Predictions for the Dreamforce 2016 keynote

What’s going to happen at the Dreamforce Keynote this Wednesday?

Given that Desynit is home to not one but three Salesforce MVPs, you would think that we’d be able to answer that question without any hesitation. The announcements in CEO Marc Benioff’s keynote address at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual global gathering in San Francisco, are never any less than awesome. The intense pre-event speculation just makes for an even more powerful run up to the main show. 

Sadly, all of our MVPS are under NDA and despite our best attempts, we completely failed to extract any insider information whatsoever about the announcements to be made this Wednesday.

That being said, based on the pre-conference press reports and having a good number of Dreamforce events under our Desynit belt (collectively speaking), there are a few elements of the keynote that we still feel pretty confident in calling. So here they are, in no particular order, our top five predictions for the Dreamforce keynote 2016:-

• There will be a big focus on Salesforce Einstein, Benioff’s venture in AI; the product Salesforce refers to as “world’s first comprehensive artificial intelligence platform for CRM.” According to Forbes, Einstein is not just another of Salesforce’s  ‘cloud’ product suite but instead, will ‘serve as a new nerve system across the entire business.’

• You can expect to see a number of prominent female speakers joining Benioff at the keynote, including Melinda Gates, Patricia Arquette, Billie Jean King and Deborah Duggan. His championship of women in leadership is pretty consistent from year to year (and this year in particular, as he’s publicly backed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign).

• Marc Benioff will use the opening of the keynote as an opportunity to reinforce his commitment to philanthropy, and will (justifiably) have his audience in tears as he tells the story of why the world needs to adopt his 1-1-1 model. Hopefully he will convince many other organisations along the way to make a similar commitment.

• Parker Harris will at some point join Benioff on stage in some kind of fancy dress, and slapstick roleplay between himself and the CEO will follow. We suspect that there may be a German theme this year…just a prediction.

• A ‘mature’ pop star will open the event. MC Hammer, Huey Lewis & the News, Stevie Wonder and The Beach Boys have all performed in this slot in previous years. Anyone born after 1976 will feel uncomfortable. 

Catch the Keynote over breakfast in Bristol

Of course, not everyone is lucky enough to make it over to San Francisco for the conference. There is no need to miss out however – the good news is that Salesforce are sponsoring ‘Dreamforce Viewing Parties’ worldwide, and Desynit will be hosting one right here in Bristol on the 6th October, at 8am. So if you fancy catching the keynote over a full English breakfast on Bristol’s iconic Glassboat, then RSVP to our invitation here. It’s a free event, and we even have some Salesforce goodies to hand out. Come along and we’ll see if we’ve called it right. You never know with Salesforce, there may be even more surprises….