On the Salesforce Admins Podcast this week, we’re bringing you another monthly retro. In this episode, we’ll cover all the great Salesforce product, community, and career content from December that we may have missed over the holidays. We’re joined again by Laura Pelkey, Sr. Manager, Security Customer Engagement at Salesforce.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation.
New York in December is truly a magical sight — the lights, the decorations, and Dreamforce NYC, the first in-person event Salesforce has hosted in a while. We’re hoping for a future where we’re all able to get together in the same place again.
For Laura, the podcast highlight of the month was Ashley Sisti’s episode about translating your admin skills. This episode offers great advice and guidance on how to have tough conversations with your manager when you need extra support or something isn’t working. For me, I really enjoyed my conversation with Joe Sterne about being neurodivergent in the workplace and how we can be compassionate and give space to each other when we work together.
Jen’s Flow automation resources roundup is a can’t-miss list. There are so many different ways to do something on the platform, so having a good map for all the information out there can help you make a plan. Laura points us to Christopher Marzilli’s post about how MFA can save your company money. Salesforce commissioned a new study to look into it, and the results are fascinating, to say the least.
One of the greatest mysteries in the Salesforce ecosystem was finally solved this month: why is there no “i” in the @SalesforceAdmns Twitter handle? Spoiler alert, it’s NOT because there’s no “i” in “team.” I also really enjoyed J.’s video about debugging — it was incredibly helpful and fun.
Mike Gerholdt: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast in the December Monthly Retro for 2021. I’m your host Mike Gerholdt and in this episode, we’ll review the top product community career content, and get you caught up on really everything we want you to watch. Not to mention, don’t leave early, we’re going to tie a bow on this year and wrap up our discussion with some favorite things we discovered or rediscovered in 2021. And to help me do all of that is, joining me once again, Laura Pelkey. Hello, Laura.
Laura Pelkey: Hey Mike. Hi. Thank you for having me again. I’m really happy you’re not sick of me yet.
Mike Gerholdt: No, you’re a fan favorite on the Retro Podcast.
Laura Pelkey: I try, I try.
Mike Gerholdt: You do such a good job of wrapping things up.
Laura Pelkey: Oh, thank you. I’m going to add that as a skill on my LinkedIn.
Mike Gerholdt: Yes. Obscure skills listed on LinkedIn.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Wrapping things up on audible podcasts.
Laura Pelkey: Conclusions.
Mike Gerholdt: Not to mention how many minute, how many words per minute I can type, but put that at the top.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah, definitely.
Mike Gerholdt: I’ll kick off with, we had Dreamforce New York, formerly Dreamforce to you, but Dreamforce New York. And I saw on a tweet, in the Twitter bird, that you were headed to New York in December. I did not go. Leanna on my team went and so did Jennifer, but I thought New York in December is a pretty good place to kick off our December highlight episode. Laura, what were your New York December highlights?
Laura Pelkey: Yeah, well that’s actually my favorite month to visit New York because I’m, I grew up on the east coast so we would go there from time to time every few years. And it’s so beautiful with all the decorations and everything, I love going in December. It was awesome getting to be there, especially during the new Dreamforce New York event, got to chat with some of our customers, everyone was, there’s tons of excitement going around that Salesforce was hosting an in-person event again. And it was really great to be there. It made me remember all of the awesome times that I’ve had meeting and chatting with customers about security at past Dreamforce’s in San Francisco and at the world tour in New York and all the other times. It made me feel happy to be around all the excitement, but also nostalgic. And I’m hoping in the future that everyone, all of us, can do these things and get together for Dreamforce again, at some point.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. It’s hard to wrap up a year if I feel I’m not slipping and sliding.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Hailing an Uber, trying to get out of the Javits Center at 5:30 on a Thursday.
Laura Pelkey: Right, right.
Mike Gerholdt: Cause it’s, and it’s always impeccably cold. It’s always freezing cold. It’s decent cold, you can deal with it cause I’m Midwesterner, most of the day. And then for some reason it’s five o’clock, Dreamforce New York’s over, and then it just cranks down as you go outside to wait.
Laura Pelkey: You’re like “Oh, I’m in New York right now, it’s so cold.”
