Dreamforce was always a bit of a disruption for me as a San Franciscan—traffic, closed roads, did I mention traffic? This year, instead of sitting in my car waiting to inch forward, I shared a Waymo to get around The City, and experienced Dreamforce firsthand. As a marketer, I was eager to see how Salesforce presented itself. As a company, Beezwax paid close attention to this conference, especially innovation happening with Tableau and Slack.
Welcome to “the largest AI event in the world”
First, can I mention the scale of this event? 40,000+ attendees, with hundreds of sessions, vendors and entertaining diversions available throughout the 87 acres of Moscone Center. I walked nearly 20 miles at Dreamforce, soaking in the buzz of my fellow Trailblazers (the attendees). Together with my teammates, we took in 3 days of technical and business sessions, watched dozens of product demos, spotted celebrities, and even shook the hand of Marc Benioff, who posed quickly for an ‘ussie‘.
The Big Announcement: Agentforce
As someone working with Beezwax developers on Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and AI, Agentforce grabbed my attention with its customizable agents designed to enhance workflows. These agents streamline tasks for service bots and sales teams. Agentforce Studio—a low-code platform—enables rapid development and deployment, bolstered by integrations with AWS, Google Cloud, and IBM.
Tableau AI: Smarter Insights, Seamless Integration
Shifting focus to Tableau (yes, it now has AI, too). They introduced AI-driven analytics for real-time insights. The standout feature, Tableau Pulse, offers automated data monitoring and integration with Slack. The new VizQL Data Service enhances query capabilities, making data analysis accessible and efficient. These advancements make Tableau's AI features invaluable for personalized insights. Don't worry, our Tableau team is equipped to help you navigate these updates.
Slack Innovations: AI-Powered Workflow Boost
Slack launched AI-powered features as well, including Slack AI, which offers automatic note-taking and improved search functionalities. As you may already know, many of the features from Quip have been seamlessly integrated into Slack, boosting team productivity. It was very nice to see demos of these soon-to-be-released features. Perhaps most exciting are Slack expanding as a developer platform, with changes to Slack APIs, which allow you to pull relevant information into your communication stream for better collaboration.
Dreamforce's Impact on San Francisco
Dreamforce 2024 attracted over 40,000 attendees, giving a much-needed economic boost to the city, especially for hotels, restaurants, and local businesses. Seeing so many people downtown and full tables at restaurants was great. So, if you were like me in past years, stuck in traffic watching the time tick by, know that this huge event helped support our beautiful city. And if you're waiting on the onramp for better Slack workflow or Tableau viz, we've got you covered.
Final Thoughts
Dreamforce was an eye-opener for me—both for the sheer scale of the event and the remarkable advances in Tableau and Slack.
Header photo by Russ Catanach © 2024 – used with permission.