Look back – such an important part of organizing any event. This year I (Martin) did it mainly based on the feedback we received, both good and bad (actually there wasn’t that many negative comments).
Key numbers
- 415 attendees with 64% of them planning to enjoy the long day (I would say we are the content longest conference I’m aware of);
- 43% from Czech Republic, 35% from Europe, 11% from Slovakia and 10% from the rest of the world – still roughly 50:50 betwen CZ/SK and foreigners;
- majority of consultants, not trivials number (12%) of business users – almost on par with admins;
- 50% first timers – not sure where we got them, but great to see them, next year I’m looking to see the survival rate;
- 30l of tea has been served during the day;
- Kytky od potoka made again a few attendees happy at the end of the event;
- 28% of attendees paid themselves, for 55% the company provided the ticket – which is awesome!
- 9,33 points out of 10 rating;
- 10% of attendees donated to the cause we selected – mission accomplished!
- 1 478 official photos (and counless of unofficial).
CzechDreamin is one of the best technical community-driven conferences in Europe.
Sessions & Speakers
As every year it was great to see the interest, we got close to 300 submissions and select the right mix was hard. We knew that some sessions will have just a handful of attendees but it was still worth to include them in the mix. And we are glad that we finally covered some topics for the first time as we never found space for them so far – speaking about Slack (yes, surprise), Field Service or OmniScript.
- the technical depth was the most appreciated part of the event, closely followed by networking opportunities;
- Evan Ponter, Matt Meyers, Pei Mun Lim and MUDr. Martina Maskova were mentioned the most in the feedback;
- the burnout risk is real and resonated with people even better then we foresaw (“I found the closing keynote to be the absolute best”);
- the following sessions have been explicitly listed in the feedback, worth checking out?
- Evan and limitations of dashboard – attendees plan to use them on projects they are right now (Overcoming the standard Lightning Dashboard limitations with custom lightning page + custom fields + flow + PATCH request. Mind = Blown!);
- Congratulations, you are agile. Your product is still late, Marin Niehues (nice comment – many agilists forget about the main metric of the company. Which is revenue 🙂 );
- From Chaos to Confidence: Running Global Salesforce Rollouts Without Losing Your Mind, Leanne Botwright & Liz Elliott – this was definitely one of the most interesting and relatable talks of the day. This talk made you think and laugh at the same time. Funny presentation and lovely to see the interaction between both speakers;
- Build it Right – Salesforce Architecture tips with Lukasz – practical and sensible advice throughout with real life examples and horror stories;
- Beyond Best Practices: Why Following the Rules Can Break Your Code? and Build It Right: Salesforce Architecture Tips Every Team Should Know – these were great for what I’m encountering right now;
- What to Do in the First 24 Hours After a Salesforce Data Breach – was motivating to look even further beyond my current role, thank you for bringing such valuable topic. I believe this part is mostly overlooked but extremely crucial, the lecture moved along a bit too quickly in some parts; I didn’t even have time to read everything on the slides;
- Revenue cloud vs CPQ by Oleg & Georgiy;
- Robert Sosemann’s session about custom extension of Agentforce;
- Screen flows – beyond the Next button;
- “I loved Pei’s session around using critical thinking skills in the age of AI”;
- Paul Ginsberg & Roger Farrow – very practical session about understanding needs of people with their real life experience;
- “I really liked the new yoga session, which was great to attend as a final session :)”
- Michal’s one – the guy who ‘tried’ to deliver a user story during the session – with the help of Claude Code;
- Nicolas’ class about refreshing sandboxes: that’s another long term problem I have that I will try to tackle using his product. I was already using it for other tasks and I’m really happy with it, so I’m glad I found out a new way it can help me;
- Chandan Mullick covered a way to inject code via Screen Flows that was novel, but I’m pretty sure is a security vulnerability. Equal parts intrigue and concern to look into. Still credit for finding something new;
- My favorite was probably Beyond Best Practices: Why Following the Rules Can Break Your Code.;
- More Than a Training Plan: How Admins Drive Real Organizational Change (Justyna Krajewska & Marie van Roekel): thank you for the insights and inspiration! No need to be nervous: we’re all friends here 🙂 It was a truly great and useful presentation. More of this type of content should be shown at tech-events;
Sponsors
The event won’t happen without them and while this year was harder to get them, we survived and are eternally grateful for supporting us. While speaking slot is not part of any sponsorship level it is interesting to hear the community that they want to give sponsors more space and hear more, now we just might need to find a way how to do it without slipping into a “cheap” sales pitch which no-one will like.