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Yep.
Laura Pelkey: Yep.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, I, this is probably the coldest I’ve ever been in my life.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Well coming from California, now I’m a baby, I’m just so sensitive to the cold. And I brought the wrong… I used to do the things that I would laugh about people or laugh at people for. I brought a coat that was too light, I didn’t bring the right shoes. I just did all the faux pas.
Mike Gerholdt: Sure.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Well in California, it hits 69, you got to a puffy jacket on already.
Laura Pelkey: Oh yeah. Way too cold.
Mike Gerholdt: Right?
Laura Pelkey: No, I’m just kidding. I’m good with that temperature, but I’m not going to lie, and you have seen this, I know you’ve seen this. People actually do wear puffy coats when it’s like 65 degrees out.
Mike Gerholdt: No, they do. I remember in February when I would go to the home office and I’m coming from February in Iowa where it’s 10. You’re excited that it hit double digits and I’m walking out of the tower, walking back to my hotel room and I’m in a short sleeve shirt, jeans, and I’m hot.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: And standing next to me on the street corner is somebody, puffy coat zipped up to their nose, muffler around their eyes, big knit jacket, like their climbing Everest.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. I’m not going to name names, but there are some people that are, that may or may not be on my team that may have been one of those.
Mike Gerholdt: That are cold all the time.
Laura Pelkey: How can I name names, but you know one of them very well.
Mike Gerholdt: Right. Hold is relative. Okay. We promised podcast, blog, all kinds of content highlights. We’ll kick off with podcast, because podcast, some people are listening to the podcast and I don’t know, I get to choose. Laura, what was your podcast high for the month of December?
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. I really liked Ashley’s podcast Translating Your Admin Skills. She talks about something in this podcast that I actually hear a lot from other admins, that is a challenge, which is how do you have tough conversations with your manager when you need extra support for something or maybe something isn’t working. And we know if you’re an admin you know this, a lot of things just fall to you and you’re kind of the gate for things and you’re the one that, you’re responsible for all of these different things. Even with the MFA requirement coming up in February, I’m hearing some admins say that they’re having challenges getting their leaders on board with that, even though it’s something that is a requirement. That’s personally for me, even a skill that I’m trying to get better at. And I like that it’s something that we can talk about and you’re not, if you’re feeling like this, it’s something that a lot of admins find challenging. Yeah, I liked that, that resonated with me.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. That was a fun episode. And even the pre-call with Ashley was, I don’t record the pre-calls, but I do for the most part, a call with most of the guests ahead of time. And Ashley and I had so many things to cover that I was like, okay, we’ve got to start narrowing this down, or it’s going to be a six hour podcast.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Time of a Good podcast.
Mike Gerholdt: Right.
Laura Pelkey: Let’s talk about…
Mike Gerholdt: Here’s the Titanic version of a podcast in six hours. I will jump ahead, I think it was actually the following week I had Joe Sterne on who is in our Salesforce organization. Helps build things about being neuro divergent. And this was actually a topic that came up internally in some of our admin discussion groups. And I thought it was really, first of all, I thought it was really fantastic that Joe took the time out to share that with us and was being very transparent.
I saw a lot of tweets on the Twitters, tweets on the Twitters, about Joe sharing that and his courage to do that. I want to thank Joe again for doing that. I think there was a few people that also called Joe out, but what I really loved about it was we got the time to dive into how do we have those discussions with coworkers? How do I, Mike, have that discussion with Joe in a compassionate manner, in a way that helps me understand how to work with them and bring the best out of them. And then also if I was a manager to Joe, how can I make sure that I’m inviting that open conversation with my employees? It was a really a little different podcast, but sometimes in December you do different things.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. I love that. It’s, I think it’s first of all, so amazing when somebody’s brave enough to share something that’s personal like that. And, but it also just makes it okay for other people to talk about sort of their backgrounds and things.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah.
Laura Pelkey: That’s really cool.
