A Fun-filled Salesforce Ohana Meet

I’m pretty excited to write my first blog, I guess I was waiting for the right time! Glad that my debut will be with a blog on the Salesforce Ohana and the community spirit within Salesforce.
Salesforce Ohana meet, held at Hyderabad on 10th and 11th of January 2018, is a really good start for this New Year, for anyone involved with the Salesforce community in India! A small behind-the-scenes tidbit is that the meet up was planned and put together in just 3 weeks!! All thanks to the core team, Gaurav Kheterpal, Rajdeep Dua, Vishwa Vikas Dagla, Naga Kiran, the entire Salesforce Developer Relations team and many more.
The meetup was specifically aimed at bringing the actual meaning of Ohana (Hawaiian equivalent to Family), Partners, Community Leaders/Reps and Students. It makes more sense, the students get to understand more about Salesforce and its community (one of a kind), the community leaders/reps help them understand the Salesforce culture and partners can interact with the students and absorb them into their teams! This was a great thought. This event was scheduled for 2 days in Novotel Hitech City, Hyderabad – they have some amazing conference halls!
The event had members from Salesforce, Jacob Lehrbaum, VP of Developer Relations, Salesforce, Rajdeep Dua, Vishwa Vikas Dagla and Nagakiran to name a few and the awesome partner community – ABSYZ, Apps associates, Biznussoft, Briskminds, Celebel, Concret.io, Cloud Vandana, Dazeworks, Dhruvsoft, Metacube, Nagarro, Persistent, PopcornApps, Sambodhi Tech Solutions, Virtu Whiz. Over 90 charismatic students from different colleges – Aditya Engineering College, MVGR College of Engineering, GL Bajaj College of Engineering, Keshav Memorial Institute of Technology, NRI Institute of Technology, Vardhaman Engineering College and JECRC Engineering College and Community Leaders and MVPs – Shivanath Devinarayanan (MVP and User Group Leader of Gurgaon, Chennai and Kerala), Vinay Chaturvedi (MVP and User Group Leader, Noida), Pritam Shekhawat (MVP), Akash Mishra (User Group Co-leader, Noida), Parth Vasni (User Group Leader, Pune), Abhinav Gupta, Atul Gupta, Gaurav Kheterpal, Women In Tech leaders and members like Surbhi Narula (WIT Noida), Neetu, Payal Mittal, Payal Agarwal, Radhika Bansal, Nishi Kushwahah, Ritika Bhargava, Shruti Sridharan and many more.
Day 1 – We were all pumped up to know how this event was going to be done and especially since it is the first ever of its kind! The registration desk was flowing with the students, partners and community leaders/reps for their badges, after which we were re-routed to the event hall. And then was a good start to the event with the introduction and some soulful music. The agenda also included a few breaks for Breakfast, lunch and Tea. The attraction to those breaks was the Student Interaction (SI) where we as partners made the most of it (My fav part :)) An addition to this was the bell that the coordinators had organized for keeping track of our breaks! (+5 points for that ;)). The introduction had the Salesforce team introducing themselves and the thought behind the Ohana Meet to the crowd and introducing Jacob too. The Partners had a chance to portray their value proposition to the audience, Community leaders and WIT leaders got to impart confidence in students’ minds about Salesforce and the college faculty got to share more information about their colleges! Every member got a chance to introduce themselves right from Jacob Lehrbaum, VP of Developer Relations, Salesforce. Each and every partner got their time slots to showcase their company and fun facts, college faculties got their time to unleash the potential of their students and not to forget, our community members too. After lunch, there was a new idea pitched in by our WIT leader, Radhika Bansal – the elevator pitch as part of the student interaction session, where the students were given chances to tell the audience why they are are the best in 60 secs. There was also a session headed by Salesforce MVP Gaurav Kheterpal – the panel discussion. It was an open-ended discussion where anyone from the crowd could ask questions that they have in mind about Salesforce. There were a few students who caught our eye during the day. Many were curious to know how Salesforce works and how it is safe for customers and many more. The fun-filled 1st day of sessions wrapped up by 6 and we went back after a day well spent.
We did have our fun at our hotel with midnight dosas, chai and kulfis with the others present at the event.
Day 2 – Tour, swags and interview day! All thanks to the kind invite from Salesforce, we, partners were all dressed up and ready for the Salesforce office tour at “The Salesforce Office, Hyd”. After a great breakfast and a good office tour, where I and my team almost got lost in the huge office, we reached back to the venue by 11.00am. We could see the eagerness in each student’s eyes. There were career counselling sessions that were taken by leaders like Nishi, Atul, Roshan, Abhilash and Abhinav. After this, the booths opened! Each partner was given booths to conduct their interview and shortlist candidates. After each candidates’ interview, (this is a must say!) they had even thought through the process of letting the other partners know the student’s availability etc – a great process! There were lunch and tea breaks too. In the afternoon, we were given the opportunity to distribute swags out to students. After the tea break, the selected students were announced in the hall and we all headed over to take pics with the core team, other Salesforce group members and students. A post-event dinner was arranged for the community members too 🙂 The event wrapped up with all bearing happy faces, exchanging numbers and having high hopes.
I really enjoyed being a part of this event and all thanks to Dazeworks! Looking forward to having more events like the same so that we stay truly as Ohana! Special thanks to the core team who arranged this event at such short notice. Bringing more than 150 people in the mid of a week despite everyone’s busy schedule is no small game!