Every year, the world’s most innovative minds come to Dreamforce to inspire, excite, and motivate attendees. This year is no different, except that we’ll also be welcoming our largest group of financial services attendees ever — over 5,000 professionals from insurance, banking, lending, wealth management, and institutional banking and markets will descend upon San Francisco to explore how the latest technology innovations are helping build deeper customer relationships and unlock the secrets to customer loyalty.

If you’re among the lucky number headed our way September 25-28, we’ve got an all-star lineup in store for you. Between marquee speakers like Al Gore, Chairman of Generation Investment Management; Geisha J. Williams, CEO and President of PG&E Corporation; and Andre Iguodala of the Golden State Warriors, over 2,700 sessions to choose from, and all the parties — you can start to feel strapped for time trying to fit everything in.

Don’t fret. We’ve got you covered. To quote Benjamin Franklin, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Read on for our recommendations on how to invest your time wisely at Dreamforce ‘18.

Top 4 ways to spend your time at Dreamforce ‘18

1) Learn from the leaders

We are thrilled to have over 100 financial services Trailblazers speaking at 40+ sessions at Dreamforce '18. These industry leaders are breaking the mold and driving the future of the industry. You won't want to miss what they have to say — check out the full list here.

If there’s one session you have to attend, it’s this year’s financial services keynote, Unify The Experience, Unlock Loyalty. Executives from BBVA and State Farm will be taking the stage to share insights and give a live demonstration of how they’re unifying the customer experience across retail and commercial lines of business to drive loyalty.

Watch this “Inside Dreamforce '18: Financial Services Keynote” clip for a quick sound bite on the where, the when, and the what.

2) Forums: your marketplace of ideas

New this year, we’ll be holding our inaugural FinTech Forum @ Dreamforce 2018 on Monday, September 24th. Co-sponsored with Capgemini, this will be a half-day immersion of insightful, interactive panel discussions with experts in the industry, reflecting on topics that are redefining the financial industry like blockchain, artificial intelligence, the API economy, and more. Sign up today!

3) Make the Financial Services Lodge and Campground your home base

The lodge is going to be home base for our Financial Services Ohana at Dreamforce. Located on the fourth floor of the InterContinental Hotel, 888 Howard Street, we’ll have four full days of theater sessions and demos offering deep-dives into what's possible with Financial Services Cloud and our leading FinTech partners in the AppExchange. Swing by for a visit to relax and recharge, and you might even find yourself walking out with a Financial Services Astro.

I’m cute, but I also mean business. I’m Financial Services Astro.

Be sure to block out time to explore the Campground and visit with our industry experts to test drive live industry solution demos across banking, wealth, insurance, institutional banking, and markets.  Plus, we’ll have demos that give you a hands-on look at how our solutions cross consumer and commercial lines of business to unify banking.

4) Partake in a meeting of the minds: Financial Services Roundtables

As Theodore Zeldin once said, “When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.”

Dreamforce is not just a mega technology conference. It’s also a mega financial sector conference. Dreamforce ‘18 is one of the best opportunities of the year to connect with your financial services peers, and one of the best ways to do that is to participate in our Financial Services Roundtables.

We’ll be hosting 13 peer-to-peer discussions in the Financial Services Lodge on various topics like compliance by design, wealth, asset management, life insurance and annuities, making the move to Financial Services Cloud, and more. Visit the Financial Services Trail Map to view the full schedule, and join us on-site at the lodge or reach out to your Salesforce relationship manager to reserve your seat.

Can’t wait to see you soon in San Francisco! Until then —