Mike Gerholdt: We wrote a few blog posts and we managed to narrow those down for this one. I’ll go first, Laura, I chose Jennifer’s Top Flow Automation Resources. No surprise Jennifer Lee wrote an automation playlist, but the reason I really like this is if you’ve spent more than five minutes looking at the platform, you know that there’s at least three different ways of doing something and there’s at least two or three different tools to do that with. And that’s because a lot of it is built around what you’re trying to do, the skill that you have to accomplish it, you know what I mean? I think back to 10 years ago, the ability to do some of the things that Flow Builder can do now was only available if you could write code in a trigger. And I think of how inclusive it is now that we have a platform where the tool allows me to execute on business logic in the same way, as a developer can write a trigger.
And I understand there’s differences, but I bring that up because what I like about this is Jennifer goes through different blog posts, what they cover and why she loved it. And to me, when there’s a flood of content and you’re trying to work through stuff, it’s super helpful. She also covers some videos and of course covers podcasts. Anything that covers podcasts, a big fan of that, but that was a good way to kind of sort through. There’s always a lot of information coming at you and much in the same way we do with this episode, we try to rise some cream to the top.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah, that’s really cool. Okay. Can I ask maybe a dumb question?
Mike Gerholdt: There’s no silly questions on the podcast.
Laura Pelkey: No silly questions. You mentioned a trigger, can you explain what that is? I’ve never heard that before.
Mike Gerholdt: You’ve never heard of triggers in Salesforce.
Laura Pelkey: No.
Mike Gerholdt: Oh, it’s code that would execute… You would write a trigger as opposed to using the flow or a process.
Laura Pelkey: Oh.
Mike Gerholdt: Used to write triggers… You had to execute them, usually deploy through a sandbox.
Laura Pelkey: I see.
Mike Gerholdt: And yeah, so it was basically a way of executing on the platform, because there was before triggers, there was after triggers, there was before save triggers and after save triggers, right, it’s a way of executing. And you can still write triggers on the platform. It’s a code way of executing automation or executing actions before or after the fact on a record once it’s been instantiated.
Laura Pelkey: Got it. Well, I was a no code…
Mike Gerholdt: And they were intimidating.
Laura Pelkey: Yes. I’m very much no code if there’s any possible way to avoid it so I’m happy that now there’s more automation stuff that can help with that. I’m very much the audience of no code, more… What is it? More clicks, no code? I’m saying it wrong.
Mike Gerholdt: Sure.
Laura Pelkey: Sure. It can be that.
Mike Gerholdt: It can be that. At least make it up as we go.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Mike Gerholdt: Clicks, not code there’s that too. I don’t know. It doesn’t have to be, right. I’m sure there’s still stuff you can do with the trigger that flow builder doesn’t do. And immediately after this podcast errors and somebody listens to it, I will be roasted on Twitter for not knowing it.
Laura Pelkey: I just opened a can of worms.
Mike Gerholdt: Yep.
Laura Pelkey: Sorry about that.
Mike Gerholdt: That’s okay.
Laura Pelkey: Hopefully people find it interesting, though.
Mike Gerholdt: Retweet you in everything.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Hopefully people find it entertaining. That’s the goal.
Mike Gerholdt: Sure.
Laura Pelkey: All right. My blog pick is, for December, ‘How MFA Can Save Your Company Money While Reducing Risk’ by our colleague Chris Marzilli. I actually helped a little bit with this blog post. This is, for those of you who don’t know that are listening, Salesforce recently commissioned a new study from Forrester to explore if there are, if there’s any monetary value for our customers in implementing MFA or multifactor authentication, if you’re not familiar with that term. And the results of the study are super compelling. I won’t go into the whole thing, but just a little bit of a spoiler. You can actually expect ROI from MFA, not only in terms of risk reduction, which is obviously the number one reason to do it, but also in cost savings with Salesforce’s MFA solution, which is crazy. This report or this new study is great, we’re trying to circulate it and really get it in front of our customers so that they can use it to kind of help build the business case for implementing MFA, especially to their leadership if they’re running into any challenges when trying to make this implementation. Cause sometimes it’s more complicated depending on the kind of business you’re in or the industry you’re in. This blog specifically will help you position that.
Mike Gerholdt: I was looking at it and I have a question because it’s something I’ve never heard of. Is there cyber insurance premiums?
Laura Pelkey: There is a thing, such a thing as cybersecurity insurance.
Mike Gerholdt: Wow. Okay.
