So I used 4 days of vacation earlier this month to attend Dreamforce. I was glad that I soaked up that cultural phenomenon: the largest tech conference in the world with over 150,000 people descending onto San Francisco. The conference itself was a shit ton of hustle. I studied the agenda and breakout sessions closely and pretty much prepared for full days from 8-6. Of course, to get to the sessions on time, that required getting up super early at the ass crack of dawn. The very first day, I think I was up at like 5:30 to catch a 6-something train. I walked briskly, and then the session was booked. Because the conference is so fucking huge, there are like a gabillion venues for the sessions: all the Moscones plus Century Theaters plus the Hilton, the Marriott, Yerba Buena, the Metreon. Seriously, swarms of people everywhere. Thank goodness for my years in China: they really trained me well for insane crowds. So anyway, one of the days, I had sessions in one hotel and then another session in a second hotel. I busted my ass walking to the second spot, only to be turned away yet again due to capacity. After that, I decided it was necessary to arrive 20-30 min early to each session AND to just stay at a single venue.

Overall, I’m glad I went. It was pretty cool to see case after case of nonprofits and highered institutions were really empowered to do more with an organized CRM system. I mean, to have data centralized in one place is a magical and powerful thing. In my year off when I had done like 50 informational interviews, I’d met/called several Salesforce consultants. I saw their booths at the conference. The first few days, I felt a lot of reluctance approaching them. I don’t think it was necessarily shame that was holding me back: I guess I just wanted to NOT talk about my current job that I hate at a place that doesn’t even use Salesforce. I mean, I think I want to do what they do, and yet 1-2 years after talking with them, I am nowhere near them. Ok, maybe there was some shame or disappointment with my personal progress. In typical fashion, every night after I got home, I chided myself for dragging ass. How would I ever get another job if I let all my networking skills die? How did I expect to work in consulting if I had no initiative in the critical moments? Yeah, I’m kind of emotionally abusive to myself. But fuck man, it did the trick bc by the third day, I made it happen. And then another interesting thing happened. In this sea of 150k attendees, I bumped into a classmate from my Duke Nonprofit Management class in June 2014. I don’t really know if he remembered my name, but I actually chatted with him for 45 min or so. Frankly, in our class, I didn’t particularly like him bc he was kinda the class clown (and you know I’m all serious with my academics), but he was fine this time around. Interestingly, he claims that he recognized me bc of my red jacket. Haha. That $45 F21 jacket has brought me more attention than any other item I own. File that tidbit away.

Dreamforce also had a concert on Thursday night. I was super stoked bc the Killers were on the list (along with Gary Clark, Jr. and the Foo Fighters). When I discovered that my conference pass included access to the concert, I was all over that shit. J expressed all this concern about Thursday being a really long day and how was I gonna be up at 6a and then last through for the concert at like 8:30-11. Blah, blah. Little does Bubbey know, I will pull out all the stops for free shit. If I paid for something (even if I’m just out $5) or if an amenity is included, I HAVE to use it. Long story short, we worked out a plan. After the conference wrapped around 5:30, I rode Muni to the west side of the city to have dinner with Bubbey and his sister S. I then rode the Muni back east to get to Pier 70, the site of the concert. I was kinda bummed about going to the big event solo, but c’est la vie, right? I can’t be stopped. Then, the most unexpected thing happened. Google directions was wrong, and the Muni stopped earlier than expected. A bunch of other conference attendees all got off. I kinda just merged myself into a group of Brits. We ended up catching a separate Muni and then getting to the site. It was probably a group of 6, and they all knew each other. I had no expectation that they would keep me in their fold, but I was pleasantly surprised. Even as we weaved through the crowds, one of the guys just really kept his eye on me. And then after we got in, they grabbed me a beer, and it was kinda nice to suddenly belong to a group. Eventually, we lost some members, but yeah the remaining three of us hung out together for the duration of the concert. Sadly, I got there too late to gain access to the stage where the Killers were performing. Also, I was disappointed to see on the Jumbotron that hottie Brandon Flowers let his hair grow way too long. Damn that dude’s look changes with the wind. He has a lot of different styles. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the music and then by the time the Foo Fighters came on, we were strategically positioned with the musicians in full view. In fact, later in the night, one of the maintenance crew was adding a new porta-potty to the bathroom area just left of the stage. My new friends had the smart idea to follow closely behind the dude as he split through the crowd, creating a path for us closer to the stage. Genius. The Brits LOVE the FF. They’re a bit cacophonous and screechy and fuck man, David Grohle is a goddamn maniac, but the show was entertaining and well, it was kinda cool to just be swept up in the concert energy. Around 11, I said my goodbyes and then Bubbey picked me up to ride home. I felt really proud of myself that night. I didn’t let my social anxiety prevent me from making new friends.

Of course the next day is where my naive stance on relationships revealed itself. One of the guys, Stephen, had explained the night before that they had a booth and their chotkes arrived late due to customs, blah, blah. You know me with my follow up. So I went to their booth the last day of the conference, and I guess I thought maybe we would exchange info and connect via LinkedIn. I chatted with Stephen and he was very nice, but he kinda didn’t want to swap info, so I just left it at that. Like yeah, last night was fun. Safe travels back, and maybe you’ll be back next year. To be honest, it felt a little weird like maybe I was coming on too strong or something. I wasn’t flirting or hitting on him or anything. I guess I was just so thrilled the night before to have shared this big impersonal experience with some new people, maybe I felt somewhat indebted or connected. But it just made me realize that for consultants/sales/business people, interactions really are a dime a dozen. There is nothing really special about spending an evening hanging out with a stranger. I wasn’t hurt by this realization or anything. Maybe he read something romantic or clingy about my behavior the next day? The thing is, it didn’t really matter what he thought. I was pleasantly surprised to have met them, and I wanted to follow up the next day. I kinda got shut down or he distanced, but you know what? That’s ok. I treat relationships differently than other people. I’m not going to change what I do for fear of being read as desperate or whatever. I know what my intentions were and that’s all that matters. I was proud of myself for being unafraid and unconcerned. That’s a palpable shift from my past when I worried too much about how strangers, esp “cool” people perceived me.

Work wise, my boss returned from personal vacation the days I was at the conference. Due to the new interim AVP and all her fresh demands, my boss had to interrupt me A LOT at the conference for data and reports and files. I was pretty annoyed, but when I thought about my boss’ stresses and fears, I tried to just get what she needed quickly. There was a session at Dreamforce that talked about kindness and compassion. Everyone is going through their own fucked up shit. Try to be kind. For some reason, that stuck with me.

So the conclusion from Dreamforce? I want to gain some experience working with Salesforce. I feel like this idea of using tech to help an org operate more efficiently suits me better than social media management. It just feels like a stronger fit. My friend L, who now lives in DC, says he has a good friend who works for SF. We’ll see how that connection pans out. I’m happy that L and I are still in touch now and then. He’s going to be in Santa Clara in October for a couple days, so hopefully, we’ll get to catch up in person. It’s probably been a year since we last met up.[FAG id=7445]