Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’re bringing on some of the Admin Relations team to talk through the Admin Track, Admin Meadow, and RRL IRL!
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with the Admin Relations Team.
First up, we have Lisa Dick, Director of Admin Marketing at Salesforce and the newest member of the Admin Relations team. It’s her first Dreamforce, and she’s excited about everything we’ve planned for you. “The one thing I want everyone to feel when they walk into the space is to feel like the Admin Meadow and the Admin Zone is really the home for admins,” she says.
Even better, sessions are mapped to the 14 skills in the Admin Skills Kit so you can focus in on the things you want to learn most. Lisa especially wants to see you at the Admin Theater on Tuesday for Admin Karaoke, so pick out your best power ballad and don’t miss out. Finally, you can sign up in the Admin Meadow for a 1-on-1 consult to talk through the challenges you face with someone who has a ton of expertise.
Next up, we brought on Jennifer Lee, this year’s Admin Track Leader, to talk about everything we have planned for you. “We’re going to be able to nerd out on all things Security, User Permissions, Flow Builder, Dev Ops, and even more,” she says. Be sure to take a listen to this part of the pod, as she highlights some of the standout events you won’t want to miss.
We also brought on LeeAnne Rimel to give us a sneak peek at the Admin Keynote. It’s a time we can all come together on the biggest stage to just talk about admins and best practices and changes that are coming for tools you use every day: Flow Builder, App Builder, permissions, deployment, and more. And, because it’s LeeAnne, you better believe there will be killer demos.
Finally, we talked to Ella Marks to find out what she has planned for Release Readiness Live. At Release Readiness Live, we’ll showcase the top highlights for admins from the Winter ‘23 release, and then open it up to questions from the audience for our product managers. And this year, it’s going to be in-person—this will be the can’t-miss party that ends Dreamforce and sends you off with a ton of new information to take home to your org.
Don’t think you’ll have to miss everything if you can’t make it to Dreamforce in person. There’s tons of stuff to see and do on Salesforce+, so block off your schedule and tune in live. After the Admin Keynote, there will be a special after-show hosted by Gillian and a panel of admin experts to recap the highlights and give some post-game analysis. You’ll even be able to ask our product managers questions for Release Readiness Live later in the day.
Gillian Bruce: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and careers to help you be an awesome admin. I’m your host today, Gillian Bruce. Listeners, we are less than one week away from Dreamforce 2022. If you can believe it, this is the 20th Dreamforce. I know. It’s crazy. I wanted to take today’s episode to spend some time hearing from the incredible people on the Admin Relations team about what the admin experience at Dreamforce 2022 is going to be.
If you’re joining us on site in San Francisco in just a few days, welcome. We’re excited to host you. We will see you very soon. This is a great preparation episodes that you know exactly what to expect when you get here. If you’re not able to physically join us on site here in San Francisco for Dreamforce this year, don’t worry. A lot of the content that we’re going to be covering is also about how you can participate with us digitally. This is truly going to be a hybrid event. We have two streaming channels, the entirety of Dreamforce on Salesforce, plus we also have some other special things happening live. You can definitely participate, even if you’re not going to be here with us in San Francisco.
What I have lined up for today is a sequence of the incredible people on our team who are owning and designing and running really important pieces of the admin experience at Dreamforce. We’re going to talk about the physical experience in Moscone West on that first floor, the Admin Meadow and Admin Theater with Lisa Dick, who is one of our amazing marketers on the team. Then we’re going to talk to the one and only, Jennifer Lee, who is owning and running the Admin track this year. That’s all the breakout and theater sessions that are mostly presented by you, the community. Then we’re going to get into talking about the big shining star of every event, the Admin Keynote. Leanne Rimel, who has been the mastermind behind this year’s Admin Keynote joins us to talk a little bit about what to expect for that.
Then we close it out with the bang, folks, because we have the one and only Ella Marks. I like to call her Stellar Marks, who is going to talk to us about how she is bringing release readiness live, our traditional online virtual experience of how to prepare you for the release. We’re bringing that as into Dreamforce this year as an in person and virtual experience. It’s going to be the closing party, the closing ceremony of all of Dreamforce. In fact, the Admin Keynote and the Admin Release Readiness preview are all happening exactly a week from the day that this podcast comes out, because it’s all on Thursday. Thursday of Dreamforce is admin day.
Stay tuned. You’re going to hear from each of these incredible people about what is happening with the admin experience at Dreamforce and how you can participate either in person or online. Let’s kick it off by talking to Lisa about the Admin Meadow.
Lisa, welcome to the podcast.
Lisa Dick: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
Gillian Bruce: I was going to say, first time on the podcast, right?
Lisa Dick: Very, very first time on the podcast.
Gillian Bruce: Oh, well welcome. It’s about time we get you on the podcast because we need to introduce you to the listeners. Lisa, can you please introduce yourself and tell a little bit about what you do at Salesforce?