Laura Pelkey: I’m very far from an expert on what is going to make your premiums lower, but I do, I would venture to guess that most companies probably at this point do have some kind of cybersecurity insurance. I know it’s crazy.
Mike Gerholdt: I mean, I guess you can ensure everything, right.
Laura Pelkey: You can insure…
Mike Gerholdt: Lloyds of London, but.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Absolutely.
Mike Gerholdt: I just never heard of cyber insurance premiums.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Learn something new on this podcast every day.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. It’s pretty crazy.
Mike Gerholdt: What triggers are…
Laura Pelkey: I know. Many new things. Yeah. But this blog is really great. I would definitely urge people to take a look at it if they’re still trying to figure out how to get this, the MFA implementation ball rolling.
Mike Gerholdt: And we’ll wrap up our content part, Laura, with video. I’ll have you go first because I mean, I like the video you picked.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Spoiler alert.
Laura Pelkey: I know. I picked ‘Why Is There No “i” in the Salesforce Admins Twitter Handle?’ and if people haven’t seen this… I know this is a little bit of a lighter topic, and usually we highlight content that is maybe a little bit more serious or something, but this is kind of one of my favorite speakers. Mike, I think his name is Mike Gerholdt. I don’t know if you have heard of him or if you know him.
Mike Gerholdt: I’ve never heard of him. He must be new.
Laura Pelkey: He must be new, yeah. As somebody that… Back before I worked at Salesforce, I was a Salesforce customer and I’ve always been surprised, in a really good way, at the community that our customers have created once I came on board and sort of made the transition to a Salesforce employee. And we know this, that admins are really at the heart of any Salesforce implementation. And I remember back to my very first world tour in New York, I was very intimidated at the idea of running a security booth and standing there for, I don’t know, we used to stand there for eight hours at a time or something.
Mike Gerholdt: Well, yeah. In this particular instance you were a machine.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Cause I think you staffed it solo.
Laura Pelkey: I might have been by myself, which was hard. Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Totally a bad decision, but you got to make him early.
Laura Pelkey: It was a crash course and yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: It was.
Laura Pelkey: I was intimidated and I was worried that customers weren’t going to like me or that they weren’t really going to want to talk or, but I was so happy. What I found actually was such an amazingly warm community of people who really genuinely wanted to learn. And they also wanted to give feedback to us on our products and how we could make our products better. And just collectively, it was never about me, me, me, it’s oh, I think this feature’s really helpful to all admins or have you ever thought of doing something like this? This would be helpful to more people. And I just love that kind of just the ethos of Salesforce admins. That was why I picked this particular video.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. And that’s, that was a fun time because that’s also when we were setting up the admin Twitter. And I remember being on a conference call with Sarah and Jillian and our Twitter representative and they were adamant at that time you could not have admin in a handle. I don’t care what kind to handle you were setting up, it would not say admin or administrator. We couldn’t get around it, so that’s why it didn’t have a, spoiler alert, in case you watch the video.
Laura Pelkey: Have we gotten past the statute of limitations where you could possibly get in trouble for this?
Mike Gerholdt: Well, actually a few years ago they… I think they might have relaxed it or something, but we chose to stick with the MNS.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Because Jillian pointed out in the meeting, she’s like, there’s no i in admin and I think that just relates right back to the story that you told.
Laura Pelkey: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mike Gerholdt: Yes.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: And I do remember that world tour, you were a machine, you worked the entire time. I was like, I’m going to go get you this glass of water.
Laura Pelkey: Oh man.
Mike Gerholdt: Maybe go stand at the booth for a while or Starbucks or something.
Laura Pelkey: I do miss those days though, to be honest, which is funny looking back on it.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, in case you’re wondering, almost every Salesforce employee at Dreamforce New York runs off of Starbucks that day. That’s it, that’s all we get to eat. We drink coffee all day and whatever pastries or food they’ll throw in an oven.
Laura Pelkey: Yep.
Mike Gerholdt: That’s what we eat. I’ve never had more Starbucks in my life than when I do Dreamforce New York.
