The Salesforce Admin community delivered again!
On June 1, 2017, we asked you to submit your best ideas for presenting at Dreamforce 2017 in the Admin Track. And then we waited… But not for long! Within the first 48 hours, we couldn’t refresh the dashboard fast enough to keep up with your submissions. It was so fun to see them roll in!
Many of you submitted ideas, and now you probably have a few questions, like: Why did your session get picked? Why did your session get “Not Accepted”? What the heck is the “waitlist”? We love transparency at Salesforce, so here is the rundown on how the Admin Track came together.
Prior to launching our Call for Presentations, I recruited a group of Salesforce employees from different departments to be session owners and submission reviewers. They are Salesforce Admin advocates from across the company who know the role of the Salesforce Admin very well, and most have created Admin content themselves. These 16 people not only help review content but will also work with presenters to bring Admin content to life at Dreamforce this year. With session owners ready to go, we launched the Call for Presentations.
By the time we closed submissions on June 31, 2017, we had received over 730 submissions! That is a staggering number of ideas.
Here is the breakdown:
The last number is key: There were only 70 total breakout and 50 theater slots available for Admin track this year. You might be thinking, “That sounds like less sessions than last year, what’s the deal?” In 2016, the Moscone Center started a massive construction project which is now fully underway. That means our Dreamforce footprint is even smaller this year, and thus all breakout session tracks lost some slots. As a result, we were only able to accept 56 (we intentionally repeat some core sessions to make it 70 total) breakout and 50 theater sessions of the 730 ideas you submitted for the Admin Track. It was a really tough process since there were so many incredible abstracts.
We spent over 350 hours reviewing each of your session submissions. We wanted to make sure our whole team had the time to look through each idea, knowing how much time and effort each of you put into your submission.
The first round of evaluation was “blind,” which meant that the reviewers had access to the session abstract, but the speaker names and company information was hidden. Each reviewer was asked to vote “Yes” or “No” as to if the session should be part of the Admin Track. To ensure that everyone had adequate time to review each session, this round went from July 1 through July 14th.
During the second round, the reviewers had access to the primary speaker’s name and company, in addition to the abstract. Like the first round, each reviewer was asked to vote “Yes” or “No.” Reviewers did not have access to the first round of voting results. To ensure everyone had adequate time to review all of the information again, this round went from July 17th through July 28th.
After the two rounds, each proposal had a possible percentage score of yes versus no which were averaged into an overall score. For example, if a session received 4 yes votes and 1 no vote in round 1, it’s R1 score was 80%. If in the second round it received 6 yes votes and zero no votes, it’s R2 was 100%. That would make its overall score 90.91%.
With overall scores in hand, we began the final selection process. First, we looked at sessions that scored 100% in both rounds of voting. There were so many great submissions, which means competition was intense. In fact, there were so many submissions with 100% scores after both rounds of voting, we couldn’t accept all of them because we had to make sure all our content areas were covered. We slotted as many 100% sessions as we could first, and then reviewed the top-ranking sessions for each category to fill out the mix. New for this year, we also recruited Salesforce product managers and experts get the best content possible. This means we have over 17 sessions that will be driven by Salesforce product managers and experts for Dreamforce 2017.
In 2016, the overwhelming feedback from presenters was they were overbooked. Dreamforce is a place for you to learn, connect, and have fun! So, this year, we did our best to accept great content without overbooking our Admin speakers to make sure you get the opportunity to enjoy all that Dreamforce has to offer.
Here is how the Breakout Session mix ended up:
Here is how the overall Admin Theater mix ended up:
First of all, don’t be sad! The competition was intense. We still want you to present your content! We are so excited about what you submitted that we want to find a way to feature your ideas on our other outlets – especially webinars and blog posts on admin.salesforce.com. If you’re interested, please fill out this quick form and we will see how we can help you bring your amazing idea to life for the #AwesomeAdmin community. Not sure? Fill out the form and we will be in touch to help you figure it out.
THANK YOU for being the best, most inspiring, and dedicated community!
#AwesomeAdmin
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