2016: My Salesforce Year In Review!

“The trouble is, you think you have time” — Jack Kornfield

Although I’d like to believe that I’ve become a lot more organised and disciplined in terms of time management over the last couple of years, I’ve no qualms in admitting that there are still occasions where time often moves too fast for me to be able to catch up. Over the holiday break last week, I sat down to reflect on how year 2016 went by and I could literally re-live most of the special moments through the year, as it was yesterday. Of course, it’s a sort of an annual tradition for me and I wrote about my annual review last year as well.

Overall, it was a satisfying and fulfilling year 2016 for me. So, here’s a recap of what kept me excited and busy through out the year.

Open source

I started off the year trying to muster some community support to take my MarvelForce open source project to the next level but it took a back seat as few other things came calling. This project is close to my heart and it was a great honor presenting it at the Inspiration Theatre at Dreamforce 2015. The best part – if all goes well, I’m going to be presenting a talk on this at the upcoming London Calling conference in February (next month)!

 

I’m not exactly fond of web development but I did end up analysing the Force.com PHP Toolkit for another open source project. And since I found that it’s no longer maintained and not in the best of shape, I spent a few weeks modernising the library to make it more usable. I wrote a couple of blog posts about the changes I did – you can read here, here and here about it.

Salesforce StackExchange

I had a mixed year on Salesforce StackExchange – there were weeks and months where I contributed to the best of my ability but at the same time, I rue the times where I was not as active. I love the StackExchange community (as much as the Developer Forums which I moderate) so I am hoping to make amends this year and be more active. Though I’m not really a numbers fan, it feels good to be rated among the top 3% of such as an elite community of Salesforce experts.

 

sfEDUReach

The #sfEDUReach program aimed at using Trailhead as a stepping stone for Salesforce education in colleges and universities was conceived by the Salesforce India Dev Relations team and it’s been an honor for me to contribute to it. It’s fair to say that the program made a huge impact covering several Tier 1 and Tier 2 colleges across the length and breadth of India. I was happy to assist in some of the events

Jaipur Developer User Group

We did our first Jaipur DUG event for the year with sessions from Rajdeep Dua (Director – Salesforce Developer Relations) & Sonam Raju (Senior Developer Advocate – Salesforce).

 

Giving credit where due, Ankit Arora (aka Forceguru) deserves all the appreciation for conceptualising and working behind the scenes to ensure every single meetup done as part of Jaipur DUG goes well.

Though I think we can still do better in terms of organising events on a more regular basis, it was heartening to see all event being very well received by the local Salesforce developer community. The TrailheadX and Dreamforce viewing events were especially popular and the enthusiasm of the community ensured that people stayed till wee hours in the morning

And we reserved our best for the last, in December 2016, we had a special meetup with Kavindra Patel (Senior Director, Strategic Events, Salesforce) joining us along with Salesforce MVPs such as Shivanath Devinarayan, Abhinav Gupta and our very own Ankit Arora.

 

Academic Interactions

I consider myself fortunate to have been involved in academic interactions through out the year at leading educational institutions – helping educate students on latest technology trends, helping them start their Salesforce journeys and in general, get some valuable face time with the young ones.

 

ng-Conf Extended 2016 (May)

ng-Conf is the world’s largest community led conference for AngularJS developers. Last year, we had managed to organised an extended version of ng-Conf in our city at a small scale. This year, we went big with organising ng-Conf Extended 2016 and it proved to be one of the biggest and most successful ‘extended’ events this year at a global scale. It involved weeks and months of planning and the fact that the event was a resounding success was very satisfying for everyone involved – the speakers, the audience and everyone else involved.

Developer Force content

The Salesforce Developer portal is the primary reference point for anything and everything for Salesforce developers. Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to have contributed content to it and this year, that continued in the form of webinars.

Dreamforce 2016 (October)

I’ve a special relationship with Dreamforce and that bond grew stronger this year as I presented a couple of sessions at the conference this year. I’ve attended been attending Dreamforce as a speaker and attendee for few years now but this was my first Dreamforce as a Salesforce MVP and the overall experience was truly humbling and very special. Apart from the sessions I presented, I mostly spent time volunteering at Developer Zone, Admin zone, Circles of Success and at my company booth. Overall, a very busy and satisfying week.

Salesforce Advantage Tour, Singapore (November)

Dreamforce is an exhausting experience in itself and as things settled down next month, came the invite to help out at the Salesforce Advantage Tour in Singapore. And since it presented an opportunity to meet the Salesforce Singapore community members, there’s no way I could turn it down. I had a great time helping out at the Trailhead library booth and manning the Salesforce Dx demo station. The event went really well and I believe it’s a great example of how Salesforce Developer Relations can work together with the community at large to build a mutually winning team.

 

 

Community Bonding

I got to meet a lot of awesome community members and fellow MVPs in person and I cherished those memories through out the year.

 

Awards & Recognition

I was included as a ‘Salesforce MVP’ in the Summer’16 batch and to say that I’m humbled and honored would be an under statement. Of course, I believe that being a MVP isn’t a means or and end and it’s a part of my ongoing journey.

I’m also grateful to have received some other recognitions over the course of the year as well.

“25 Salesforce Experts to follow” by tenfold

“So You Want My Job – Salesforce Mobile Architect” on Admin Hero

“I’m the (Kevin) Backon of Salesforce Community” on Eric Dreshfield’s awesome blog

“Salesforce in 2017: Predictions for the future” by Mason Frank

All in all, a busy but satisfying year 2016 to look back and reflect upon. I hope to carry this momentum into year 2017 to keep up my community efforts.

Happy New Year!