Laura Pelkey: Yep. Or more of the like Rice Krispy Treats from Starbucks.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Those are pretty good, too.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Those go quick.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: I picked the Demystify Flow Limits by Debugging from J who is on my admin EV team. And I love it because… Well, first of all, J, really great on camera. They really have a great personality and very approachable way of explaining things. But I also feel as we talk through automation, we sometimes forget that you’re going to hit a wall. And when you hit that wall, it’s good to understand how to get around that wall or why you hit that wall. And you can hit limits and users can get errors, and it’s important to understand that. And it’s also important to be able to kind of work through that or debug it. Fun video.
Laura Pelkey: Very fun.
Mike Gerholdt: Should look up the history of why it’s called bugs in coding. It’s cause they actually found a bug on a circuit board that was ruining something.
Laura Pelkey: Oh my gosh, really?
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Yep. That’s where bugging came from.
Laura Pelkey: That is an, that is a great fun fact.
Mike Gerholdt: Fun fact, it’s an actual bug.
Laura Pelkey: That is a great fun fact.
Mike Gerholdt: All right. Last podcast of the year. Tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve, champagne, three, two, one, ball drops. Do you watch Ryan Seacrest? I watch Ryan Seacrest because I’m old.
Laura Pelkey: I don’t really…
Mike Gerholdt: You don’t have to admit to it. You’ve already admitted to a lot of things.
Laura Pelkey: I know, yeah. This is, I’ll just keep the admissions to [crosstalk].
Mike Gerholdt: But I figured, so I looked up what we did in 2020 and Jillian and I ended the year on a fun holiday kind of wrap up addition. And I thought I’d carry that through this year, Laura, with you. Just to keep things in… What we found, things that made us happy this year, and I threw in a few categories, the first category just to keep it generic is pop culture. I don’t know if you want to go first, but anything that you found maybe this year, that in the pop culture realm made you happy or I don’t know, you liked?
Laura Pelkey: For pop culture, I will say I’ve been watching a lot more television since the pandemic started. I think as probably many of us have. This is embarrassing, this is very embarrassing to say. I invite anybody who wants to, to judge me for this, but I’ve been actually recently started watching the show Love Island UK. And I hate to admit that, but I love it.
Mike Gerholdt: Because there’s a US version too, right?
Laura Pelkey: There’s a US version, but I actually feel more… I feel like the UK version, you don’t, they sound more intelligent.
Mike Gerholdt: They do?
Laura Pelkey: Because I’m learning all of these new British words, so all their slang. I feel it’s educational for me in a way.
Mike Gerholdt: It’s actually work prep for the next time you go to Dreamforce London.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah, exactly.
Mike Gerholdt: Just log all these hours as work prep.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if anyone else listening watches Love Island UK, but… I mean, I hate to admit it, but I really, I do enjoy it.
Mike Gerholdt: Guilty pleasure.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Guilty pleasure.
Mike Gerholdt: I… Well, first of all, I was, I think last year I talked about binge watching M*A*S*H. I finished that, I am contemplating starting it all over again. I watched every episode in order once a day, not…
Laura Pelkey: Wow.
Mike Gerholdt: One, let me clarify, one episode in order every single day. It took a while, but I got through every episode of M*A*S*H and I just so enjoyed that show growing up. But I finished that, went through a few other binge watchy stuff. I feel like it’s interesting because some of these, you’re kind of noticing like, oh this is clearly when they went back filming and stuff feels different, but I did find, and I know it’s on the third season, so I’m catching up. But I found You on Netflix.
Laura Pelkey: Oh yeah. That show.
Mike Gerholdt: It’s also funny because when you bring it up, it totally sounds like a really weird sentence.
Laura Pelkey: It does.
Mike Gerholdt: No, no. Laura, I found You on Netflix.
Laura Pelkey: It sounds, yeah. I think you should just say it around everyone and see what their reaction is.
Mike Gerholdt: Not Laura, I found You.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Yes. It’s a little creepy.
Laura Pelkey: I’ve heard that. Yeah. I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard that. But it’s a good show.
Mike Gerholdt: I like that it’s narrated in, you get their inner thoughts. That’s 90% of the show.
Laura Pelkey: Oh interesting.
Mike Gerholdt: 90% of the show is their inner dialogue that they have with themselves.
