By John Ross
What a year 2015 has been. As 2016 gains momentum it’s not surprising that Salesforce has been named the world’s most innovative company by Forbes in recent consecutive years.
Its achievements in 2015 were unrivalled as they announced at Dreamforce 2015 new capabilities for its Analytics Cloud, the launch and new release of IoT Cloud, SalesforceIQ, “relationship intelligence” application amongst its new innovations.
As you plan your events calendar for the year, there’s a lot you need to take into account when it comes to considering events and conferences related to your niche, and personal goals. We all know that Dreamforce is the event to attend, not just because of its sheer size, but also because of the amount of quality content that is shared. What else is out there and which events will be tailored for your role as Business Analysts, Systems Administrators, Project Manager, Developers, Architects and Consultants?
To help you get organised, Mason Frank International has made a list of major events and conferences throughout the year to incorporate into your calendar. While we chose to list mainly national events, there are several smaller meetups and webinars available which you may also wish to investigate.
We understand that your time is precious and our recommendations are based on careful assessment of Salesforce events that will help you hone on quality content and maximise your involvement. Apart from access to excellent networking opportunities and great innovative content, these events will also provide you with first class speaker line-ups and the opportunity to visit some great locations.
Location: Skills Matter, London, UK
Audience: Salesforce Professionals
Description:
London’s Calling is the first European Salesforce.com event independently organised by the Salesforce Community. An exciting educational event where you can meet and network with all the influential people in the community.
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options: Yes
Expo: Yes
Cost: £99.00 – offer ends February 3 2016
Reasons to attend:
The conference is organised, run and delivered from within the Salesforce Community. This is a not-for-profit event supported by sponsors. Access to the best content available to help educate and provide value for everyone involved in Salesforce.
Location: London, UK (TBC)
Audience: Sales Engineers, Salesforce Partners, Consultants, Project Managers
Description:
Salesforce.com focuses on identifying the challenges that the future will pose and finding sustainable solutions to generate and develop business with customers. The Cloud Elite SE Partner Program aims at guiding excellence in learning best practices to ensuring consistently high quality learning experiences for sales engineers, consultants and project managers of the most effective system integrators.
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options:Yes
Expo: N/A
Reasons to attend:
The Cloud Elite SE Partner Program helps to grow and establish your expertise and capacity required to deliver success across your customer base. Learn to drive the next phase of salesforce.com’s explosive growth and to encourage the spirit of a common business.
Location: Westin Hotel Buckhead, Atlanta, GA, US
Audience: Salesforce Community
Description:
This is another user event for the Salesforce Community, by the Salesforce Community! Southeast Dreamin’ was created by Salesforce users for Salesforce users, to provide learning and networking opportunities as well as facilitate collaboration.
Conference Format
Sponsorship Options: Yes
Expo: N/A
Cost: $ 100
Reasons to attend:
This one-and-a-half-day event features Keynote Speaker & Salesforce Developer Evangelist Mary Scotton, an Ask the MVPs Panel, 12 community-led breakout sessions and Salesforce-led Circles of Success. Attendees will also have access to the Sponsors Expo and live DemoJam to learn more about AppExchange options that can expand the use of Salesforce.
Location: Hannover Exhibition Grounds, Hannover, Germany
Audience: SMEs, Major Corporations, ICT Professionals
Description:
CeBIT is the only event worldwide where visitors can experience the entire spectrum of digital transformation on the basis of specific showcases and examples of best practice. The exhibition is targeted at SMEs as well as major corporations. Thanks to the strict emphasis on B2B applications at CeBIT, you can gain a quick and comprehensive overview of the latest trends.
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options: Yes
Expo: Yes
Cost:
Exhibition:
Exhibition & Conference:
Red Tickets:
Reasons to attend:
The CeBIT Global Conferences provide an all-round survey of the digital marketplace. The world’s ICT elite attends to analyse cross-industry trends and ground-breaking innovations.
Location: McCormick Place – Lakeside Center, Chicago, IL, US
Audience: Administrators, Analytics, Automotive, Communications, Executives, Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, IT Professionals, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Marketing, Media, Retail, Sales, Service, Small and Medium Businesses
Description:
Salesforce is the world’s No. 1 Sales Application which gives you everything you need to connect with customers in one place.From real time marketing campaigns to intuitive deal tracking, from any device. Evaluate how customers are increasing revenue by an average of 32% with Sales Cloud.
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options: Yes
Expo: Yes
Cost: Free
Reasons to attend:
Hear from Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO at Salesforce, and other company executives, plus industry-leading customers, partners, and product experts who will demonstrate how to transform your business. Also features customers who use Salesforce products to connect to their customers in a whole new way.
Location: Hynes Convention Center, Boston, MA, US
Audience:Administrators, Analytics, Automotive, Communications, Everyone, Executives, Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, IT Professionals, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Marketing, Media, Retail, Sales, Service, Small and Medium Businesses
Description:
Visit this Salesforce Cloud Expo to interact with Salesforce products and hear how customers are succeeding with Salesforce.
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options: Yes
Expo: Yes
Cost: Free
Reasons to attend:
The place to go to get your hands on all the Salesforce products and solutions. You can interact with Salesforce products firsthand and hear success stories shared by Salesforce customers.
Location:Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
Audience:Administrators, Analytics, Automotive, Communications, Executives, Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, IT Professionals, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Marketing, Media, Retail, Sales, Service, Small and Medium Businesses
Description:
Salesforce is the world’s No. 1 Sales Application which gives you everything you need to connect with customers in one place. From real time marketing campaigns to intuitive deal tracking, from any device. Evaluate how customers are increasing revenue by an average of 32% with Sales Cloud
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options: Yes
Expo: Yes
Cost: Free
Reasons to attend:
Hear from company executives, plus industry-leading customers, partners, and product experts who will demonstrate how to transform your business. Also features customers who use Salesforce products to connect to their customers in a whole new way.
