Career / Events

Navigate Your Career With the Salesforce Trailblazer Community

By Christine Marshall

What’s the secret to a long and prosperous Salesforce career? The Salesforce Trailblazer Community, for a start! There is an abundance of free resources, groups, peers, and thought leaders to connect with, helping to accelerate your career trajectory and make lifelong connections and friends.

The Salesforce ecosystem is truly like no other; no one else can boast a community of tens of thousands of passionate people helping each other out. So, whether you’re brand new, or a seasoned professional, where should you go to discover the power of community?

The Trailblazer Community

The Trailblazer Community combines Trailhead with the online Salesforce community, optimizing the ability to learn and connect from anywhere, with other Trailblazers in the Salesforce ecosystem.

From the Trailblazer Community, you can manage your profile, ask questions, join Groups, and vote on Ideas!

  • Today Page: A personalized homepage that brings the Trailblazer Community feed, in-progress learning, and recommended Trailhead modules into one destination.
  • Learning Panel: Surfaces relevant Trailhead learning content in the flow of community interactions on the Topics and Questions pages, by suggesting learning modules that match your conversations and questions.
  • Groups: Search and join groups to connect and collaborate with Trailblazers based on location, role, or interests such as specific features.
  • Questions: Got stuck setting up a new feature? Post your question on the Answers Community to get help and support from your fellow Trailblazers.

Trailblazer Community Groups

Attending your local Salesforce Community Group is a great way to meet other like-minded Salesforce professionals for networking and learning. There are 1000+ groups all over the world, hosted by other Salesforce professionals, and they can be held locally or virtually.

There are different types of Community Groups based on roles, locations, or interests. For example, Admin, Developer, or Women in Tech. Typically, there will be sessions, time for networking, quizzes, and more.

Anyone can join a Community Group! If you want to grow your network and learn useful Salesforce skills, find your nearest user group here.

Salesforce and Community Conferences

Salesforce events can be split into two camps:

  • Community (Dreamin’) Events
  • Salesforce Events

Community Events

Community events, often called Dreamin’ events, are organized by independent groups of Trailblazers. Created by the community, for the community, these events are smaller than Salesforce-hosted events and are perfect for meeting fellow Salesforce enthusiasts!

Salesforce Events

Salesforce events are run by Salesforce themselves and exist in various formats and sizes. Salesforce events include World Tour, TrailblazerDX, and the ultimate Salesforce conference – Dreamforce.

  • World Tour: As the name suggests, World Tour chapters happen in major cities across the world including New York, London, Paris, and Sydney. These are one-day events with +10,000K attendees that take inspiration from Dreamforce.
  • Specialized events: Salesforce hosts specific, large-scale events for certain specialists. Take TrailblazerDX (formerly TrailheaDX), which is aimed at Salesforce Admins and Developers, or Connections – the go-to conference for Salesforce marketers (digital marketing and commerce).
  • Dreamforce: Salesforce’s main conference, Dreamforce, takes place in San Francisco each year. Attracting +170,000 attendees (in non-COVID times), and taking place over multiple days, it qualifies as one of the largest tech conferences globally. Salesforce pretty much shuts down the city of San Francisco for a week whilst attendees flood the city to learn and network!
READ MORE: Salesforce Events

Salesforce Saturday

Salesforce Saturday was founded by Stephanie Herrera in Austin, TX back in March of 2015.

It was created as a way for the community to dedicate one day of the week to growing their Salesforce skills. They provide a more intimate setting to learn and ask questions, typically with 5-20 people gathering in informal venues to study together. Find your nearest Salesforce Saturday here.

Twitter

There is a huge Salesforce community on Twitter and it’s a great place to stay up to date with Salesforce news. You can expect to find plenty of Salesforce professionals and influencers sharing articles, answering questions, and posting useful tips and tricks.

Not sure where to start? Check out our lists of who to follow:

LinkedIn

For more formal networking opportunities, why not check out LinkedIn? Connect with individuals or companies, and even join groups to find like-minded peers and the latest news.

Slack

Slack communities provide a fantastic, intuitive, and engaging platform to connect with others. For our pick of the best Slack channels, check out Salesforce Slack Communities to Join.

If you join just one Slack channel, let it be #OhanaSlack…

Ohana Slack

Salesforce Ohana Slack aka #OhanaSlack, is a Slack workspace that’s available to connect with the Salesforce community and get real-time help 24/7. Started by Kivin Mikolajczak and Meighan Brodkey, #OhanaSlack is for every Salesforce professional. It enables you to connect and ask questions in real-time, and with such a huge global community, you can guarantee there will be someone online whenever you are! You can sign up here.

Discord

Discord is a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and instant messaging social platform. You can voice call, video call, and message in private chats or as part of communities called “servers”. There are two standout Discord servers for Salesforce professionals.

SFDX – Salesforce X Discord

SFDX has over 12,500 members who connect to discuss all things Salesforce. Plus, you can expect plenty of memes!

Salesforce Professionals

The Salesforce Professionals Discord was built to “create a community for Salesforce professionals to grow, learn, and encourage others throughout their journey”. Expect topics running from networking and job opportunities, to study resources and even a book club!

Blogs, Vlogs, and Podcasts

Salesforce has inspired a booming community of inspiring and insightful content creators. You can find a plethora of blogs, vlogs, and podcasts online, packed full of useful information to propel your Salesforce career.

Summary

From user groups to in-person events, which is your favorite way to connect with the Salesforce Trailblazer Community? Did we miss any? Let us know in the comments.

The Author

Christine Marshall

Christine is the Courses Director at Salesforce Ben. She is an 11x certified Salesforce MVP and leads the Bristol Admin User Group.

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