Laura Pelkey: Okay.
Mike Gerholdt: I have a lot of inner dialogue.
Laura Pelkey: I don’t ever want anyone to be hearing mine.
Mike Gerholdt: Oh my God. It’d be a hot mess.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. That would just be a mess.
Mike Gerholdt: One thing that we could, there’s no transition to that. None.
Laura Pelkey: No.
Mike Gerholdt: How do you transition off of inner dialogue? Hey, let’s talk about Salesforce features. Oh, that’s an obvious transition.
Laura Pelkey: Well, we’re building the fee… No, I’m just, I’m not even going to joke about that. Not even.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I was like “One thing you’ll hear me talking about all the time is Salesforce feature in my head.” I did look up, did you find what Salesforce feature that came out in 2021 that you liked? Excited about? Favorite?
Laura Pelkey: I will say my… I think the feature that I’m probably proudest of and that I think is the most useful for our customers at this point in time, and from my perspective as a security person, is the MFA assistant.
Mike Gerholdt: Imagine that.
Laura Pelkey: I know. I’m, I threw in the Love Island UK reference just so I would be less predictive.
Mike Gerholdt: Tried to throw everybody off the scent. It didn’t work
Laura Pelkey: Everything comes back to MFA or security work to me. But yeah, I’m super proud of that feature. I mean, this is a tool that we built. I did not build it, but a very talented team worked on it and built it to be native across all of the products built on the Salesforce platform to really enable our customers with a step by step process to implement multifactor authentication. Which as you know, it’s not just one click and done there’s a rolling out, there’s some change management aspects. It can be… It can take some time, but I’m super proud of this feature and I think it’s really helpful at the end of the day.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Well you’ll be pleased to know that I chose a feature that I’ve, I feel is in the same ballpark as yours. It’s security-esque minded, to be a security minded admin. In summer, we came out with expirations on perm set.
Laura Pelkey: Oh, yeah. That’s a good one.
Mike Gerholdt: I just like that… Hello, now I don’t have to set a calendar expiration or just forget completely.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: I just think it’s so cool.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: I love stuff that I can set a date on or a timer. If you knew how many things in my house were Google-ified or timered, I love to just be in my house and things turn on at the right time.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. You just feel like the…
Mike Gerholdt: It’s weird. Not as weird as watching Love Island UK, but it’s weird. But, and expiration dates on perm sets feel that way, right? I can set this thing up, I can be in the moment, I can do the thing, and then, oh, by the way, this needs to end on December 15th. Boop, don’t have to worry about it.
Laura Pelkey: That’s awesome. Right, and you’re already setting it up and so now your work is condensed to that one moment versus [crosstalk].
Mike Gerholdt: Yes.
Laura Pelkey: It’s such a time saver. And also just ensures that, ensures security.
Mike Gerholdt: Ensures that if you take time off on December 15th, that you don’t have to log in.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. That’s incredible.
Mike Gerholdt: Because you could be on Love Island.
Laura Pelkey: Right? You might be, you mean, you never know.
Mike Gerholdt: And they’ll probably take your phone.
Laura Pelkey: Oh, they do.
Mike Gerholdt: And you’re like, no, you don’t understand. I’m a Salesforce admin and I have to revoke this perm set.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah, they take your phone. You can’t talk to anyone outside the island. Actually it sounds a little extreme, but yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: A lot extreme.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Very extreme.
Mike Gerholdt: They must have a filter. What if somebody calls?
Laura Pelkey: I don’t… Yeah. I’m sure there’s, you have to talk to a producer or something.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Also how would you like to be that person?
Laura Pelkey: No. No, thank you.
Mike Gerholdt: Hey your brother just called. What’s going on? Oh, nothing just broke his toe.
Laura Pelkey: I like to be, I just, I like to be the viewer. A viewer, just a viewer.
Mike Gerholdt: Okay. Third thing… I mean in 2020, it was very much cooking. I did not give up cooking in 2021. I still cook a lot.
Laura Pelkey: Good.
Mike Gerholdt: Even though it’s the Home Chef… I love those make your own meal stuff like the Hello Fresh and whatever.
Laura Pelkey: Oh yeah. What’s the other one? Blue Apron, is that still around?
