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Salesforce’s third annual developers conference, TrailheaDX 2018, kicked off on March 28 in San Francisco with two days full of keynote addresses, product releases, 150+ technical sessions and fireside chats with Salesforce Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff and co-founder and CTO Parker Harris. And did I mention Stevie Wonder was there, too?
Here are the top five highlights from Salesforce’s event of the year.
1. The Fourth Industrial Revolution
TrailheaDX started with Salesforce Vice President, Chairman, and COO Keith Block’s keynote address. Block’s theme was the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” and its profound impact on society, particularly the advances in artificial intelligence and the explosion of big data. Yet, despite remarkable advances in technologies to better serve customers, we are facing a customer divide as nearly 60% of companies lack Fourth Industrial Revolution capabilities. They have either not yet started their digital transformation or haven’t completed it.
WATCH THE KEYNOTE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ebkQvoC4HA
Listen at the 12:50 mark to see how Salesforce is helping companies put their customers at the center of their world through digital transformation and the Salesforce Customer Success Platform.
2. Announcement of the Integration Cloud
TrailheaDX attendees were greeted immediately after Block’s keynote with the announcement of the Integration Cloud. Connecting systems and disparate data sources to build customer experiences remains one of the biggest developer challenges. With the Integration Cloud, developers will be able to connect every system, every customer, and every device, to create a hyper-connected customer experience. It includes a set of services and tools that make it easy for Salesforce customers to surface their data—regardless of where it resides—and deliver intelligent, connected customer experiences across all channels and touchpoints.
This product announcement was driven by Salesforce's recent acquisition of MuleSoft, an application network platform. A deeper set of products and services will be released when MuleSoft is fully integrated.
3. Salesforce and Blockchain
Day 1 concluded with a Fireside Chat with Benioff and Harris. Through this wide-ranging discussion, the highlight was Benioff’s blockchain solution for Salesforce. This fascinating story starts with him accidently attending a crypto conference and getting into a conversation in a bar about cryptography and cryptocurrencies.
WATCH THE FIRESIDE CHAT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nC0TX_GCIM&t=2108s
Start listening at the 33:00 mark to see how this accidental conversation will lead to a blockchain and cryptocurrency solution, which will be announced at Dreamforce this fall.
4. Einstein: AI for CRM
The highlight of Day 2 was the Salesforce Einstein Keynote. During this presentation, Marco Casalaina, VP, Product Management, Einstein, showed how Einstein can deliver accurate and useful predictions to supercharge your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.
Salesforce Einstein is delivering more than one billion predictions every day, helping companies get a new level of insight into their business and customers. Casalaina described the three types of questions Einstein can answer as such:
• Descriptive: “What happened and why”
• Predictive: “What’s going to happen”
• Prescriptive: “What should I do about it”
WATCH THE EINSTEIN KEYNOTE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC1cNcSfkEk
Start listening at the 9:00 mark for actual demonstrations of how every Salesforce admin and developer can use Einstein to build smarter, customized, AI-powered apps and experiences with clicks or code.
5. Almost forgot … Stevie Wonder!
OK, I admit it. While all that technology news was interesting, the second annual Equality Awards and TrailheaDX Afterparty was a blast! Bloomberg TV anchor Emily Chang, co-founder of PepupTech Shonnah Hughes, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee (posthumously), Westworld star Evan Rachel Wood and multi-Grammy award winner Stevie Wonder each were recognized by Salesforce for their work to “create a more equal world for all.” Also, Stevie Wonder hung around to play at the afterparty. How cool is that?
As a Salesforce partner, Global Knowledge was on hand at TrailheaDX ’18 and our experts met with hundreds of developers and administrators interested in learning and development.
If you want to be the first to learn about next year’s TrailheaDX event, sign up to be notified about TDX19 dates and when early bird registration opens.
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