My Dreamforce Experience: Alan Guedes, Women Win

Author: Alan Guedes, Monitoring and Evaluation and Database Manager at Women Win

When I first heard about Dreamforce I had no idea how much both my organization and I could benefit from going to the event. Initially, I thought it was just another conference like many others I had attended in the past. But actually, it’s a huge gathering of people (120,000) from various industries and cultures, who share one common ideal: finding a solution to help them fulfill their mission, using Salesforce technology.

I decided to include Dreamforce ’13 in my personal development plan because I had recently started working as the Salesforce.com administrator at Women Win and I didn’t have an IT background. I wanted to gain more skills and ultimately help Women Win successfully build the Monitoring and Evaluation system that we had envisioned, which would help us measure the impact we have on the girls we work with around the world.

After registering and while preparing for the conference, my team and I realized that the event had many more opportunities for Women Win to gain from. We submitted a proposal to share our own experience and speak in a session (which we did), we made plans to promote Women Win and connect with other alike organizations and possible donors; and we carefully selected sessions to attend that we could potentially benefit from, sessions that not only focused on what we were currently doing, but more importantly focused on areas which were not yet well developed organizationally.

At the Conference:

The feeling of being in beautiful San Francisco and rushing from one session to another, hopping on and off the Dreamforce buses and stopping every now and again to meet someone from another nonprofit was just great! The sessions I attended were very informative and gave me ideas for new functionalities at Women Win, and the hands on trainings built my skills much faster than if I had studied on my own. Additionally, the cloud expos allowed me to discover countless apps – a few of which we have adopted and experienced increased productivity as a result.

If you have never attended Dreamforce and are trying to make up your mind, my advice to you is: definitely go! Take a look at last years’ activities and sessions, navigate through this year’s Dreamforce website and start planning your agenda because you’ll need to work out your time really well to see everything that is relevant for you. The downside of learning so much is that when you arrive back to the office you have so many ideas, and sometimes not enough time or manpower to implement. So, my advice is to start negotiating the budget with your team so you can start hiring new people after your return 🙂

About Alan Guedes:

Alan Guedes is the Monitoring and Evaluation and Database Manager at Women Win, a nonprofit that envisions to equip adolescent girls to exercise their rights through sport: www.womenwin.org

Dreamforce ‘14 is happening in San Francisco from 13-16th October. It’s not too late to register. Use code: NP30014* to lock in your $300 Salesforce.org rate.

*The Salesforce.org discounted rate is ONLY available if you are a full-time employee of an organization recognized as a charitable or nonprofit organization in the country in which you are located. All registrations utilizing this discounted rate will be subject to verification.