Mike Gerholdt: I’ve done that. It’s hard.
Laura Pelkey: Oh, is it? Okay.
Mike Gerholdt: It’s hard. We do Hello Fresh and Home Chef.
Laura Pelkey: Okay. Those are cool.
Mike Gerholdt: Home Chef is based in Chicago, so it’s pow at my front door right away.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: We did the Blue Apron one. I like that they’ve got different meals for different skillsets. I don’t know if they’re sitting at a computer, a hot monitor all day, slaving over a keyboard.
Laura Pelkey: I know.
Mike Gerholdt: Sometimes I just couldn’t bring myself to make some of those meal kits.
Laura Pelkey: Right. It’s hard enough just to get, just to move to the couch to turn on Love Island.
Mike Gerholdt: Right? Exactly. You understand the struggle.
Laura Pelkey: I get it. Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: My food find for this year is kind of a rediscovery. And it’s a rediscovery because in 2020, I didn’t make it to really any events, outdoor events like car shows or the fair or things like that. 2021, my house everybody’s vaccinated. We’ve got the boosters, all the shots. And we actually made it to, I want to say four or five different car shows and a national show as well.
Laura Pelkey: Oh, that’s awesome.
Mike Gerholdt: One thing that I forgot I, how much I loved about all of those events is the vendors. And in particular, one of them where they make the homemade lemonade and they chopped two or three lemons, they put them in some sort of medieval press, some sort of cup of sugar and a few chunks of ice and they throw in some water and then they shake the living daylights out of it. And then they hand it to you in some sort of sippy cup. I kid you not, at one car show, I bought so much lemonade from this one vendor that I walked up and she was like, “You’ve been great to us.”
Laura Pelkey: Oh my gosh.
Mike Gerholdt: “Give me your cup and I will fill it.”
Laura Pelkey: Aw.
Mike Gerholdt: I was like, “Thank you.” And she goes, “No, you’ve bought a lot of lemonade from us.” And to be fair, it was 98 degrees. It was the hottest show I’d ever been at, just, you were melting.
Laura Pelkey: Lemonade is great for something like that, for a day like that.
Mike Gerholdt: It’s perfect. It was perfect.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: I know it feels very simple, but that… It’s like, Lemonade’s a sandwich. It’s better when somebody else makes it.
Laura Pelkey: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Now that sounds good. Now I feel thirsty.
Mike Gerholdt: Right. And it goes all year. You can have lemonade in the winter. It’s not bad.
Laura Pelkey: No. I need to get some after this.
Mike Gerholdt: You feel kind of sunshine-y.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it is nice. I mean, it’s delicious.
Mike Gerholdt: Laura, what did you find for food this year? Not to distract you from my lemonade.
Laura Pelkey: I know, I’m just thinking about lemonade now. Well, let’s see.
Mike Gerholdt: It’s really good.
Laura Pelkey: There… Actually on my recent trip to New York, this is just a New York themed podcast, I guess, for some reason.
Mike Gerholdt: Well, I mean, we did Dreamforce New York
Laura Pelkey: Right. Oh, that makes sense. Not for some reason, actually for a very logical reason.
Mike Gerholdt: Also New York in the holiday season is beautiful.
Laura Pelkey: It’s fun. It’s beautiful. Yeah. I went to the best Italian restaurant I’ve ever been to in New York, run by a family that’s from Rome, so very authentic Italian. And I had a pasta carbonara, which is, it’s the very creamy, lots of cheese, I think there’s panchetta in it. The best carbonara I’ve ever had in my whole life. And I’ve had a lot and I’ve even tried to make it. And this was worlds beyond what I’ve ever had. And it’s just, now it’s just ruined forever because I will only want it from that Italian restaurant in New York.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah.
Laura Pelkey: Oh it was so good. It was so good, though.
Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Fresh, I’ve had fresh carbonara.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Not by somebody from Rome, but we… Two years ago, I feel, two or three years ago we were in New York and the team got together and we went to this really fun Italian restaurant, Jillian and a few of us. And we had a really great dish, but yeah. Fresh carbonara.
Laura Pelkey: Oh my gosh. And they make the pasta.