Lisa Dick: I would love to. Thank you. I joined Salesforce this year. I’m a little bit newer to the team, but I’m the director of Admin marketing on the Admin Relations team. This is my first Dreamforce ever. I am very excited for what we have planned.
Gillian Bruce: Okay. Then let’s get into it because people are really pumped to know. I know a lot of people listening are going to be able to physically come to Dreamforce next week, which is really exciting. A lot of people are not, so we’re going to cover both, but can you tell those who are coming to Dreamforce, what are they going to be able to expect once they arrive on site as an admin?
Lisa Dick: I am so glad you asked. I would describe the admin experience this year in one word, which is magical. I think we have so many fun things planned. We have so many little surprises planned here and there, but the one thing that I want everyone to really feel when they walk into this space is feel like the Admin Meadow and the admin zone is really the home for admin. We’re going to have activations and sessions and things for people to keep coming back to, so that over the course of three days, there’s going to be so many things that people can interact with and visit, and sign up for, that it really will, I think, feel like a true home and a place that our admins want to keep coming back to.
Gillian Bruce: They’re going to want to hang out with us all the time in the Meadow and at the theater. Wait, I said theater. Tell us about the theater.
Lisa Dick: I would love to tell you about the theater. There’s a couple of different pieces of the admin zone. One of them, as you mentioned, is the theater. We will have both 20 minute sessions in the theater and also 40 minute breakout sessions with a ton of different learning tracks. There are so many sessions. I would like to call out that all of our theater sessions have been mapped to the 14 skills from our admin skills kit so that when someone comes to a theater session, they’ll have a better understanding of what session maps to all of those different skills to find the right sessions in the theater for the things that matter most to them and the things that they want to learn.
Gillian Bruce: Oh, I love that. I am very passionate about the Salesforce Admin Skills Kit. I love that we’re pulling that in through all of our, both breakout and theater sessions, but I know that there’s some special theater sessions that you’ve got lined up. Is there anything you’re going to share with us?
Lisa Dick: I would love to share them with you. We have some really fun sessions. As most of our admins know, we always try to have some fun sessions mixed in with all of the amazing learning sessions. We’re having what we are calling, the How I Solved It showdown, which will be at 1:30 every day. It’ll feature participants coming up with real actual business challenges that they have come up with an automation to solve. I also want to add that one of our most fun theater sessions will be on Tuesday, which is admin karaoke. I hope that everybody comes out and either sings. If you’re not okay singing, that’s okay, but cheering on all of your fellow admins. We think it’ll be a really great time.
Gillian Bruce: I will be in the cheering section, for sure. No one needs to hear me sing anything.
Lisa Dick: I do. I need to hear you sing everything.
Gillian Bruce: No, no, no, no, no. Okay. But there’s more than just the theater. You mentioned that there’s also the Admin Meadow. What are folks going to be able to experience in the Meadow?
Lisa Dick: That’s right. There’s a couple of different components to the Meadow. There’s a ton of action happening. When I talk about coming back to the Meadow and it feeling like home, there will be enough things happening in the Meadow to bring everybody back over the three days. When you first walk into the Meadow, you’ll of course be greeted at a welcome desk. There’s a couple of things you can do there. You can obviously get some help, but there will also be folks that are signing admins up for a one-on-one consult. We will have those consult stations in the Meadow. Admins can sign up for a 20 minute consultation with a Salesforce expert to really get their own individual questions answered.
We know that our admins face a lot of challenges or unique situations, or things that they just want to talk through with someone who has a ton of expertise. Having those consultations will allow folks to do that. They can sign up for those at the welcome desk when they get on site. We will also have four different demo stations, which I’m really excited about. Our demo stations will be staffed by Salesforce experts. We are really, really excited this year to focus on four specific topics, which are user management, app building and automation, the Admin Skills Kit, which I also love, and then also a session for admin best practices. There’s a lot of things happening at the demo booths. Those are, as folks know who have attended Dreamforce in the past, the demo booths, you can just walk up to. It’s not something that you have to schedule.
The last thing that’s really exciting happening in the Admin Meadow is our activation. Again, talking about the skills kit, we have heard so many wonderful stories about how admins are using the skills kit to really help explain what they do and define what they do and really tell their own story through the skills in the skills kit.
The great part about Dreamforce this year is we have turned the Admin Skills Kit into a digital activation. It’s really bringing to life the skills and creating your own unique admin story. In the Meadow, we will have a way for our admins to walk up to an activation station and really use those 14 skills to tell their own story of who they are and then it’ll be shareable. You can add it to your resume. You can share it across social. We’re really excited for admins to really take the 14 skills and make it feel more unique to them.
