Dreamforce is one of the most exciting times to be in the Salesforce Ohana, and the Marketing Cloudcast was there to bring you live interviews with some trailblazing marketers who are thinking about leveraging Salesforce in new and innovative ways. Our new hosts, Megan Collins and Tina Rozul, are here to take you inside Dreamforce.

We had the opportunity to speak with a few Marketing Trailblazers at Dreamforce and got to hear first hand from amazing brands about their inspiring moments of learning, networking, and knowledge sharing.

In this episode, we’re talking with Dreamforce attendees Dave Smith, the Senior Vice President of Monetization and Yield at Pandora; Matt Thompson, the Social Media Manager with Lids Sports Group; and Jennifer McClelland, Principle Channel Marketing Manager at a local energy company in San Francisco. If you are interested in watching sessions from Dreamforce, you can watch them on Salesforce Live - this includes our Marketing Cloud Keynote: Trailblazing In the Age of Intelligent Marketing.

For the full conversation that's filled with many more insights, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Here are some highlights from our conversations with Dave Smith, Matt Thompson, and Jennifer McClelland.

1. What do you love most about Dreamforce?

For many people, there’s a huge opportunity for meeting and connecting with some amazing people. “Dreamforce is one of those unique opportunities where you can be with 170,000 of your best friends in three days,” Dave says, “it’s an incredible networking opportunity that brings together people that I need to talk to and want to talk to.”

For Matt, the highlight is everything that you can absorb and put into practice for your own business: “There's just so much information that you're given here, but it all makes you rejuvenated to get back to the office and start implementing some of these learnings.” Getting to check in with so many people all trying to do a similar thing and share what you’ve learned is such a great opportunity.

This was Jennifer’s fourth Dreamforce. What keeps bringing her back, is the chance “to learn about new technologies that are being offered within our industry and others, especially as a marketer.” You never know where that next great idea will come from, and Dreamforce is an opportunity to immerse yourself in a world of great ideas.

2. What was your favorite thing at Dreamforce?

“I think the session that impressed me the most at Dreamforce, or my ah-ha moment was with Pitbull,” says Jennifer. He explained what he was doing with the schools he’s build in Miami and the alternative curriculum they’re focused on. He was inspiring and eloquent, as well as being Mr. Worldwide. Einstein and the potential ways that you can use it to reach customers on the right channel was also a big highlight.

Matt was impressed by the sheer scope of Dreamforce. He goes to a lot of conferences, but they’re nowhere near the scale: “It takes over an entire quadrant of San Francisco and there’s a whole national monument national park in the middle of town, and it's just really cool. It's an all encompassing experience.”

For David, it was the people who are gathered together and the chance to pick someone’s brain about what they’re up to and how they’re thinking. While Pandora has been a big Salesforce DMP Marketing Cloud user for awhile and done some great things with the platform, “it's really fascinating to come here and just sit informally bump into people in different sessions, in the halls, sitting over coffee and talk about what they're doing.” You never know when something someone else is doing could be perfect for a problem you’re trying to solve.

3. What makes you a Marketing Trailblazer?

With all of our guests here at the Marketing Cloudcast, we wanted to understand their views of what it means to be a Marketing Trailblazer. For Jennifer, it means “to learn about the technology that you have available, and fully understand how it can be leveraged, in order to improve your customer communications, for a streamlined and better customer experience.” For David, it’s the fact that Pandora can use Salesforce DMP to help advertisers reach the right customers by knowing every interaction their users have with their platform, regardless of device. “The ability to connect data and connect consumers to advertisers in the right way really puts us out in front.”

Jennifer, Dave, and Matt offer much more insight on Dreamforce and innovation in marketing in the full episode of the Marketing Cloudcast. Join the thousands of smart marketers who are Cloudcast subscribers on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, Stitcher, or Overcast.