This is Part 2 in our three part mini-series featuring some of the legends responsible for building Salesforce’s storied Dreamforce conference. 

On this episode, Linda, Kraig and Dan dive into the challenges of shifting Dreamforce from in-person to digital, the true meaning of understanding your audience, and how Salesforce plans to transform the future of B2B events marketing.

• You don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time. Take inspiration from different places and remix it with your own spin and flavor. Some of the best creations happen this way. 
• To reach new audiences, sometimes you have to borrow people from different industries. This can be a cheat code to unlock new doors. 
• Great experiences need to have an option to be experienced again. This is the potential opportunity of high- quality digital content mixed with in-person experiences. 
• To be truly unstoppable: fail fast, learn faster, apply, and repeat.

“The [Dreamforce] physical event gained inspiration from Disneyland. We made lots of trips to Disneyland to understand from the very best how to curate an on-site experience. And it's no different in this new world. We're gaining inspiration from the people who do it best, which is not just television but this next form of television– the on demand forms. So if you look at the experiences that Netflix or Peloton or YouTube are able to provide, we're gaining our inspiration from them and how they serve up content to their audiences.” — Linda

“My hires this year have not come from the event world. They've all come from the broadcast production world so that we can understand how to keep curating products that are going to be engaging to our viewers. We take that concept of ‘we've come here to tell a story.’ So we have to take advantage of all the tools and best practices out there in storytelling. And that means that we're not borrowing from the events world, we're borrowing from a completely different industry.” — Linda

“We're still learning. That whole idea of failing fast and learning quickly and applying--and also being inspired by others--that has always been what we were driven by from the very beginning. And that continues to be our focus now. So whatever medium we use, whatever end product there is, we desire to tell a story in the way that's most meaningful to our audience". — Linda