Dreamforce 2021: Highlights from the Day One

The biggest Salesforce tech conference of the year has finally started amidst the uncertainties of the post-pandemic world. Dreamforce has always been a bundle of excitement for its attendees, with even more learning, innovation, and fun than the previous year. And Dreamforce 2021 is already promising to uphold this commitment, as it has definitely got something for everyone from Trailblazers to tech minds, partners, & key business prospects.

As expected, the inaugural day of Dreamforce 2021 was amazing. It began with the most-awaited keynote session delivered by Salesforce CEO & Co-founder, Marc Benioff & Salesforce COO, Bret Taylor. This year’s keynote not only touched upon Slack’s important role in Salesforce’s ‘digital headquarters’ strategy and the power of Salesforce’s Health Cloud but also discussed the importance of the company’s ecosystem of customers, partners, & Trailblazers.

This was followed by hundreds of expert-led sessions, live workshops, fun-filled activities, and live music. Here are a few interesting highlights from the first day of Dreamforce 2021:

Slack for ‘Digital Headquarters’

Probably the biggest excitement among the Dreamforce attendees was for the latest update on Slack & what was its role going to be in the Salesforce ecosystem. This buzz was because just a short while before Dreamforce 2021, Salesforce had announced its decision to acquire Slack for a whopping $27.7 billion & integrate the two companies. Bret Taylor stressed the importance of Slack in setting up ‘digital headquarters’ instead of physical ones.

Off-late, with the normal work functions going for a toss in the post-pandemic scenario, digital headquarters have emerged as an essential building block in creating an enterprise that is trusted by customers & investors alike. Which is what Salesforce was going to leverage Slack for! Some of the major announcements regarding Slack include the introduction of the new video message capabilities in Slack, the launch of a more advanced version of government-certified Slack & the integration of Slack with a wide swath of the Salesforce’s cloud products, from Commerce Cloud to Experience Cloud.

Salesforce Health Cloud on Display

Another point Marc Benioff stressed upon was the role of Salesforce Health Cloud 2.0 in making the in-person Dreamforce 2021 event possible. He explained how even before the participants arrived for the conference, they received testing kits from Salesforce in response to which they had to send in their used cotton swabs. After which the cotton swab management system of the Salesforce Health Cloud came into play, testing up to 10,000 swabs in just 7 days.

This, Benioff said, was the introduction of the attendees to the Salesforce Health Cloud 2.0, particularly its ‘Dreampass’ feature, which brought together capabilities for attendee registration management, COVID-19 vaccine status, testing status verification, & testing vendor integration for issuing testing kits; finally making the in-person event possible even amidst so many challenges & health risks.

‘Trailblazers’ Shoutout

The first & foremost thing Marc Benioff did after coming on stage was giving out a huge shoutout to the real MVPs of Salesforce, the ‘Trailblazers’. Salesforce’s community of developers, administrators, architects, sales leaders, marketers, & CEOs received plenty of praise from Benioff during the conference, including credit for Salesforce’s incredible market share of 19.8%.

Addressing the mix of people in San Francisco as well as the 15 million people watching online on Salesforce+, Benioff credited the Trailblazers for the incredible success of the company, the commendable business performance & achieving $26.3 billion in revenue in the fiscal year 2021-2022.

A special mention to Marc Benioff’s Dreamforce shoes this year!

Look Out for ‘100,000 Dreamforces’

Another major announcement of Dreamforce day 1 was the promise to deliver 100,000 Dreamforces to the Salesforce users across the globe. Benioff & Taylor announced Salesforce’s plan to package all of the excitement, content, demos, & entertainment of Dreamforce, personalize it according to the users’ requirements and then deliver it to them directly.

Calling Dreamforce 2021 ‘the first of 100,000 Dreamforces’, Benioff asked the audience members as well as the online viewers to contact their account executives to put forth their order for their personalized Dreamforce experience. This means that now users have the opportunity to get quality Dreamforce content, targeted towards them and their teams & company, delivered especially for them.

Live Entertainment

No Dreamforce experience can be complete without live entertainment, and Dreamforce 2021 didn’t disappoint in this department as well. First it was the surprise performance by the popular band, Metallica at the very beginning of the keynote session. This was followed by another surprise performance by the Grammy-winning, American singer-songwriter & a ‘Master Trailblazer’, Lionel Richie himself. And who can forget the friendly banter between Marc Benioff & him before the latter’s performance.

The day one came to a fitting conclusion with the live concert in the Dreamforce Opening Celebration which featured the Dreamforce favorites, FooFighters & Dave Grohl playing in front of the Trailblazers. The entire arena came to life as the American rock band belted out song after song & the Dreamforce mascots, Astro, Codey, Ruth & Einstein danced alongside them.

Can’t wait to see what Day Two has in store for everyone!