Optimism vs pragmatism: The reality check after the World Tour whirlwind.

A few weeks have passed now since the whirlwind of Salesforce World Tour 2023 in Sydney — so how’s the hype train faring after all the dust (and the hangovers) has settled??

I’ve revisited a few of the event highlights to see how they’ll stack up in weeks, months, and years ahead.

1. Open for business

Despite everything, a positive sentiment endured at World Tour. It's obviously been an up and down start to the year for the tech industry. While we’re certainly not out of the woods in terms of the challenges that lie ahead, there was a genuinely good vibe emanating from the throngs at World Tour.?

It didn’t feel like misplaced optimism either, but rather an outlook defined by the bumpy pandemic years we pushed through. In what was a level of upheaval almost no one currently working had experienced before, the silver lining was that our resilience levels and appetite for innovation have both flourished.?

The numbers speak for themselves:?10,000+ people at the event, 250 deep at the coffee bars, and 400 at the co-sponsored CalibrX after party.

From my perspective, it felt like it was part release, part optimism for the coming years. (Did you go to World Tour? Let me know in the comments if you picked up that vibe too!)

2. A customer first playbook?

Discussions centred around ‘customer first’ thinking was the theme that carried across an inspiring keynote with Rowena Westphalen, SVP Solutions ANZ & ASEAN, Leandro Perez, VP & CMO Asia Pacific, and Taksina Eammano, EVP & GM Field Service.

With consumer and customer sentiment at its lowest point in decades, the takeaway is that it’s time to start repairing things with a strong people-oriented strategy.?

And as I’ve written about in past articles, organisations like Formula 1 are already utilising this model to reshape their offering in order to open up to a huge untapped market.?

So, the main message was that the key to thriving in the current ecosystem is to become a customer company —?that is, putting the customer at the centre of everything you do.?

In a nutshell, the best way to put this place into action is to create a Customer 360, build apps and automate, understand your customers, get fast time to value, and focus on success now, not tomorrow.

Very sound advice, I'd say.??

3. Connections to make, energy to absorb

I think a good litmus test for the success of an event like World Tour is when you walk away feeling like you could’ve kept talking and mingling for days after.

That’s how I felt afterwards, and from the interactions I had, I definitely wasn’t alone. It was great to catch up with so many old faces while making new connections at the same time. My only regret was I didn’t have enough time to keep the chats going.?

Luckily, with Dreamforce 2023 not too far off, the networking will continue in earnest.

Everyone certainly got into the spirit of things. At times, with rolling events to get to, it resembled something more of a high-end pub crawl at times!?

Bottom line, it was great to be around good people with equally good energy.?

Notable mentions

Of course, the launch of Salesforce’s chatbot, EinsteinGPT was the other big news. Adidas has already adopted the bot, so it’s out in the wild doing its thing as you read this.?

And huge congratulations to TupaToa who was announced as this year’s Golden Hoodie recipient. They’re doing some really impressive work in New Zealand to increase Māori and Pacific representation in leadership. Check them out !?

How was your experience at World Tour 2023??

Thanks again to those who made the time to come to my event and for the many catch-ups I had. Let’s keep the good energy and discussions flowing into 2024.?

If you're keen to chat more about World Tour or anything else in the tech and recruitment world — reach out today.

- Garth