session about Shield. I remember checking it a while ago and been surprised that everything has to be done in APEX, which is still truth. But it can be powerful and add another layer of security you might need, all of that for some small percentage of your licence price. Sadly it is quite limited on documentation, so you will probably Google a lot and not finding much;
- it is either my social bubble or something is going on, but everyone wants to be a CTA. Gemma told us why and what does it take and I’m still unsure. I like that it will force me to really understand things, learn in details things I don’t know I can use and thus my clients benefiting from better implementation, the payrise which usually follow is tempting as well. Those countless hours you spend studying … Plus $6 000 which we usually forgot, because we expect our companies to pay for it;
- CPQ here, CPQ there. Not much popular for some reason in Czech Republic, the exam being considered the hardest. Julia doesn’t think so, she is happy that most of configuration can be done declaratively. It has limits, but in reality they make sense and if you need to break them, think twice. It makes sense to change/simplify your processes rather than try to implement your complicated processes into CPQ. And it can nicely navigate your sales people to offer what they should offer, check whether they offer things which play well together, take care about approval process and much more. Plus it looks way better and is easier to use than the standard quoting process. Also expect longer deployment, where Prodly Moover might help.
Tony’s closing words about equality and how he uses Salesforce as a platform. Not technological platform, but community of people, to drive a change. Sounds like Salesforce is not just technology anymore, which … is strange, for someone who is used to deal just with a technology, but something that definitely makes it powerful.
And sponsors. The conference won’t be without them and I really need to try some products I saw here:
- Elements.Cloud which should help with documentation of your instance, find what changed and why and what could it break;
- Copa.do to help with deployment and streamlining the whole process. It must be good when Salesforce invest into it, at the same time maybe Salesforce DX and CI will be enough?
- I implemented a few CTIs in last a few months and I feel that their Salesforce integration doesn’t keep on par with Aircall. It is more likely more expensive, but looks super easy to use and greatly integrated;
- always when I see Resco presentation I’m sorry for them, as I feel that they don’t provide much extra. And they always persuade me that they just perfectly complement Salesforce products, even with the new Field Service Lightning, which just don’t have some features, which might be crucial for a lot of organizations;
- Sofacto, which looks like something to complement CPQ, to take care about invoicing and billing. Will probably need to check in more details;
- and there were others, but I feel I already know them enough or don’t have any use right now. But you might have.
Which is probably also the reason why I love going to these conferences, being it London’s Calling, Surfforce, Dream Olé or YeurDreamin. And reason why I organize CzechDreamin. It is great to meet people you know (the Ohana family), learn something new and nurture those connections. It might be hard to understand at first, but I feel that when you experience it you will know.
Paris
With the conference over (I found that home time means moving to a pub nearby, drink and continue in conversation) I had a few todays for myself before flying back. Great time to explore Paris.
Love that combination of small narrow streets, which get bigger and bigger to those wider streets with massive buildings. That make me wonder how the cities started to be build, who decided where to put streets, where buildings, how big they will be. Must be interesting times, when the places were empty and it somehow started to grow.
Lots of cafes and restaurants everywhere, I found a small bakery where they baked the bread right in front of your eyes.
Experienced demonstration against fuel prices, which seems like a ridiculous topic for me, but one person died and hundreds were injured. It was huge.
Didn’t visit a single museum, the queues just surprised me and I didn’t feel like I want to stay there for a few hours. Pity.
Been to several Lego shops just to see, what is available today on the market. And that’s awesome, I didn’t check it for a while, but I can spend fortune there. You can even build your own figures, how cool is that?
And finally time to fly home, see my family again and have head full of ideas how to make CzechDreamin great.
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