Perspectives on Salesforce.com

I was pretty busy at Dreamforce this year and didn’t take any time to blog or even Twitter. I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in the MapQuest booth to market Arrowpointe Maps. Much thanks to MapQuest for giving me that opportunity. Doing this really gave me a chance to see how Dreamforce is for lead generation and sales. It was great for lead generation and now it’s up to me to generate the sales.

For those looking to get the inside scoop on Dreamforce, start with the links below. From these, you will get your info and plenty more links to dig in further:

• Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce Sessions Pages -See the videos! I will be doing this for sure since I missed most of the sessions. Many are already posted.
• Salesforcewatch.com’s Dreamforce 2007 Posts
• CRM FYI’s Dreamforce Posts

In no particular order, here are some of my key takeaways from the show:

• Salesforce is really pushing the envelope on creative ways to better their platform and provide capabilities for development. Once us developers see this new functionality, we want it NOW and we already want it to do more, but it will take some time and we have to be patient. It’s no small task to roll this stuff out. Congrats to all at Salesforce that has developed (is developing) these features!
• Initially, the Visualforce functionality (when coupled with Apex code) will find most of its use in internally developed applications rather than partner apps. This is due to Apex Code’s requirements to work from an Enterprise WSDL rather than the Partner one (for now). Partner apps will need to rely on the SOA components to make callouts for things that require more dynamic logic and we also need to wait for Apex Code to be distributable via the AppExchange to all types of Orgs. I imagine this is only a matter of time.
• Adobe Flex rules. It’s next on my developer agenda.
• I had a dinner with some Salesforcers and fellow bloggers. I was able to let some influential people at Salesforce know my ideas for the platform and I felt they were sincerely listening, which was great.
• MapQuest is working hard on their platform and will be releasing some very impressive new functionality soon and getting developers more on board with their API.
• It was great to be given a “Developer Hero” award during the Platform State of the Union break-out (Steve Andersen and Mike Farrington got one too). Here’s what it looks like:
  
• The Force.com Cookbook is recommended reading for Salesforce developers. It has good code samples. Reading it made me realize how much I don’t know.
• Working a booth all day is very exhausting
• It’s nice to finally get home