By Michelle Swan @michelleswan
To me Dreamforce is kind of like a wedding. You spend months of hard work planning for it, you get to hang out with people you haven't seen in years, and there's lots of drinking and dancing. So much goes into both these events, yet they go by way too fast. So, one of my favorite things is to look back on the pictures. You can't possibly capture every moment of the event but it's a great way to remember some of the things that made the day (or the week in this case) special. Here are 10 of my favorite memories of Dreamforce 2012.
1. Getting ready for our day of training with 100+ employees who came from around the world
to represent Appirio at the show. So much work goes into getting everyone ready for the big event, and watching the excitement and camaraderie between all these Appirians is one of my favorite parts of the week.
2. Watching the booth come together and fill up with people who want to talk about Appirio, Salesforce and cloud computing. After dozens of brainstorms and meetings on how to make the most of our presence on the show floor, experiencing the energy of the booth in action is pretty #awesome.
3. Hearing Appirio get recognized by Salesforce for a partner innovation award for our platform work with Facebook. It was refreshing to hear co-founder Glenn Weinstein's accept the award and talk about how we make our customers successful amidst a lot of other company pitches.
4. Getting to know our Cloud Pioneers, an award that we give out to customers who are driving and championing cloud within their organizations. One of our newest winners was the Steven Peltzman, the CIO of Forrester. Here is a picture of the Forrester team after our Cloud Pioneer happy hour at the Appirio Club.
5 and 6. Experiencing the opening keynote address with thousands of Salesforce enthusiasts. There's already been a ton of coverage of the actual announcements from this, but two of my favorite parts of the 3 hour extravaganza were checking out Benoiff's Louboutin circuit board shoes and seeing fellow Appirian @alliecefalo profiled on the big screen.
7. Volunteering in the various Salesforce Foundation events, representing Appirio's Silver Lining program alongside dozens of other Appirians. Salesforce has inspired so many corporate giving programs with their 1/1/1 model, and their $10M+ donation this week to the city of San Francisco and the transformation of Howard Street into a volunteer center for the 90K people attending Dreamforce raised the bar yet again.
8. Partying with hundreds of customers, prospects, partners and press at the Appirio After Dark Party at the SF MoMA, which our partner Workday co-sponsored this year. With acrobats pouring whisky shots, a marching band, a glowing absinthe bar and even a few celebrities like Jermaine Dupri, this party gets better year after year.
9. Watching Justin Foster and other Appirians hand $1000 cash to people at Dreamforce wearing our t-shirts, or participating in one of our other Dreamforce contests (like the winner of our Server Ninja game at the Appirio booth also shown here). Their eyes just light up - almost as much as Justin's did in his sparkly suit photobombing Marc Benioff on the show floor.
10. Going home at the end of a long week and reconnecting with my favorite people in the world - my family. They are a close second to my colleagues at Appirio (such as the marketing folks pictured below minus the talented Kirk Crenshaw), but few things compare to movie night on the couch with your kids after a week of meetings, sessions, networking and booth duty.
I can't wait to see what next year brings!
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