Dreamforce 2023 & Living in San Francisco

Practical Advice for Starting Over and Reinventing Your Life

The press hasn’t been kind to San Francisco with their catastrophic Doom Loop predictions and scenarios. The press has terrified residents and bystanders alike with coverage of the downside of San Francisco. Yet, living in San Francisco has some amazing benefits. For one, I am attending Dreamforce — the Salesforce conference.

Last year I watched the streets close and thousands of brilliant people pour into my neighborhood. I would watch them walk past me on their way to and from the conference and I wondered how could I get a ticket to the magical Dreamforce convention. This year I have one. I feel so lucky to be here with people like Jane Goodall, Matthew McConaughey, Foo Fighters, and presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom. And, of course, the founders of riverBI and recipePro the company I am working with this week. Lucas and Phillip are impressively self-funded in a sea of companies surviving on V.C. capital.

Not to mention the brilliant mind behind Salesforce Marc Benioff. He even wore custom Gucci sneakers, with red laces, Gucci’s logo, and blue clouds for the opening keynote. But he is not all show. Benioff at 23, was named Oracle’s Rookie of the Year. Three years later, he became the youngest person in the company’s history to earn the title of vice president. Benioff founded Salesforce in 1999 in a San Francisco apartment and defined his mission as “The End of Software.” For anyone who waited around for CD-ROM updates to arrive in the mail, it was Benioff who put an end to that and began live updates in the cloud.

Did Dreamforce live up to the hype? Yes, there was so much thought put into every detail of the three days I spent there it was honestly very impressive. And, thank you San Francisco for pulling yourself together for the conference. The people I talked to from around the world told me they had really enjoyed being in San Francisco.

I wasn’t able to see the iconic Jane Goodall as I was busy with riverBI customers. My benifactors were launching their new tool recipePro which automates ETL processes for CRM analytics, Tableau, Snowflake, and others making it easy to convert your salesforce report types into fully configured recipes.

When I moved to San Francisco many of my close friends advised against it. They didn’t think it was safe and that I should stay where I was in my quiet neighborhood or downsize to a place close to my quiet neighborhood.

I have come a long way from the warm July morning seven years ago when I got the call that my husband had a heart attack at work and had died. He went to work one morning and never came back.

This is not where I expected to be at this point in my life, but I am grateful for the opportunities and experiences I have been so graciously offered. Being able to learn new technologies, support and launch new products, and be at Dreamforce with its creative and magical summer camp atmosphere has been an incredible experience.

It’s true San Francisco isn’t the safest place in the world, but a little danger can be good. It keeps you on your toes. It is never too late to reinvent yourself and have new experiences. I think that has been the greatest lesson I have learned this year.