Mike Gerholdt: Fresh pasta.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Handmade pasta. Oh my God. It’s so good, I’m so hungry now, also.
Mike Gerholdt: For carbonara and lemonade.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Right. That would be kind of a weird, maybe a great combo. Have never tried it.
Mike Gerholdt: I don’t know. It could. I mean the lemonade’s very acidic, would help break up the creaminess of the carbonara.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. If anyone’s still listening to this and you would like to try that, please let us know how it goes.
Mike Gerholdt: Oh yeah. We’ll totally set up a lemonade and carbonara dinner at our next event.
Laura Pelkey: Yes. Yes.
Mike Gerholdt: That’s what we should do.
Laura Pelkey: Oh my gosh. That’s what we’re going to serve at the security booth at our next event.
Mike Gerholdt: Lemonade and carbonara.
Laura Pelkey: Only your true…
Mike Gerholdt: I could just see you standing there, “Can I scan in your badge for a little cup of carbonara?”
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. I would do it, I have no shame. Anything to get somebody to come over to talk to me, are you kidding? No shame. I would absolutely give away lemonade and carbonara.
Mike Gerholdt: What was that thing that you did at Trailhead DX? Chase the flag, is that what it’s called?
Laura Pelkey: Oh, capture the flag. Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Capture the flag. Yeah.
Laura Pelkey: Capture the flag.
Mike Gerholdt: She’s got to rename that.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Capture the lemonade..
Mike Gerholdt: Carbonara.
Laura Pelkey: Capture the carbonara.
Mike Gerholdt: Capture the carbonara.
Laura Pelkey: I bet you we probably get some people with that.
Mike Gerholdt: You have equally excited people who don’t have carbonara and then a whole area of people just napping.
Laura Pelkey: Yep. Yeah. Then there’s just the nap area.
Mike Gerholdt: Carb loaded on carbonara.
Laura Pelkey: They show up for carbonara, then we spring it on them that they’re actually participating in a hackathon. They want the carbonara, but I bet you, they try.
Mike Gerholdt: Oh, that’s a cruel, that would be a cruel trick. Have a 24 hour hackathon with all you can eat carbonara.
Laura Pelkey: Yes, my gosh. You have to fight sleep and you’re…
Mike Gerholdt: Oh, it’s… I mean, come on.
Laura Pelkey: A double edge sword.
Mike Gerholdt: It’s Survivor, right?
Laura Pelkey: Survivor. It’s developer Survivor.
Mike Gerholdt: Do you have anything with caffeine? Nope. We got this fresh glass of lemonade.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Nope, sorry. Just some herbal tea though if you would like to have some tea. Camomile.
Mike Gerholdt: Nice warm herbal tea.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: We’re mean.
Laura Pelkey: Yeah. You’re right now.
Mike Gerholdt: Guess who’s never going to hire us to do a hackathon?
Laura Pelkey: Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Everyone.
Laura Pelkey: Anyone, right? I was going to say. Yeah, I don’t know who does that, but definitely we won’t be on their sure list.
Mike Gerholdt: No. “Hey we should do a hackathon. Well, I know who not to hire.” It’s those crazy people over on the admins podcast.
Laura Pelkey: Yep. Yep.
Mike Gerholdt: Well, to tie a bow on this last podcast for 2021, if you’d like to learn more about all the things we just talked about, minus lemonade and the carbonara, please go to admin.salesforce.com to find those links and a few more or resources. You can stay up to date with us on social for all things admins. We are @Salesforceadmns. No I on Twitter. I am, of course @mikegerholdt on Twitter and Jillian, my co-host who is currently on leave right now, is @jilliankbruce. Of course, my guest host today was LauraPelkey. If you want to send carbonara to her or follow her on Twitter, you can follow her @laurapelkey1 because the original Laura Pelkey is off.
Laura Pelkey: Somebody beat me to it.
Mike Gerholdt: Probably. Maybe she’s on Love Island.
Laura Pelkey: She’s probably on Love Island. Yeah.
Mike Gerholdt: Not UK.
Laura Pelkey: No.
Mike Gerholdt: Anyway, with that last podcast for 2021. Stay safe, stay awesome, and stay tuned. We will see you in the new year.
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