Location: Pier 48, San Francisco, US
Audience:Sales, Sales Operations/Administrators, Back-Office Visionaries from Finance, IT and Legal
Description:
Accelerate brings Sales, Sales Ops/Administrators, and back-office visionaries from Finance, IT and Legal together to share best practices and innovations that will help companies run businesses faster and smarter on the Salesforce platform.
Apttus Accelerate provides a mix of thought-leadership, networking, and solution-focused best-practices, along with a dedicated day of product training, and exclusive opportunities to connect with industry luminaries, product experts, our executive leadership team.
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options: Yes
Expo: Yes
Cost:
Reasons to attend:
Accelerate 2016 will focus on how the whole business can transform its people, process, and technologies to drive speed, scale and growth.
Sessions will provide actionable recommendations and take-away resources, so you can get the most from your experience and make an immediate impact back in the office.
Location: Washington D.C. US
Audience: Administrators, Analytics, Automotive, Communications, Everyone, Executives, Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, IT Professionals, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Marketing, Media, Retail, Sales, Service, Small and Medium Businesses.
Description:
Free for one dynamic day of thought leaders, innovators, and product experts sharing their experience.
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options: Yes
Expo: Yes
Cost: Free
Reasons to attend:
Hear from Salesforce, and other executives, plus industry-leading customers, partners, and product experts who will show you how to transform your business.
Location: Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, GA, US
Audience: Marketers, Project Managers, Salesforce Customers, Influencers
Description:
Salesforce Connections will combine the world’s largest digital marketing event with the best of the Salesforce World Tour expanding the audience and brand reach across three amazing days of education, inspiration, and enablement for marketers and Salesforce customers. Salesforce Connections used to be Exact Target’s user conference.
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options: Yes
Expo: Yes
Cost: Free
Reasons to attend:
Experience unique and perfectly tailored content for today’s marketers from the biggest brands and brightest minds. Learn from exclusive hands-on training and breakout sessions. Connect and network with the best marketers from around the world.
Location: ExCeL, London, UK
Audience: Professional Sales Leaders, Sales Managers and Directors
Description:
Sales Innovation Expo is the largest and most important event for professional sales leaders. With some of the best-known names, thought leaders and industry experts offering cutting-edge advice and demonstrating the latest technologies, products and services. This year’s event will be running alongside B2B Marketing Expo and features Jeremy Waite, a Salesforce Evangelist.
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options: Yes
Expo: Yes
Cost: Free
Reasons to attend:
This event will equip Sales Directors and Managers with the latest systems and tools to improve sales performance.
Location: ExCeL, London, UK
Audience: Administrators, Analytics, Automotive, Communications, Everyone, Executives, Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, IT Professionals, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Marketing, Media, Retail, Sales, Service, Small and Medium Businesses
Description:
Company executives, plus industry-leading customers discuss how Salesforce has helped them to drive success through innovative solutions.
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options: Yes
Expo: Yes
Cost: Free
Reasons to attend:
Salesforce complete integrated solutions for managing all interactions with your customers and prospects, designed to help your organisation grow and succeed.
Location: The Westin Chicago River North, Chicago, US
Audience: Developers, Team Leaders, Architects, Project Managers
Description:
GOTO Chicago 2016 includes two conference days on May 24th-25th and two workshop days, May 23rd & 26th. Attendees are experienced developers and technology professionals who value networking, and interaction throughout the event.
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options: Yes
Expo: N/A
Cost: Free
Reasons to attend:
The GOTO conference is an enterprise software development conference designed for team leads, architects, and project managers organised by developers. The result is a high quality conference experience with the best presentations and training sessions on the most important topics presented by thought leaders.
Location: San Francisco, CA, US
Audience: Administrators, Analytics, Automotive, Communications, Everyone, Executives, Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, IT Professionals, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Marketing, Media, Retail, Sales, Service, Small and Medium Businesses.
Description:
Dreamforce brings together thought leaders, industry pioneers, and thousands of your peers for a week of idea sharing. You can pre-register for Dreamforce ’16 to secure the lowest price, and get ready for another transformational week.
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options: Yes
Expo: Yes
Reasons to attend:
Whether you’re a company of five or a Fortune 500, you’re going to see a boom in success by coming to Dreamforce. With over 1,500 sessions and thousands of live solutions from the world’s largest cloud ecosystem, Dreamforce has tailored content specific to your industry, role, and company size.
Location: Atlanta, GA, US
Audience: Administrators, Analytics, Automotive, Communications, Everyone, Executives, Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, IT Professionals, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Marketing, Media, Retail, Sales, Service, Small and Medium Businesses.
Description:
Free for one dynamic day of thought leaders, innovators, and product experts sharing their experience.
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options: (TBC)
Expo: (TBC)
Cost: Free
Reasons to attend:
Hear from Salesforce and other company executives, plus industry-leading customers, partners, and product experts who will show you how to transform your business.
Location: NY, US – Javits Center
Audience: Learn more about the new products just announced at Dreamforce, including Lightning, SalesforceIQ , and IOT Cloud.
Description:
Free for one dynamic day of thought leaders, innovators, and product experts sharing their experience.
Conference Format:
Sponsorship Options: Yes
Expo: Yes
Cost: Free
Reasons to attend:
Hear from Salesforce and other company executives, plus industry-leading customers, partners, and product experts who will show you how to transform your business. Event will also feature customers who use Salesforce products to connect to their customers in a whole new way.
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