A Look Back at the Most Iconic Moments of Dreamforce 2021

What a week! Trailblazers across the globe rejoiced as the grandest Salesforce cloud carnival, Dreamforce 2021, finally came to town. Beginning on 21st September; Dreamforce organized inspirational conversations, product launches, insightful sessions & amazing announcements for everyone; before finally coming to an end on 23rd September. Aimed at redefining the future of work & building a sustainable environment, Dreamforce 2021 was a great success. Let’s have a look at some of the most memorable moments from this year’s Dreamforce.

Marc Benioff’s Opening Keynote

It’s not Dreamforce if there’s no inspiring keynote from Salesforce CEO & co-founder, Marc Benioff to kick start it. And Dreamforce 2021 was no different. The theme for this year’s opening keynote was ‘Welcome to the Trusted Enterprise’ where he explained that the industry is in a serious trust crisis. He also spoke about the workspace, equality & sustainability crisis the industry is facing.

There’s nothing more iconic than Benioff’s Dreamforce-special shoes

Benioff further introduced a kind of playbook for “The Trusted Enterprise,” designed to help businesses earn the trust of their customers, employees, partners, & communities. The five main pillars of this playbook are:

• Trust: Trust needs to be a company’s #1 value as it’s the foundation for success.
• Customer-First: Companies that put customers at the center of everything will thrive, in which Salesforce’s Customer 360 can play a major role.

• Digital Headquarters: Embracing a remote-first, digital environment, with Slack as the primary channel of communication, cultivates a more inclusive & more productive workspace.
• Health and Safety: Technology, like Health Cloud 2.0, enables companies to return to ‘normal life’ quickly & safely.
• Sustainability: Prioritizing the planet, pledging to focus on sustainability, & contributing towards a better future is the responsibility of all the companies.

Slack as the New Digital Headquarters

After being acquired by Salesforce, Slack was definitely the star of the show. Not only was it a core part of the keynote, but there were many individual sessions also about it explaining Slack’s roadmap. Slack’s CEO & co-founder, Stewart Butterfield took centerstage in an exclusive session and unveiled new product innovations & features like ‘Clips’, an easy way for team members to quickly capture and share video recordings in-app; & Slack Connect, an easy way to meet with people outside of your organization. Slack’s crucial role in setting up & embracing the digital HQ culture was also discussed in detail

Promise of ‘100,000 Dreamforces’

When Marc Benioff & Bret Taylor announced from the event’s center stage their plan & vision for the future Dreamforce events, it definitely took everyone by surprise; in a good way. Their promise to deliver 100,000 personalized, customized & tailored Dreamforce experiences to Salesforce users across the globe received a huge shoutout from the crowd gathered there as well as the event’s Salesforce+ viewers. They explained how they’ll package all the excitement, content, demos, & entertainment of Dreamforce, personalize it according to the users’ requirements and then deliver it to them directly.

Launch of Salesforce’s ‘Backup and Restore’ Solution

Kicking off the amazing product launches, Salesforce launched its very-own ‘Backup and Restore’ solution. Marla Hay, Salesforce’s VP of Product Management, introduced it as the new data recovery service native to the Salesforce platform that was built with ease-of-use in mind. Some of the prominent features of the application like automatically creating backup copies of business-critical data, letting organizations restore & recover data in just a few clicks, & prioritizing data protection were also explained during the product launch.

Sustainability on Everyone’s Minds

Sustainability & becoming ‘net-zero’ were the hot topics throughout Dreamforce 2021, being discussed by Marc Benioff & the speakers alike. In the keynote session, Benioff explained how Salesforce had been striving to reach its goal of having ‘net-zero’ emissions across the entire value chain & utilizing 100% renewable energy only; a goal it had finally reached. They also shed light on some of the significant advancements that were made in the Sustainability Cloud like offering Slack-First Sustainability for better collaboration with suppliers and industry-specific climate action plans.

Exciting Luminary Sessions

Dreamforce events have a reputation for hosting special luminary speakers every year. Even this year, the event was made memorable by the presence of prominent guest speakers like American actor, producer, & author, Will Smith; American actor, producer, comedian, & writer, Jason Sudeikis; author & former monk, Jay Shetty; mayor of San Francisco, London Breed; award-winning writer, Minda Harts; author, journalist & television personality, Elaine Welteroth; U.S. Paralympian, Blake Leeper and the U.S. Gold Medal Gymnast, Aly Raisman. Famous personalities from the business world also shared their valuable insights with the Trailblazers.

Live Entertainment

No Dreamforce experience can be complete without live entertainment, and Dreamforce 2021 didn’t disappoint in this department as well. Whether it was the surprise performance by the popular band, Metallica at the very beginning of the keynote session or the performance by the Grammy-winning, American singer-songwriter, Lionel Richie himself. Dreamforce favorites, the FooFighters & Dave Grohl,  also entertained the crowd during the live concert at the end of the first day.