Few expect large-scale live events to resume soon due to the Covid-19 pandemic, however, primary-generation corporations have switched their primary meetings to virtual formats.
Salesforce, however, can simply completely abandon Dreamforce, the industry’s largest and biggest business, in any form in 2020, Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff told The Inshapeation in a report released Monday.
In April, Salesforce officially canceled the big event, originally scheduled for November 9 and 12, which last year attracted 170,000 registered attendees in San Francisco, and probably tens of thousands more who didn’t register. At the time, the software-as-a-service giant said it would host an online virtual event.
Salesforce also canceled the Tableau Conference 2020, its annual convention for the visualization of knowledge and business intelligence that attracted about 20,000 attendees. The Tableau convention, scheduled October 5-8 in Las Vegas, would also be virtual, the company said.
“Dreamforce is a fundamental logo for Salesforce, but there’s no Dreamforce this year,” Benioff told The Information.
He went on to say that he was no longer sure that the live occasion would be replaced through a virtual format, the generation news site reported.
Silverline, one of Salesforce’s leading distribution partners based in New York, has been working with Salesforce for months as its eco-formula marketing formula shifts to virtual conferences, said Kai Hsiung, Silverline’s leading expansion director at CRN.
“From this point of view, we were eager to see how a virtual Dreamforce could take place, with Silverline supporting it with all our virtual marketing capabilities,” Hsuing said.
But if that’s also canceled, “it probably wouldn’t have much effect on Silverline as a whole,” he said.
Instead, Silverline would focus its marketing resources on Salesforce marketing projects and “look forward to a once-in-person in 2021.”
Benioff also told The Information that he knew how long he would lead Salesforce, the company he founded in 1999 after leaving his post as the youngest vice president in Oracle’s history.
“I advise others and advise myself the same thing, that is, my brain is open to all possibilities, and the right thing for the future, I will,” Benioff said, according to the report.
The Information reported that Mike Micucci, who ran Salesforce’s network collaboration and e-commerce activities, had left the company.
Salesforce responded to comment requests about adjustments to Dreamforce plans.