Gillian Bruce: I love it. I have gotten some sneak peaks of this activation. I cannot wait to see it in action. It is really amazing way to, like you said, pull together the skills and make your own custom story. I think this is a great takeaway that everyone is going to love. Hey, especially if you’re joining virtually, you’re going to see people post these. You can create your own when you’re at home. This is going to be a really cool thing that I’m sure we’re going to carry beyond Dreamforce, as well, in some capacity, but there’s a lot going on, Lisa. I love it.
Lisa Dick: It’s a lot.
Gillian Bruce: Do you have any tips, maybe for folks who this is their first Dreamforce? This is your first Dreamforce, so you’re in the same boat. What is your strategy when you’re coming on site? What are you going to do first? How are you going to try and manage doing all of the things?
Lisa Dick: Yeah, it’s a great question because there is a lot going on. I also recognize there’s a lot happening outside of the Admin Meadow, but one of the cool things that our team creates, it’s called the Admin Workbook. We will be sending that out and publishing it on Twitter the week before Dreamforce and really helping attendees plan those things out and figuring out the things that they really have to make sure they do before they leave the Dreamforce grounds. But I haven’t planned mine out yet because I’ve been so deep in figuring out what the Meadow looks like, but I think my big piece of advice that I have heard from everybody on the team and some folks that have been at Salesforce for a while is to just walk around and take it all in. It’s a large amount of space. There’s a lot of people, but there’s also so much to be able to just take it in and just really enjoy the experience of it because it’s been so long since we’ve been together in such a large setting. Just take a moment to just recognize how exciting it is that we’re all back. We’re all together. We get this really unique space and opportunity to celebrate that.
Gillian Bruce: I love that. That’s a great tip. Now, for those of people who maybe are not able to join us in person, what do you recommend for them to get a little taste, a little feeling of this admin magic?
Lisa Dick: Yeah, a couple of things. One, definitely log on to Salesforce plus and see some of the top hits for admins. The second is to follow us on social. In addition to having magic in the Meadow, we will, obviously, of course, our admin Twitter account is amazing. We’ll have a couple of details of some fun things happening during the week, but also there’s going to be a sweepstakes for folks on site and who follow our Twitter account. Yeah, I think that’ll be a really helpful way to figure out what’s happening both onsite and for the folks at home.
Gillian Bruce: I love that. I love that. Well, Lisa, I am excited for you to experience your first Dreamforce. I’m really, really looking forward to connecting you with a bunch of admins who are going to be onsite, which is going to be really fun. Everyone, come meet Lisa. She’s going to be in the Admin Meadow pretty much the entire time, but we’ll let you walk around a little bit, I promise.
Lisa Dick: I hope. Thank you.
Gillian Bruce: Lisa, thank you for all your hard work. We are so looking forward to seeing everything come to life next week. Yeah. Hey, let’s get ready to Dreamforce, huh?
Lisa Dick: Let’s get ready to Dreamforce. Absolutely.
Gillian Bruce: I cannot wait to see your faces as you walk into the Admin Meadow on Moscone West in just a few short days here. Lisa has been working hard. So fun to hear about some of the special surprises and magical moments that you are going to experience. Now we’re going to keep it moving because we got a lot of great admin experience to talk about. Admin experienceness, I think that’s a thing. Next, we’re going to go to Jennifer Lee, who is the mastermind, and organizer, and proud owner of the admin track this year at Dreamforce to talk about all of the great theater and breakout sessions you can expect this year. Jen Lee, welcome back to the podcast.
Jennifer Lee: Thanks for having me Gillian.
Gillian Bruce: Well, I needed to get you on because we’re getting ready for a little something called Dreamforce in just one week here, actually, if you’re listening to this podcast. I wanted to get you on because you are managing the entire admin track at Dreamforce this year. Hands to you. That’s an amazing feat. I wanted to get you on the podcast to talk a little bit about some of the amazing things happening in the admin track. Give us an overview as folks get ready to head to Dreamforce.
Jennifer Lee: All right. How much time do you have because I can go on and on about how amazing the line up is?
Gillian Bruce: Well, I know you can go on and on. Let’s keep in sound bite for the podcast.
Jennifer Lee: All right. I am really super excited to be this year’s track lead for the 20th Dreamforce admin track and to curate such a great lineup of breakout and theater sessions. We have a little bit for every admin out there, whether you’re just starting out, you’re intermediate, an advanced admin, and a wide variety of topics that can help you build on those 14 skills that you helped us identify in our skills kit. In fact, Brittany Gibson, if you’ve seen that awesome, great Quip doc that she put out there, the admin sessions by skills that list out all our sessions categorized by the related skills, that is something that you definitely need to get your hands on if you haven’t seen it. Gillian, would we be able to include that as a link in the pod notes?
Gillian Bruce: Absolutely. It’s going to be in the notes.
