Welcome to the DevZone at Dreamforce 2013, our biggest and most exciting experience for Salesforce Platform developers yet.  This year the festivities started on Monday and everything kicked off with a packed house of attendees both new and experienced to working with Force.com, Heroku and ExactTarget.  One of the most popular sections all day long was our Developer Library where the line remained long to take home free copies of workbooks and textbooks.

But of course, the DevZone is a lot more than just the library…

The Hackathon

For our hackers the DevZone will be open 24/7 as teams try to create the most excellent application using the Salesforce Platform, but that isn’t nearly as ground-breaking as the $1 million cash prize being handed over to the winner.  The Hackathon area has been buzzing with developers trying their hand at their prize.  It’s been very exiting to talk to developers as they work and watch people use both the new Salesforce1 technology and the rest of the platform.

Hands On Workshops and Developer Library

If you want to learn the Platform, the DevZone is the place to go.  Not only do we have the always popular library to pick up the printed texts, we have hands on workshops to walk new developers through various aspects of the Salesforce Platform.  The workshops are available in the Agenda Builder for registrations are a great way to get up to speed as a Salesforce Developer.

The Theaters

We have three theaters this year: Mobile, Community and Developer. Also available in the Agenda Builder, these are 30 minute dives into topics that are right on the DevZone floor.

Connected Apps Lab

What’s the Internet of Things?  Can you make Raspberry Pi signal SOS?  How can the Streaming API alert a node of connected hardware?  Find out all of this and more at the Connected Apps Lab, where hardware and software mix in unique ways to let the Salesforce Platform communicate with a variety of devices.

Breakout Sessions

But of course it would not be Dreamforce without the breakout sessions.  The rooms in the back part of the DevZone offer talks on a wide variety of aspects – from technical architecture to fine tuning your Visualforce and Apex code.  All of our sessions this year are filling fast, so be sure to keep an eye on Agenda Builder to see what topics might be of interest to you and get on the list as soon as possible.

But wait, there’s more…

Dreamforce is just beginning people and there is a lot more to be excited about this week.

Salesforce1

The next generation CRM application is here: Salesforce1.  It is already available for iOS and Android and there is information on developer.salesforce.com on how to get up and running with the new technology.  To see the application in action, you need not go any further than:

Salesforce Keynote

Marc Benioff’s keynote is hitting the Main Keynote Room in Moscone Center South at 9:00 AM on Tuesday.  It’s going to be packed and there overflow plans are already being put into place.  It’s the must-not-miss cornerstone moment of Dreamforce and will surely offer some incredible insight into the present and future for Salesforce.com.

Developer Keynote

For developers the other must-not-miss event is the Developer Keynote on Wednesday.  Kicking off at 10:30AM at Gateway in Moscone Center South, the keynote will spearhead what developers are going to want to know for the coming year when it comes to building applications on the Salesforce Platform.  Space is limited and seats are going fast, so if you haven’t put this on your Agenda Builder – don’t wait another second to do so.