The grand finale of the Cloud Workshop was awaited with bated breath. After all, everyone knew that there was a surprise waiting to unfold.
The start was at 3pm. But, the hall was packed by 2:45pm, with even standing room hard to find. The event began with a reminder of the technology and its capabilities, expressed by our Senior Developer Evangelist, Abhishek. While wrapping up his intro, he let the audience in on the surprise – none other than Siddhesh Kabe, Senior Engineer at Salesforce.com, India! He had enthusiastically accepted our invitation to speak at the finale of the Cloud Workshop, to talk about his life as a Salesforce.com developer, current industry trends, and what it takes for a company to be successful in this hyper-competitive marketplace. The entire audience was stunned at his profile – Salesforce certifications on Developer, Administrator, Advanced Administrator as well as the Cloud Consultant track.
Siddhesh, who connected via Skype, took over the floor and conveyed his excitement to be a part of this cutting edge Cloud Workshop. He first expanded on his career growth, and how his passion for the Salesforce cloud took him to a prestigious position at Salesforce.com itself. Knowing that the audience represented a mix of departments like development, business, sales and testing, he gave an all round view on how can individuals learn Salesforce, and aim towards a career in this technology. He added that Salesforce technology is fast evolving and changing, with 3 releases in one year, adding many features into the Force.com platform. Siddhesh added that a developer who is passionate about problem solving and grabbing opportunities in the world of technology is the perfect candidate to be a topnotch Salesforce developer. Our certified developer evangelist Deepak actively drove the interaction with Siddhesh through the session. The discussion then turned towards the evolution of S-Controls into Visualforce, how Developer Console has transformed the debugging experience of a developer, and the customization capabilities of the Force.com platform, keeping everyone’s interest levels high.
Siddhesh creatively described how seeing an elephant on the rear view mirror from your car, is exactly what happens in the world of Salesforce. The implication was, that Salesforce (the elephant) is fast approaching your car from behind, which means you must accelerate to move faster than the elephant. This interesting anecdote helped the team at Suyati realize that Salesforce enthusiasts must move way faster than the technology does.
Before concluding, Siddhesh projected the Salesforce “Be a Customer Company” video, which was a massive motivational boost for the business and sales teams attending the session.
He articulated the need for a next gen company to transform itself into a Customer Company. He said that the customer is always the king, and we (as a product/service provider) should open up our ears and eyes on every channel. This, will help us listen to customer expectations, and then cater to it the very next moment. In conclusion, he stressed that success doesn’t come easy, reminding one and all to work hard. The thundering applause was a clear indicator of the upbeat mood of the audience at that point!
Abhishek thanked Siddhesh on behalf of the whole company, and everyone appreciated his sparing valuable time to address our Cloud Workshop.
Abhishek then delivered the concluding address, explaining the nuances of AppExchange and IdeaExchange. He also showcased Suyati’s first AppExchange App “Converted Leads Finder”. He explained how Salesforce.com puts their development priorities in the 3 month release pipeline, by describing the IdeaExchange. It showed how intuitively Salesforce.com has put in place a portal through which people can post their Ideas, features, requests, etc., directly to Salesforce.com, and also have the option of voting for ideas that were already posted. This creates a community oriented environment, where Salesforce.com can effectively understand the top priority issues and feature requests, to work on for upcoming releases.
The session was wound up by showcasing customer success stories. The first video depicted the upcoming Dreamforce 2013, which had everyone in the audience spellbound. Then, the success stories of Virgin America, GE Aviation and DocuSign were shown. These videos gave a gist of how companies around the world have used Salesforce technology to maximize their productivity, and how customization can be thought through at previously unimaginable levels.
As the curtain fell on a memorable and highly educative week, the whole team was happy to have contributed to the furthering of a technology they truly believe in.
Special thanks to:
- Siddhesh Kabe, Senior Engineer & Evangelist, Salesforce.com India, for taking the time to educate us.
- Kavindra Patel (Director of Developer Events & Programs, Salesforce.com) for supporting us, and tweeting the message to the world!
Here’s a round of applause for the team that made it happen:
- Management
S Karthikeyan (CTO), Vincent N.P (Director)
- Evangelist Team
Abhishek Sivasubramanian (Senior Developer Evangelist), Deepak K Anand (Certified Developer Evangelist), Arun P Menon (Certified Developer Evangelist), Neenu Mathew (Developer Evangelist)
- Operations
Arunraj Pazherickal (Software Developer), Thambu Louis (Software Developer), Thankaraj Rajendran (Systems Administrator), Dama Davis (Manager – Systems & Operations)
- Session Contributors
Nidhin Kunjappan, Celin Joseph, Reshma Raveendran, Sulfikar Nasar, Maneesh Mohanan
- Social Media Team
Anju Mohan, Muktha Ashok Kumar, Subin Jacob
You can read the Day 1 and Day 2 coverage and the Day 3 coverage.