Jennifer Lee: Awesome. All right. In regards to speakers, we have Salesforce MVPs. We have community members. We also have Salesforce PMs, like Shell Feldman, Diana Jaffy, Antoine Kubot, just to name a few. They’re going to share their latest and greatest with their respective products. We’re going to be able to nerd out on all things, security, user permissions, flow builder, DevOps, and even more.
Gillian Bruce: I love nerding out. This is making me excited. Come to Dreamforce to nerd out.
Jennifer Lee: All right. I’m going to give you a teaser into some of their sessions. Okay, folks, bookmark these now. True to the core from feedback to features. Also, getting started with low code application building. The feature of user management for admins, and also rating effective and maintainable validation roles.
Gillian Bruce: It’s quite a line, Jenn. There’s a lot going on there.
Jennifer Lee: I know when I was a customer and I attended Dreamforce, I like to learn from the practitioners, the people who are out there doing the thing. I’m just going to highlight just a few sessions that, again, you want to bookmark. We’re going to go through the fundamentals of formals, approach reporting like never before, deluxe report types. We’re going to throw in some Salesforce automation with Slack. Then if you’re looking to get into public speaking and speaking at events, we have a session called find your voice, tips for becoming a Salesforce speaker. There’s also a session on the art of a Salesforce demo because we, as admins, need to present and share what we’ve built to our users. Learning that would be great. We also have dynamic forms, driving data, and user experience. Lastly, we have the London user group leaders presenting a theater session on how to become a skilled admin specialist. They’ll go through various skills and what’s involved in doing that and then tying that back to the skills kit.
Gillian Bruce: I love it. I love how you cover really a whole breadth between nerding out on products. You kind of career developmental, great content, and then just best practices as well. That’s really awesome.
Jennifer Lee: And I’m excited for new faces. While we love our returning Dreamforce presenter veterans, we do have some new faces as well. There’s app exchange strategies for Salesforce business analysts with Shira Tyson Griffin. I hope I said their name right. There’s also step by step guide for transitioning all processes to flow with Chrissy Andrews and Kristen Blazer, and catch the release, how to manage major releases year round with [inaudible] Burke, who is our awesome release person, but also a former coworker of mine. She works at Manual Life Candy Weeks.
Gillian Bruce: I love that. That’s great. Yeah, actually [inaudible] was on the podcast earlier sharing some of her great presentation that she put together about app exchange strategies for business analysts. Yeah, a whole bunch of first time Dreamforce presenters, which is always fun to get some new voices out there and amazing content. I’ve been able to jump on a couple of the dry runs for these sessions and wow. It is a rockstar lineup. It is going to be an amazing track.
Now, for those who maybe aren’t able to attend in person, Jen, how can they enjoy some of these great topics and great presentations?
Jennifer Lee: We have the opportunity to record three of our sessions from the admin track. Those will be available on Salesforce plus for a future viewing. They’re the automate your business processes with Flow Builder. Ready, Click, Automate, Salesforce to the max with RPA. Lastly, Make the Move From Chain Sets to DevOps Center.
Gillian Bruce: Okay, those are three, obviously, very popular and very exciting sessions about really great product and innovations that everybody needs to know about. Again, Salesforce plus on demand after Dreamforce. You can get it all right there, as well as some other great stuff like our Admin Keynote, which we talked about on the podcast already. Of course, release readiness live will be available after Dreamforce, as well.
Jen, this is your first time running an in-person Dreamforce as not a customer, as part of Salesforce. Tell me a little bit about how that change has gone for you. Not only are you now part of Salesforce running an in person Dreamforce, but you’re owning all of admin track. Just tell me. How has that been?
Jennifer Lee: I just say it’s been truly your honor to even be given this opportunity. I want to give props to [inaudible], you, and everyone on the team for being so supportive. It truly takes a village to do this. I’m just the conductor, but it truly takes the whole orchestra to get this thing together. It’s been great going through and being on the other side, because I was a presenter and now I’m on the other side organizing it and going through the process of selection. That was really hard. We had so many great submissions and I only had so many slots. It was really hard going through that process. But then now, working through and doing the dry runs, I’m really getting excited by seeing the sessions. I really can’t wait to get those in front of all our admins.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah, absolutely. It’s been really fun to see you bring that perspective to this process that Mike and I have done for gosh knows how many years at this point. It’s great. You’ve done an amazing job. It’s really fun to see it all come to life. Hey, I’m looking forward to seeing your face next week after the Dreamforce is going on and the sessions are happening and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is the track that I put together. It’s coming off amazing. All these people are getting such great value out of it.”
Congratulations. Hey, everybody get ready to enjoy a amazing admin track next week. Jen, we also didn’t talk about the fact there are breakouts and there are theater sessions. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Jennifer Lee: Yes. Our breakouts will be 40 minutes in an enclosed room. Our theater sessions will be on the… The breakouts will be on the second floor of Moscone West. The theater sessions will be on the first floor of Moscone in the Admin Meadow. It will seat about 125 people in an open area. We’re really excited to get the excitements of the crowd, the people walking around the Admin Meadow. Yeah, I’m really looking forward to all this.
