There are tech communities and then there’s the special Salesforce community – unique in it’s very own ways with an unparalleled reach and a thriving ecosystem of official and community-driven events all over the world.
Last week, I had the privilege to speak at London’s Calling 2017 – Europe’s biggest community-driven Salesforce event and as I write this post on my return flight to India, I can’t be thankful enough for what an amazing learning experience this has been. I’ve been to Dreamforce (several of them), Salesforce World Tours, Advantage Tours and several other events but I truly believe London’s Calling 2017 has set the benchmark for me in terms of how to plan and pull off a successful community event with high quality content.
The Venue
Picking a co-working space as the venue for a large geek conference may seem unconventional, but then Skills Matter/ Code Node is probably not a conventional co-working space anyway. The place has a very startup feel to it and I just loved the place – the conference rooms follow geeky naming conventions such as Alt, Ctrl, Tab etc.
The Agenda
It’s always a tricky job to pick (and reject others) the best suited sessions for a conference. The conference started with an inspirational virtual keynote from Peter Coffee – and while he could not make it in person, the impact of his session will remain with me (and hopefully everyone who attended it) in the years to come!
There were several of my favorite speakers in action including
- Dave Carroll’s amazing talk on ‘Artificial Intelligence for the Enterprise – Is this stuff real?’
- Barry Huges’s interesting perspective on ‘Delivering Lightning Projects – Thinking in Components’
- Peter Chittum’s courageous advice related to ‘Do not fear the command line, you’re smarter than it.’
- Paul Battisson’s enlightening session on ‘The Need for Speed: Building Performant Applications’
My Session
I was thrilled to present on ‘Salesforce1 Meets Avengers: A Fun Way of Understanding App Cloud Mobile Integrations!‘ – which is essentially the Marvelforce – an open source framework that I built to demonstrate the power of Salesforce Mobile SDK.
There were only 2 mobile sessions at the conference so I was really pleased to present this to a packed room with lots of mobile developers and Marvel fans!
Top 25 People to Meet
I’m an introvert by nature and I take time to open up to others but I was pleasantly surprised to see myself included in the list of ‘Top 25 people to meet at London’s Calling’. This was especially special as it was my first ever visit to the UK and I didn’t expect a lot of people to know much about me.
Needless to say, it’s an honour to be listed on the same page as the likes of Peter Coffee and several fellow MVPs.
And It’s a Wrap!
The event concluded with a vote of thanks from the organising team who also candidly talked about the hardships and challenges faced to organise an event of this magnitude. Of course, with Jaipur Developer Festival 2017 – less than two months away, it was the perfect dose of inspiration that I needed to get into top gear!
Thanks to the London’s Calling team for putting on a memorable show! I hope to be back again next year!
