Closing out Dreamforce 2014, Marc Benioff and Parker Harris engaged with the audience in an intimate Q&A-style keynote in Moscone West. I joined this last Dreamforce session to bring you the highlights of the discussion:

Vertical Focus

When a member of the audience who worked in the life sciences sector requested more segmented breakout sessions at the next Dreamforce, Marc Benioff acknowledged salesforce.com’s initiative in moving towards more granular vertical sessions to provide more relevant tracks for attendees. Look out for more vertical-specific content and deeper dives into sub-verticals at Dreamforce 2015.

Design/UX Led Products

Benioff spoke of the two major announcements this year, Salesforce Wave Analytics Cloud and Salesforce Lightning, and the integrity of design in their creation. According to Benioff, design isn’t just about making things beautiful; it’s about investigating the very root of how people use technology. In his own words, “design is part of every implementation.”

Salesforce Adoption

An audience member from Chile asked for advice to boost Salesforce adoption in his organization. Benioff agreed that driving adoption of new technology is no easy task for any organization, but it’s the only way salesforce.com will keep their customers, which is why he’s committed to ensuring that customers are deriving value from their products. Benioff recognized that “adoption is a measure of customer success,” and success is determined by business outcomes.

Women in Tech

Inevitably, the foot-in-mouth incident last week involving Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, came up in the discussion. Benioff addressed the issue with remarkable impartiality, saying that he feels empathy for Nadella and that “it’s a hard issue in our industry specifically.” He goes on to advocate bringing more visibility to the issue of gender inequality in the workplace by admitting that “we’re not doing enough, we haven’t been doing enough, and we need to do more.” Gender discrimination is a highly sensitive issue, and Benioff acknowledged that he’s glad that the tech industry went through the uproar last week, as it amplifies the issue and reminds us all that gender equality cannot be achieved without action.

This session featured a great dialogue between the hosts and the attendees — I thought it was a very engaging and intimate way to close out the event. We hope you had an amazing experience at Dreamforce, and gained valuable takeaways. Get in touch to continue the conversation.