Gillian Bruce: It’s going to be vibrant. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be an awesome admin party all around. Congratulations. Thank you for leading admin track this year. Folks, we’re getting ready to see you at Dreamforce.
Jennifer Lee: Yay.
Gillian Bruce: Wow. So many amazing sessions, lots of brand new presenters, lots of veteran presenters. Thank you, Jennifer Lee, for shepherding this incredible admin track to come to life at Dreamforce. I hope you’ve bookmarked the sessions she mentioned and you’re exploring on your own. Make sure you pop open that Salesforce plus window so that you don’t miss out.
Now, we’re moving on to the Admin Keynote. Leanne Rimel, who is the original Admin Keynote designer. If you all don’t remember back in 2014 when we first had our first ever Admin Keynote, which we called it a keynote, even though it wasn’t really deemed a keynote. Leanne designed all the demos for that, and in fact, created the whole entire brand of how we do admin demos by showing you how we use setup. Without further ado, let’s get Leanne on the pod to talk about what you can expect in this year’s amazing keynote. Leanne, welcome to the podcast.
Leanne Rimel: Hi Gillian. Thanks for having me.
Gillian Bruce: Well, I had to have you on, because we need to talk about something really important and really exciting happening at Dreamforce next week, the Admin Keynote. Can you tell us a little bit about what is going on for admins in the Keynote?
Leanne Rimel: I sure can. If you haven’t been a dream first before, or if this is your first time tuning in, the Admin Keynote is really this time that we gather all together as admins. We share with you the latest and greatest in announcements, in tools for admins. We try to share and reinforce things we’ve learned from you over the previous year about the role of admins and how it’s growing, and things you are all doing in your careers and at your companies. It’s really… I’ll be honest. It’s one of my favorite Dreamforce events. It is really a time for us all to gather together in the big room. We’re in the Moscone hall F in the big keynote room. We gather together and we just talk about admins for the entire time.
We spend time with you talking about what are those products and features coming that we want to make sure your hands on with? What are those business areas you should be building out? We’ll be, first off, diving into the latest and greatest with your favorite products. We’ll be including Flow Builder, Ad Builder, permissions, deployment. Those things that you’re using every day as an admin, we’re going to be talking about some of the right ways and best practices on how to use those tools. We’re going to be hearing from product leadership. We’re going to be talking about roadmap and exciting things that are coming or just released for those tools. I’m really excited for that. I love building out our product overviews and demos. It’s a really fun part.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah, and you’ve been… Leanne, you have also had a hand in helping with product demos for quite a while at Salesforce, and especially for the admin audience, which makes it extra special because these demos are really, as you said, tailored towards the admin experience. Along with what you just listed, what else is going on in the Admin Keynote?
Leanne Rimel: I love that question. I do love demos. I just still do. A quick aside, we really do build these demos. Every step of the way we’re thinking, what is it that we want admins to see? What are those features, those best practices, those tools that are just, we really want admins to know about. We really want admins to see. You’ll notice we really dive a lot deeper often into setup, into the builder experience. That’s because these are truly tailored for you, both the products that we’re covering and then how we show them in demos.
Gillian, I just love demos. I used to build demos all the time when I was a Salesforce admin. I built them in order to get budget and things like that for my projects and drive user adoption. My entire career, whether I was a customer, or at Salesforce, or tech support, I think demos are so important. They’re so fun.
Gillian Bruce: Demo all the things.
Leanne Rimel: Demo all of the things. Gillian, you asked what else we’re doing in Admin Keynote. There’s two other areas I want to share that I’m really, really excited about. I told you how demos are so important and we’re doing demos. Something that’s really exciting that we’re doing in the Admin Keynote this year for the first time is it’s not just going to be Salesforce employees up their demoing. We’re going to have our customers up on stage leading demos. We’re going to have some of our admin trailblazers who have used some of these products, used some of these tools to build solutions for their companies. They’re going to be on stage showing their build to you in a demo in the keynote. I am just so excited about that because, of course I love demoing. I love showing things. There is nothing better than seeing someone who has the same role as you, the same job as you, is maybe solving the same business problems as you, up there saying, “Here, let me show you how I solved this.”
I think that’s going to be such a fun and important element of the keynote. I’m so honored. We’ve got our admin trailblazers that are joining us, are just awesome members of the community, awesome admins through and through. I’m so thrilled that they’re taking the time to share their solutions with us and with you, our admin audience. Those customer led demos are going to be really, really fun.
Gillian Bruce: That is really special. That is unique. I think that’s the only time that any keynote has really done that. This is going to be a first time innovation that we’re bringing to the Admin Keynote this year.