- An interactive game is always a good idea! I enjoyed the one from Enehano even though it was a bit trivial. Question: where is our Big4? 😅 I remember Accenture doing some very competitive timed games in previous years.
- Titans keeps being my favourite! Easy to talk and get tailored demo from! Given the size of the lobby, they all did great to share the limited space 🙂
- Thank you very much for being there.
- The sponsors were easy to find and easy to talk to. And I love love the introduction of each sponsor you do during the welcome talk
- I spoke with representatives from most of the sponsors. All were friendly and I made it clear that I was not actively looking for myself. I would offer advice to have someone focused on stamping cards and less on sales since there were several times where people simply wanted the stamp but the staff were busy giving demos or talking with prospects;
- The sponsors did a good job of being present and available without being obnoxious;
- Fabulous conversations and finally a good use case for AI. Thanks PDF Butler for that one!
- More gamification please!
- I could find the sponsors easily, but there wasn’t enough buzz or good demo jam experiences to encourage me to visit any of them in any depth.
- From the sponsor side, everything was absolutely fine. Very interested and friendly.
- A big thank you to all our sponsors for joining forces to make this amazing event happen. May the SalesForce be with you as you continue to grow your business, create new opportunities, and achieve even greater success.
Why to attend next time?
- I would tell my boss that if we don’t come, we really miss an opportunity to meet some very awesome people and get some new ideas. Even a casual chat with the person next in line for a coffee could open up doors;
- It gives me an opportunity to come back with ideas;
- Lots of content, lots of learning, lots of networking, variety of sponsors, cost effective to get to Prague and value for money whilst there!
- I enjoyed the more technical talks. If it was only about the marketing, HR and soft-skill stuff, I would be happy to miss next year, but the tech talks were really inspiring and made me want to hear more next year;
- The personality of the people, the networking! You meet so many amazing people and make connections that last.
Networking and learning from real users, not marketing and sales pitches
- A lot of takeaways during newtowrking from the people who already solved the problems we are facing now, a bunch of new JIRA Epics were raised after having conversations with peers.
- The food and drinks as usual are great. The number and variety of sessions and especially the people – speakers, organizers and attendees – are what make CzechDreamin amazing. And the weekend trip is always one of the best parts for me, I love getting to know people more without the stress of event-day activities.
- The quality of the presentations and the speakers was truly exceptional, and you probably wouldn’t find such a concentration of Salesforce professionals anywhere else in the Czech Republic;
- it is not commercialized it is real use case oriented practical/real life experience very well mixed – technical and non technical topics – anyone can join;
- As a consultant, seeing the demo jam and meeting the ISV partners and their solutions, is a great way to get to know more solutions and apps that I didn’t know before. Also, I met 2 new potential partners to do business with. Lastly: the content is/was so much better than any Salesforce-organised event: I actually learned something useful!
- I already told my boss he needs to come too next year!
Next year?
We asked about your feeling about two days event – there are two many great sessions to include and while we want to make the agenda packed it might be too packed, so extending to two slightly slower days sound like a great idea to us. Not that excited feedback from the attendees though, but let’s see what we will invent.
We also want to get back to workshops – we had them the very first year and the feedback was that they take too much of the day. This year we tried again and got only positive feedback, at the same time it was shorter workshop and due to the schedule it was one to one, so you didn’t miss anything.
Saying that we might do a “pre-workshop” day or just a half day with a few workshops to choose from and then the regular event. Or maybe something else, let’s see – finances, team energy, number of submissions. We will keep you posted for sure.
Also great feedback about marking sessions as Green, Yellow or Red based on their level. We historically tried it with 101, 201 and 401 marks which people didn’t really get but even harder it was to get the “right” level from the speakers – what is for some really deep level is for someone else just scratching a surface. Saying that we still ask speakers what level they feel they have and count with it in the agenda, but this year we didn’t make it obvious to the attendees.
All in all – next year, same date (last Friday of May), same place. Looking forward!
PS: Will we have main prizce? Who knows!
