Salesforce.com’s developer community has officially
surpassed 1.7 million people. That's more than twice the population of San Francisco—so it’s no surprise that the developer experience at Dreamforce has gotten bigger and better year after year. This year, though, we're taking the Developer experience to the next level. Here’s a sneak peak of what to expect in October.

1. Big-Time Keynote

For the past two years, the Developer Keynote has sold out. You spoke, we listened: this year, that won't be a problem because we got a room to hold three times the attendees (boom!). It's still a good idea to get there early, though, because you'll want to be close enough to snag those pearls of wisdom. Expect fresh faces plus loads of new technology and demos at this must-attend keynote.

2. See It All in Action

As always, the Developer Zone (#devzone) in Moscone West is the place to be for developers. Every year, the DevZone evolves; this year, expect more diverse developer activities for every type of attendee. Some highlights: more ISV involvement, and all the fun that comes with wearable tech!

 The best thing about the content in the DevZone is that over 50% of it is delivered by the developer community. Drop in on one of the three theaters offering 30-minute sessions, take a look at “Demo-palooza,” an innovation “stadium” experience MC’d by one of your favorite developer evangelists, and don’t forget about Heroku! We’ll be showing off Heroku’s end-to-end customer applications from companies like Instacart, Automatic, and Urban Dictionary. We’ll also have JAVA, Node, PHP, and Ruby experts on hand to teach attendees how to build sophisticated customer-facing apps in any language.

3. Get Your Hands Dirty 

We all know that hands-on experiences are some of the most rewarding experiences at Dreamforce. Many attendees want to walk away with specific solutions and knowledge they can bring directly back to their jobs. This year, there will be even more hands-on training—in fact, everything about developers is hands-on.

We are offering four new half-day workshops to the DevZone this year. These workshops are about developing skills and building apps. Here's the rundown:

1. First, we'll have a no-code App Building workshop dedicated to point-and-click development
2. We'll also have a great workshop designed to take your existing experience admin skills and start sprinkling in some Apex and Visualforce, a great way to dip your toes into the programmatic experience.
3. Next is a workshop tailored to developers with experience on other platforms who want to come up to speed quickly on the Salesforce1 platform.
4. Finally, we've created a coast-to-coast Salesforce1 platform for experienced Salesforce1 developers that spans all three pillars of the platform: Force.com, Heroku, and ExactTarget.

And, of course, we're bringing back the very popular coding challenges where you can code and win very cool prizes!

Our most popular sessions are Code Consultations. Bring your 3-4 most important questions to an expert for a 15-minute appointment (sign up in Agenda Builder). These sessions don’t have the 25% reservation rule applied, so register as soon as possible! And don’t forget our 10- to 15-minute mini-hacks, also with fabulous prizes!

4.  Dedicated Sessions

In addition to real-time demos, there will be over 250 dedicated developer sessions. These technical sessions have everything from beginner to advanced topics on application lifecycle management, integration, mobile development, and more. There's something for everyone here.

A constant theme across all Dreamforce sessions is partner and community involvement, so more than half of the developer sessions are hand-picked from the best community submissions. Just under half of our total sessions are presented in our DevZone theaters, and all of these will be presented by members of the community and partners. All sessions will focus on tangible, practical takeaways, in code or demos, that you can start leveraging for your solutions.

In addition, more than 20 technical sessions are specifically focused on creating apps built on Heroku. Developers and IT leaders can learn how to build, scale, and deploy beautiful customer facing apps for every type of business—e-commerce, marketing, IoT… you name it. And the best part is that all of these apps are seamlessly synced to your Salesforce data on the Salesforce1 Platform.

We’ll have the Developer Library again in the DevZone, so grab these tools to walk away with unfathomable information, or go to the developer site to download online information.

5. Learn to Crossover

It's no accident that we’ve placed the new Admin Zone next to the DevZone. It is a breakthrough to recognize the crossover between Salesforce Admins and Developers. Considering the ease of creating apps with point-and-click and declarative development, many people are acting as both admins and developers for their companies.

There is a small space between people who consider themselves developers and those who consider themselves admin—with so many synergies between the two, we are looking to fill that space at Dreamforce and make additional connections. So we hope to have a steady stream of admins and developers between the zones—we can all be #AwesomeAdmins.

Did you miss The Road to Dreamforce: Developers & Heroku? See what’s being built this year for Developers and Heroku Developers at Dreamforce. On top of these programs, see how Admins are joining in on the fun. Experienced Dreamforce pros, Adam Gross, Vice President, Product Management, Heroku, Adam Seligman, VP, Developer Relations, and Erica Kuhl, Sr. Director of Community will get you up to speed on everything you need to know to get the most out of Dreamforce. They’ll also let you in on some behind-the-scenes Dreamforce secrets.