Perspectives on Salesforce.com

The ADN Sessions from Dreamforce are online now. The videos show what the session attendees saw on the screen (presentations and demos) rather than just showing a speaker talk. This will make watching them online much more meaningful than how we had to do it after last year’s Dreamforce (where we watched the presenter talk, but couldn’t see the screen).

I presented in the PHP Session which is located here. I presented on Web to Lead Spam Filtering. The table of contents is a little messed up on the video. My part starts toward the end of the PHP Overview section.

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

Dreamforce is just around the corner. Jeff Grosse create a Jaiku channel for Dreamforce  that sounds like it’ll be the easiest place to stay up to date on happenings. That feed consolidates a bunch of feeds (mine, Salesforcewatch, CRMFYI, Flickr stuff, Twitters, etc.) in one place. I will blog what I can, but will more likely be using Twitter  during the show. After it’s all said and done, I hope to create a summary post like I did last year.

This year, my primary focus at the show is marketing Arrowpointe Maps. Arrowpointe Maps is an on-demand mapping platform that facilitates a conversation between Salesforce.com & MapQuest allowing for easy deployment of mapping capabilities in your organization and providing end-users a simple means for mapping their data. Arrowpointe Maps is configurable and can be tailored to your organization, so that your users can work with their information in a meaningful way.

MapQuest has invited me to participate in their booth and Arrowpointe Maps will be a showcase application for them at Dreamforce. I will be spending the majority of my time in the MapQuest booth. If you’d like to talk about Arrowpointe Maps, my Salesforce.com services, other Arrowpointe products, or just want to say hello, please stop by the MapQuest booth. That will be the easiest place to find me.

I am using OpSource to host Arrowpointe Maps and I will be spending an hour with them in their booth on Tuesday from 2 – 3pm. They are one of the 2 certified hosting partners for AppExchange apps.

I am speaking in the Developing on Salesforce Using PHP session. I will be going over the Web-to-Lead Spam solution I created that integrates with Akismet, a spam detection service. Nick Tran, the creator of the PHP Toolkit, and Mike Simonds, a PHP developer who recently created PHP replication scripts for Salesforce, will be speaking too. That session is on Tuesday at 3:45pm.

Please say hello if you see me walking around or stop by the MapQuest booth to find me more easily at the show. I look forward to meeting lots of you at the show!

I have created a Twitter account for Arrowpointe. Follow it at http://twitter.com/arrowpointe. A direct RSS feed can be found here.

This will be an informal line of communication. I have it hooked up to my IM, so I am more likely to post nuggets of info about Salesforce.com as I am learning it rather than saving things for a longer post or, perhaps, forgetting to post them. It will probably be relatively active during Dreamforce too. Use of it will probably evolve a little as I get used to this mini-blogging thing.

My last 5 “tweets” also appear on the right-hand side of this blog.

The Dreamforce website is up and running at http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/ or http://www.dreamforce.com/. I would expect it to be as interesting as last year. At that time, we should be getting close to GA for Apex Code, which I hear is scheduled for December 2007.

The ADN session is called “Developers @ Dreamforce” and information on it can be found at http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/developer/.

Register before July 16 and receive $100 off the conference fee. Pre-July 16, the fee is $899. Afterwards, it’s $999.

See you there!