Last night in San Francisco the rain fell lightly, the weather grew cold, and I barely noticed. This morning the brisk temperature continued, the sun was shining, but again, I barely noticed. To me the forecast was cloudy. Could it be any better —today is the official start of Dreamforce 09!
As a pre-cursor to the main event, the Force.com Zone was open last night, and teeming with activity: The new Code Consultation booths were overflowing with customers looking to expand their skills in Visualforce and Apex, eager developers got a jump-start on working through the great new tutorials, and the buzz around the Hackathon was heating up. Today should be amazing — there are over 17,000 attendees converging on the Moscone Center
The great thing about the Force.com zone being open yesterday was that it was not too busy (yet!), gave me more time to meet up with many of the Developer.force.com community; In particular the bloggers. I chatted with a fellow Aussie, John Rotenstien, who runs a Salesforce-focused blog which I was not familiar with before but have now added it to my rss feeds, Jeff Douglas from Appiro, who regularly posts some fantastic Salesforce code tip and tricks on his blog, and many, many others. It is always a great reflection of the power of a company, and technical vision when the broader developer community is passionate enough about what they do that they take the time to write about it and tell the world.
I have some free time this morning to enjoy the Marc's keynote, (if you are not able to attend in person, you can view the live webcast here) meet with more customers, and enjoy the event. In the afternoon I'm back at the Force.com Zone, and conducting a few of the code consultation sessions. If you a blogger, make sure you come by and introduce yourself — I'm always looking to add more great sites to my favorites.
But for now, it's time for Dreamforce.