Adventures in Salesforcing.

Throughout my Salesforce journey so far, I have met so many amazing Women in Technology pretty much every where I've been. When I first started dipping my toe in the water of the Ohana, I discovered the Two WIT podcast, and worked my way through their back catalogue over a few weeks. It was during this time that I added something to the long term goal section of my Salesforce notebook - "guest on the Two WIT podcast". It also happens that the next entry on my long term goals list was for "Ontario Dreamin", and this was a few months before I found out there were others with the same goal. Wonderful WIT, Misty Jones had told me I should get in contact with local Toronto MVP Geoff Flynn, and coincidentally we ended up with the same Trailblazer Community booth shift at Toronto World Tour last year. A few weeks later, I received an email from Sarah Deutsch Thornton saying that Geoff suggested she get in touch with me to talk about a Canadian Dreamin event. W...

Lightning is coming. That's right - with the Winter 20 release, Lightning will be turned on by default We all knew this day would come... so with that in mind, there's no better time to become a Lightning Champion! I joined the program in July of 2018 and have had some amazing opportunities and experiences since then. It has been such a success that applications had to be closed, but they are back open until January 31! With the re-opening of applications, I thought I'd check in with program coordinators Chelsea Kaufman and Kelly Walker to find out how the program came time life. Starting only last year, the Lightning Champion program began with several Salesforce team members wanting to help give us Trailblazers a way to share  passion and experience for rolling out the Lightning Experience, or building apps on the Lightning Platform, with the community. So why become a Lightning Champion? I joined as I was looking for more ways to contribute to the community,...

So I'm going to be completely honest... I didn't do a whole lot over the holidays... but it was just what I needed! Even though I feel like I say this every, 2018 was a crazy year... and I was grateful for the week and a half to recharge.  I spent some time studying, and was considering sitting the Platform App Builder exam before the end of the year, but after chatting it through with my perpetually supportive husband, I decided to push it back to 2019. I'm not quite where I'd like to be for some of the topics, and why rush? I've been in the eco system for a but over a year, and I already have one cert.  Sometimes we have to make decide whether to push ourselves, or whether to recharge... and I chose to recharge... and I have absolutely no regrets.  I had my birthday and participated in a range of self care from getting a massage, to getting my nails done, as well as two Superhero movies and Thai food! So now it's officially 2019, a new da...

New York is less than an hour of airtime from Toronto, so I really should visit more often. New York world tour seemed like the perfect opportunity to scratch my travel itch, see some friends, and do some learning, so away I went! I met up with my roomie, Bhavana, and after lunch and a walk back to our hotel, we decided to go for a visit to the Empire State Building. There were surprisingly no lines, and we were up the top in only 10 minutes! It's quite a view from up there - we found the Salesforce tower of course. hello Salesforce tower! From there we headed downtown to Silverline CRM for the pre-world tour New York Community group meeting. As if this day weren't already so wonderful, I was greeted at the door with the biggest possible hug from Sandi Nuss Zellner - leader of the New York Administrators group. Sandi, Bhavana and I This right here - this is why I love the Salesforce community. Seeing by people from literally all over the world, and coming ...

I’m feeling a lot of love for Toronto right about now… so it’s fitting that this is the week I got my “YYZ ” tattoo the companion to my "SYD" tattoo (representing my two homes). Last night the Toronto trailblazer community events joined forces for a holiday party… and we ended up with double the number of attendees we were expecting! I honestly felt like I was going to cry! Let’s back it up a bit… I took over as leader of the Toronto Women in Tech group after being inspired by Bhavana Singh and Allison Park at TrailheaDX, but it wasn’t until I’d met some other amazing WIT leaders at WITness Sucess that I realized the Toronto Trailblazer Community had a long way to go. It was pointed out that Toronto is one biggest cities in North America, and the Admin and Develioer groups we were only getting around 30 perople max, per meeting. It was at WITness that I decided I was going to make it my mission to grow the commumity, as I have been fortunate to connect with the onlin...

I'm very passionate about being an #AwesomeAdmin, so I've decided to start another series - the #AwesomeAdmin Utility Belt! As Admins, we use our Superpowers everyday to help our users, and we rely on our various tools from our Utility Belts, as we're superheros afterall! I've met many different people in my Salesforce journey thus far, from all different parts of the ecosystem, but definitely one of the most important, has been my Account Executive, Brandon Jimenez.  We first connected by way of an introductory call when he took over our account just after we'd finished our implementation. We exchanged emails a few times, including when I had ask for some prudent advice on how to make the case to my employers to send me to TrailheaDX bootcamp. His advice helped, and when I returned, all fired up and excited, we had coffee and chatted through what I'd learned, and how he could help me going forward. We caught up at Toronto World Tour when I was m...

Admins have long been the heroes of their orgs, but at the Dreamforce 2018 #AwesomeAdmin keynote, we were introduced to the official Admin Superpowers - Champion Productivity, Deliver Innovation and Connect Experiences. Of course an Admin will utilise all of these powers, although we all have our speciality - I'm proud to say mine is Champion Productivity! But like any curious Admin, I'm always looking for ways to amp up my superpowers and never stop learning, and as luck would have it, there's a great new opportunity to learn more about Delivering Innovation through the "Be an Innovator" challenge! Over 6 videos, the #AwesomeAdmin team, with some help from the Einstein product team will be posting videos and providing guidance to walk through how to build an AI-powered app. Along the way there are Trailhead badges to earn, and fun prizes to win too! I participated in the Be a Builder challenge earlier in the year, which was very similar ...