Leanne Rimel: I think I would say we’re trailblazing.
Gillian Bruce: What? Boom! Mic drop. Love it, Leanne. Okay. You said there’s three things. We talked about too. What is the third part of the Admin Keynote that you want to share today?
Leanne Rimel: Okay. The third thing that I’m really excited to talk about today, that will be so impactful for you, Salesforce admins, who are attending and viewing our Admin Keynote, Gillian and our team worked really hard over the last few years to learn more about the skills that make admin successful. It’s called the Admin Skills Kit. It’s on our site. It’ll be in the show notes.
That skills kit that they worked hard to identify, what are those skills that help admins be successful in their roles? We launched the skills kit at TDX 22. That was in… What month was that? April 22, but we’re not done. We launched it. We gave you that first iteration of an overview of all the tools and skills that you need to be successful as admin, that you should focus on building on. We had a wonderful blog series by our admin trailblazers sharing how they use those skills in their jobs and their careers, but we’re not done yet.
At the Admin Keynote, we’re going to have some really exciting announcements about this next phase of Admin Skills Kit, and new tools and new ways, building on the skills kit, that we are working to enable you as Salesforce admins to be successful in your roles. I’m really excited about… It’s a culmination of a lot of hard work from the team and a lot of contributions and sharing and knowledge, sharing from admins, that we’re working to combine into this product, this tool, for you, called the Admin Skills Kit that’ll help you just crush it and be an awesome admin.
Gillian Bruce: Yeah. It’s like our own product roadmap. We’re sharing everybody.
Leanne Rimel: It is. We get a do a roadmap. Yeah, we get to do a roadmap conversation. We’re going to have some exciting roadmap announcements about Admin Skills Kit.
Gillian Bruce: I love it. I love it. Leanne, you did mention that the Admin Keynote is going to be in the big room this year, the same room that the mark main keynote is in. We need everybody who’s coming to Dreamforce to join us. When is the keynote happening Leanne?
Leanne Rimel: Oh, that’s a great question. It is in the big room. It’s on Thursday at 9:00 AM. It’s probably going to be your first session of the day. Maybe you can meet up with your admin buddies, go to Starbucks, go to your coffee shop, make your coffee at your hotel, whatever. Everyone can get their coffee, get their nice little morning walk in, make their way over to Dreamforce and come bright and shiny and early to the Admin Keynote and really start your day with us. I’ll be honest. I love being on Thursday morning, because I think then we’ve had a couple of days to attend sessions, to attend other keynotes, to learn more about different areas that we’re interested in. With Admin Keynote, we try to help you put a lot of that into context and set you up for successes.
You go back to your day job after Dreamforce and want to take all these learnings from Dreamforce and make your plan, your roadmap for what you do with those learnings. I love being on Thursday. I love being on Thursday morning, Thursday morning, hall F, 9:00 AM. Even if you’re not a morning person, even if you’re tired, I promise we will wake you up. It’ll be a fun show. We will be bright and shiny. There’ll be a very big element of fun. You’re going to see some really faces and love and haven’t seen in a while. It’ll be a wonderful way to kick off Thursday.
Gillian Bruce: Well, Thursday is, Leanne, it’s admin day at Dreamforce because not only do we start the day with the Admin Keynote, but we end the day with admin release readiness live, which is really exciting. The whole day is really focused on admins. It’s a great way to end Dreamforce with the bang with a whole day dedicated truly to Salesforce admins. Yeah, we’re looking forward to it. Leanne, as you mentioned, if you’re in person, come to Hall F, but if you’re not in person, people can watch it online, right?
Leanne Rimel: Yes. It will be on Salesforce plus at 9:00 AM Pacific on Thursday. Definitely tune in. And there’ll be a little something special for people who are tuning in online. There’s going to be an after show. There’s going to be the Admin Keynote, and then we’re going to be diving into our after show as well. Also, really starting this live will be on later in the day, as well, for everyone who’s not attending in person. I love that really starting this live is happening later in the day, because I think also, we’re going to be talking about some new products and some new features and some new tools in the keynote. At really starting this live, you have Q and A with the product managers. If you come up with questions during keynote or during other sessions the week, you can ask those questions during really starting this live. I’m really excited for admin day and for Dreamforce. I hope to see you all there.
Gillian Bruce: Excellent. Well, we’ll be there.
All right folks. We are done. The keynote is incredible. You are going to want to tune in. It’s exactly one week from today. You’ll be able to view that live on Salesforce plus. Starting at 9:00 AM Pacific time on Salesforce plus. You are not going to want to miss it.
We have a brief after show that’s going to happen right after the keynote that, yours truly, is hosting along with some incredible admin analysts. We’ve got Carmel James, familiar voice on the pod, and Cheryl Feldman, one of our amazing product leaders who are going to join me as the post game analysts for what happened in the Admin Keynote. You’re only going to find that live on Salesforce plus, so make sure you tune in there. We’ve got some fun surprises in that little segment too.
