Lessons Learned at Midwest Dreamin’ and WITness Success

It’s been a busy first week for us at Navigators. We officially opened our online doors last Monday, and I spent the first business week attending Midwest Dreamin’ and WITness Success and boy are my feet tired!

If you didn’t already know, Salesforce Community Conferences are community-led, volunteer-run mini-Dreamforces that meet all around the globe to share knowledge, support one another, and celebrate. If you haven’t yet attended one, I highly recommend it! Midwest Dreamin’ is arguably the grand-daddy of them all, and while I can’t confirm it, a little bird told me it was the first. WITness Success is its sister conference focusing on the Women in Tech user group. Running concurrently, they deliver a powerful week of learning and networking not to be missed! 

In the spirit of sharing the learning, here are my five takeaways from this glorious return to in-person events.

#1 Use Custom Queries to Optimize List Views on Big Data Sets

Mike Demaria’s presentation on Large Data volumes was a great on-ramp for admins and consultants just venturing into the very different world of managing large data sets in Salesforce. He did an amazing job of breaking down just why Salesforce is “special” when it comes to big data sets, and gave out tons of tips and tricks on how to optimize performance when working these challenging data sets. 

My biggest takeaway was learning that LIST VIEWS are based on SOQL queries! I suppose if I stopped to think about it, I might have realized that, but it just never hit me before. When working with huge data sets, if you find your list views aren’t performing as well as you would like, try creating a custom Index on the object to improve performance. The more unique the values you use in your custom index, the better the query will perform, and your list views will load faster! 

#2 Collaborate Better in a Virtual Context with Clear Ground Rules

With a mix of sincere storytelling and concrete tips, Oge Nawachukwo walked us through her journey from in-person to virtual Project Manager and dropped quite a bit of wisdom along the way. My favorite part was her encouragement to be careful in our communication when working virtually. Most of us know that the majority of communication is nonverbal, but we forget to account for that when we weigh and control for risks in our projects. 

To help keep communication running smoothly and minimize anxiety, Oge suggests creating a matrix to share with the project team that outlines how you will communicate, including which tool for what content, along with response time expectations. By getting this all out in the open, the team can communicate more efficiently and avoid the stress of wondering why so-and-so hasn’t answered your email yet!

#3 Copado Can Push and Pull from GIT

DevOps is quite the hot topic these days, and it’s easy to see why. If you’ve heard my rant – er, talk – on Risk & Reward in the Era of Low Code, then you know I embrace a DevOps approach to managing even declarative-only configuration for reasons too numerous to list here. So when I saw Mike Reynolds topic, “Getting down with Git: Version Control 101 for the non-Developer,” I made sure it was on my agenda. 

I’m also a huge fan of the DevOps platform Copado, where they are doing amazing works to bring the power of DevOps to everyone, both with product and with their partnerships with organizations like Supermums. Their “essentials” version is free and makes deployments tears-free! Two of my passions were brought together in this talk when I learned that Copado can push and pull configuration to and from GITHub! HOW did I miss this? It’s like chocolate and peanut butter!

#4 Consequence Scanning is Essential to Responsible Design

Moving from Midwest Dreamin’ to WITNess Success, I had the opportunity to participate in a Consequence Scanning exercise facilitated by the one and only Melissa Hill Dees.

I already knew that Melissa, who literally wrote the book on Nonprofits and Salesforce, is a champion for inclusive Design, but Consequence Scanning as a formal exercise was new to me. Melissa walked us through the hows, whats, and whys, and then led us on an exercise for a hypothetical use case. Together we brainstormed consequences, both bad and good, and how to manage risk while amplifying impact. The takeaway? Consequence Scanning is an exercise for everyone and a key tool in any project manager or leader’s toolkit. 

#5 WIT Just Hits Different

If you know… you know. I’ve been to a lot of community events over the years, but this was my first WITness Success, and I confirm that there is nothing like it in the ecosystem. As a woman in tech, it’s easy to feel like an outsider. If you have ever felt under estimated, if you have ever looked around the room and didn’t see any faces like yours, then WIT is for you! It was also fantastic to see men in attendance too, and I hope over the years we get more and more allies joining us at this special event!