Giving Back at Dreamforce ’19
At a lot of conferences, you get a mug with a logo on it and a canvas bag. At Dreamforce 2019, you get to see one of the greatest bands of all time, Fleetwood Mac, rock out to a filled Oracle Stadium to benefit the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals. And if Fleetwood Mac wasn’t enough, there was also a surprise guest—Beck. Beck’s not exactly your average opening act.
But this is no average conference. This is Dreamforce. 171,000 attendees, crammed into San Francisco’s Moscone Center, all buzzing with energy and excitement.
There were over 2,700 sessions offered at Dreamforce ranging from celebrity keynotes, to “Women in Email,” to sessions for the geekiest of tech geeks. Over the three days I was there, I attended 12 sessions. My big takeaway was that Salesforce and its partners are truly building this platform together- something Marc Benioff said in his opening keynote. Whether through the AppExchange or custom-built integrations- partners, customers and Salesforce need each other to make this whole thing work.
One of Salesforce’s values is helping others. They donate 1% of revenue, 1% of their product and 1% of their employees’ time in volunteer work back to their community. Much like the platform itself, education and nonprofit projects like these take cooperation between Salesforce, its partners, and its customers to make a difference.
Following these values, Devs United, a Registered SFDO Service Partner, co-hosted a party with Salesforce.org, to benefit GLIDE at Dreamforce this year. GLIDE is a non-profit that helps the homeless based in San Francisco. Its mission is to create a radically inclusive, just, and loving community, mobilized to alleviate suffering and break the cycles of poverty and marginalization.
To connect Marketing Cloud and GLIDE, our team decided to run an SMS campaign to give a little extra to the charity. We handed out a card at the door to let attendees know to text GIVE2GLIDE to a short code, and we donated an additional dollar for every text we received. It was a great way to incorporate what we do best with giving back. The party was a huge success, and we were honored to be involved!