All right. Now, to wrap out the admin experience at Dreamforce, we are going to talk to Ella Marks, who is innovating… Oh my gosh. This is such a cool innovation that she’s bringing to life this year at Dreamforce. It is the first time that we’re ever going to be doing release readiness live with an in-person audience. You heard it. We do release readiness live every release. It is one of the best ways to get up to speed with all of the features that you should know about as an admin hearing directly from product managers. Well, we’re bringing that experience to the attendees at Dreamforce. We’re doing it in a big keynote room. We’re going to have the product managers there, live, answering questions. If you are tuning in virtually, nothing’s going to change for you. It’s the same way that you can tune into release readiness live. We’re just going to have a live studio audience who’s also going to be able to participate. Check that out. That’s going to be at 3:00 PM Pacific time. You’ll be able to stream that the way that you normally stream release readiness live. Get your questions ready. Ella, welcome back to the podcast.
Ella Marks: Hi Gillian. Thanks for having me.
Gillian Bruce: Oh, well I am having you because I want something very specific from you. First of all, before we get into it, can you remind the listeners who you are and what you do?
Ella Marks: Yeah, I’d love to. I am a senior marketing manager on the admin relations team. I have my hands in a lot of different things, but I’d say the biggest things that I focus on are admin website and our campaigns. Our release campaigns like Learn More, and some other campaigns that you may see across our social or our website.
Gillian Bruce: Yes, you do all of the very fun activating the community things, which is great. Speaking of which, we are giving everyone who’s listening a little precursor to what they can expect at Dreamforce next week for both those attending in person and those attending online. Ella, you are owning a very exciting piece of this. Can you talk to us a little bit about release readiness live at Dreamforce?
Ella Marks: Yes. I would love to. Nothing gets me more excited for this year’s Dreamforce than talking about the first ever, in person release readiness live. That’s right. In person release readiness live.
Gillian Bruce: And the crowd goes wild!
Ella Marks: Insert cheering noises! It is so exciting because if you’ve seen release readiness live before, you know that every release we go through all those release highlights. There’s tons of innovation out there with every single release. We pick out the top highlights for admins. Then we bring them to you in this release readiness live broadcast. We get to go through our demos and show you all these new innovations. Then the product managers take your questions about these new features during that broadcast. We’re having all of that, but this time, there’s also going to be this live in person component. Don’t worry. If you’re not joining us live in person, you will still be able to watch release readiness live the same way that you’ve watched it previously. You’ll still be able to ask your questions, but it’s just so exciting that we’re going to have this new way to engage with the product managers and really be in that room. We’re hoping to bring all of the awesome admin fun release energy to the session. I’m just so excited, if you can’t tell.
Gillian Bruce: Well, it is something to get pretty pumped up about because not only is it the first in person release readiness live. This is kind of almost true to the core, but focused on the release, because we’re going to have all those product managers there. Release readiness live is amazing because you get the PMs to join you on the broadcast and answer those questions live, but we’re going to have all the PMs there. We’re going to have rows of PMs to answer questions. If you’ve got a specific question that you’ve never really gotten an answer to feel free to bring it because we are going to be able to ask them… We. You will be able to ask them there in person. It’s also the official closing party of all of Dreamforce and admin day. Ella, talk to us about how this party’s going to go down.
Ella Marks: It’s so exciting to be able to be that closing party because what it means is all week, you will have learned all of these new, amazing features. You may learn about Admin Skills. You’ll learn about products. You’ll have all of this learning. At the very end, you’ll be able to keep those questions in the back of your mind that entire time, bring them to this session and go out learning all about the top new features. When you get home, they’re right fresh in your mind, so you can immediately go start implementing these new features or playing around with them in a sandbox. This is just so exciting because you have that experience where you can have that closing party with us. We’re going to make it fun. Don’t worry. More to come on that.
Gillian Bruce: There’ll be lots of fun.
Ella Marks: Lots of fun, but it’ll be the last thing that you see at Dreamforce. You can take that, write your notes down, go home, and then immediately take action and start learning about some of these new features. I’m so excited. It’s going to be the closing party, the can’t miss last thing that you do at Dreamforce.
Gillian Bruce: Yes. Release readiness live to take it all home. To your point, what’s great is that this is a good forcing function to get everybody ready for the winter 23 release. You’ll be able to go right back to your work when you get back home on Monday or Tuesday, or if you’re taking the week after Dreamforce off, which I know some people do. Good for you, but you’ll be able to immediately go in, play within that pre-lease environment and make sure that you’re starting to prepare your org for the new capabilities you want to take advantage of with winter 23.
