Jam-Packed June
June 2025 was an exceptionally busy time for the Salesforce Trailblazer Community based in, or visiting, London. It started even earlier for me - release webinars take a few weeks to put together - at the end of May, and was maybe made worse by some of my own decisions. I’ve had a week in sunny Norfolk to recharge and now feel up to thinking about it again!
June 3rd - Summer 25 Webinar
This is a perennial challenge, although it used to be Dreamforce looming over the Winter release that compressed the timescales. Now that Salesforce have decided to move the London World Tour to mid-June, the Summer webinar gets a bit frantic too. While they may look ordinary easy, there’s quite a bit of work goes into putting on these webinars - as well as identifying the features of interest, testing them out, creating the slide deck and figuring out what to say about them, you also have to continually check to make sure that the features you are going to cover haven’t been pulled or their impact reduced. And that’s without all the effort from others to market and promote the event!
I was pleased to partner with Credera to continue presenting these webinars - they’ve been a fixture for over a decade and I really didn’t want to see them disappear, even if I have to remind myself of this when I’m panicking with a couple of days to go and the content still unfinished! I’d actually started testing OBS to broadcast on Youtube, which I’m sure would have been hilarious given how unfamiliar I was with the setup. A lucky escape all round!
If you missed the live event, you can watch on demand here.
June 4th - London Salesforce Developer Meetup
When to run community events is always a tricky decision when there are Salesforce events happening in the same timeframe. Do you have them before and pick up some of those that are over for the later events, or afterwards and run the risk that everyone is exhausted and looking to do something else. We went early this time - something I pushed for and thus couldn’t complain when I found myself with a stack of things still to do.
I’d also volunteered to give a talk on Summer ‘25 for Developers. How hard could it be? I’m already doing a full Summer ‘25 webinar, so this will just be cutting out a few slides, right? Not so much as it turns out. Strangely, a webinar aimed at Salesforce customers and prospects appies a light touch when it comes to technical detail, whereas a developer community group wants to get down in the weeds. The content for this event went even closer to the wire, as I finished it in the Old Ivy House around 5pm!
Maxim Makarenko, the other speaker on the night, was far more prepared and gave us an excellent talk on the tribulations of packaging flows.
While we can’t put these events on without our speakers, we also need our hosts/sponsors otherwise we’d have nowhere to meet up. Thanks to Stu Stretch and GoCardless for providing us with a great space, food and drink, and even a few bottles of bubbles.
June 5th - London’s Calling Speaker/MVP Drinks
Now I’m aware that I’m straying dangerously close to first world problems when presenting a social event as some kind of hardship, but in my defence I was quite tired and could have easily stayed at home! As it was I tripped up to London again and was, of course, pleased that I made the effort. Great conversations, making new friends and reconnecting with old friends, finding out all the cool things that everyone has been up to - there’s nothing like it. Great food and drink (again), this time sponsored by SmarterPay (Squirrel!) and SUMO Scheduler.
June 6th - London’s Calling
What can I say about the largest Salesforce community conference in the world? Quite a lot actually - I partnered again with Credera for this event and you can read all about the day on their blog. Thanks and gratitude to the organisers for yet another incredible event - take a bow Louise Lockie, Francis Pindar, Kerry Townsend, Todd Halfpenny and Jade Hawken.
My session was on proactive limit tracking and, of course, included a sample application - the Limit Tracker - still a work in progress, but something I’m adding to quite regularly. Thanks to Fabien Taillon for the photo!
June 10th - House of Titan
This was the event that I was most intrigued by, as Titan were trying something entirely new for the Salesforce community, at least in my experience. They rented a (beautiful) house, threw an influencer party, and offered accommodation and transport for the World Tour and TrailblazerDX events to members of the community. I could only make the influencer party, but that was quite the experience in it’s own right. I was collected at Stratford and Uber’d to a what felt like a James Bond/Ethan Hunt location in the Kent countryside - a former coach house set in acres of parkland full of people chatting over cocktails or huddled over laptops. All we were missing were threats from a super-villain or two. As the evening wore on it became clear that our role was to have fun, talk about all things Salesforce, and do a little filming. A couple of private chefs turning up to feed us was a rather nice touch too.
I really think Titan should be commended for this, and not just because I got to go along! It’s not often that we see a new approach, especially one that focuses on the community rather than spendy customers, and I certainly hope that they got what they needed out of it, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with next year to top this. If anyone from Titan is reading this, I’d also be delighted to receive an invite again next year :)
Big thanks to Alice Meyer for herding the cats, Kyli Katja for the smooth filming experience, and the whole Titan team for coming up with the concept and executing it so well. Special thanks to Khyati Pal, who led our group of Uberites with such natural authority and expertise that I was convinced she was part of the Titan organising group rather than an attendee like me!
June 11-12th - London World Tour and TrailblazerDX
London World Tour was another event that I was pleased to partner with Credera for, and once again you’ll find my thoughts on their blog in the fullness of time. In the meantime, here’s a short video with my highlights.
I must also mention something that I found very entertaining during the Agentforce World Tour keynote from Zahra Bahrololoumi CBE. I had a great seat for the keynote - right at the front and appearing on the video feed an awful lot - here I am in the video taking a picture of myself in the graphic while Zahra stands right in front of me:
A couple of days earlier I’d watch the episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry stretches his legs out courtside at a basketball game and trips up Shaq, injuring him in the process:
Every time I stretched out I remembered this and immediately put my feet back underneath me - quite an embarrassing end for my Salesforce career if I put the CEO of UK&I out of commission!
June 14th - Gallagher Premiership Rugby Final
Because apparently everything now has to happen in June, the final was moved out a couple of weeks. It was a tough job, but somehow I found the strength to make my annual pilgremage to Twickenham and watch Bath pip Leicester to the honours with my usual crew:
July 2nd - Start Your AI Journey The Smart Way
Turns out that while June might be soon over, the Salesforce events keep coming. Join me, Steve Fouracre, Alejandra Sivori and Prof. Muthu Ramachandran for a discussion covering establishing a business vision, effectively collating use cases, how to implement training and the importance of an AI Board for successful delivery of AI projects. Sign up at : https://trailblazercommunitygroups.com/events/details/salesforce-salesforce-isv-community-group-presents-start-your-ai-journey-the-smart-way-session-2/