Ella, one thing that I know that’s different about this year is because we get to do it in person, we may not have as much time as we usually do to answer all of the questions. We will have time for Q and A, but what happens..? What are we doing for folks who maybe don’t get their question answered live in this session?
Ella Marks: That is a great question, Gillian. It is something that we know everybody is going to be thinking about during this session. We will provide an opportunity to follow up on those questions that you’ve asked after Dreamforce. We’re still working out some of those details. I will make sure that we share them with you as soon as we have them, but do not worry. Your opportunities to connect with these product managers and get your questions answered are not limited to this session. Do not fear. We will answer as many questions as we can live at Dreamforce from online and in the room. But if we don’t get to your question, there will be additional opportunities to ask it. Just stay tuned.
Gillian Bruce: Well, and yeah, you’ll know exactly which PM to harass on Twitter too. It’ll be all good.
Ella Marks: We’ll share their Twitter handles. You can ask them directly.
Gillian Bruce: This is so great, Ella. Now, I would love to just ask you, since this is the first time we’re doing release readiness live in real life, IRL, what are some of the differences in putting together release readiness live for an in person and online experience versus just that online experience?
Ella Marks: That’s a really good question. I think that when it comes to anything, that’s going to be onsite, especially at Dreamforce. If you ever participated in a Dreamforce session before, or you have dreams of participating, it is such a different experience to be live in the room with people. You really want to make sure with a session like release readiness live, that we’re considering both that in room audience and the experience for those folks, and the experience for folks who are going to be tuning in online.
One thing that we haven’t really had to think about before, which is really fun, but we’re thinking about this time is, we’re showing some really exciting new features that we think you’re going to be really excited about. We’re having to think, do we need to pause for an audience reaction? That is something we’ve never had to think about before. Is anybody going to clap? When there’s an announcement? Are we going to hear some rumblings in the audience? What is this going to look like? This is a totally new experience for us. It relates a little bit less to the content, but just that general atmosphere that we want to create with this experience is, it is real. It is live. We are engaging with you, but I don’t know. I’m excited to see what it looks like, but it’s definitely not something we’ve experienced in the studio or in the online little Brady bunch box before.
Gillian Bruce: Well, yeah, instead of relying on basically the other attendees in the Brady box bunch, just to show excitement over a feature, we’re going to get real actual reactions that are audible from the audience, in addition to the normal online forever that happens, and the great gifts, like Squire I know we always posts the great gifts. But yeah. It’s fun to bring both of those together. Amazing job, Ella, of bringing both that in person, that new in person experience together with the live existing experience. It’s going to be really fun. It’s like the first real deal, hybrid live content. Honestly, cause it’s so interactive. I’s going to be really fun to see that go down. Any tips for folks who are going to be attending in person or attending online to get the most out of the session?
Ella Marks: I think to get the most out of the session, I would just recommend having a way to take notes, whether it’s your phone, or you are taking photos of the slides or of a demo, or making a note of a new feature that you might be excited about. You don’t want to lose those moments of inspiration that you might get during a session like this that is so jam packed of features. Just make sure that you have an easy way to capture something that you might get excited about because we’re going to show a lot.
If I can add one more, bring your questions. We’re going to be sharing what we’re covering before the event. If you have questions about automation, you have questions about DevOps center, or permissions and user access, you can think about those now. When the session starts, be ready to post those questions because we will be looking for them. Start thinking about those. Start thinking about what you’d want to ask to our amazing product managers. We can’t wait to answer as many of them as we can.
Gillian Bruce: Bring all the questions. All of them.
Ella Marks: Yeah.
Gillian Bruce: All of them. Well, Ella, thank you for joining us on the podcast. Thank you so much for bringing IRL at DF 22, because I’m just going to list all the acronyms at once. I know we’re all looking forward to this amazing closing party at Dreamforce. We cannot wait to see you there. Ella, it’s going to be some admin magic.
Lisa Dick: I can’t wait. See you all there.
Gillian Bruce: With that, everyone, I hope you are so pumped for next week. It is happening in just a few days. I cannot even believe it’s the 20th Dreamforce. I don’t even know what number Dreamforce this is for me. I think my first Dreamforce was 2010. Maybe it’s my 12th Dreamforce. Yikes. Wow. Anyway, Dreamforce is a magical time. I hope you’re able to join us. If you’re not able to join us in person, please, please, please stay tuned to Salesforce plus, and you can stay up to date again with all things happening in the admin community by following #awesomeadmin on Twitter and Salesforce admins, no I. I hope you all are pumped to have an incredible Dreamforce, whether you’re joining us in San Francisco or you’re joining us from your comfort of your own home. I cannot wait to see you. I cannot wait to hear from you. I cannot wait to see what you think of your admin experience at this year’s 20th Dreamforce. With that, have an amazing rest of your day. Safe travels. Have a great weekend. I’ll catch you next time, in the cloud.
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