Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company—and Revolutionized an Industry

3.8. Play #34: Be Prepared for Every Scenario ... and Have Fun

After a few years, our City Tours became so deluged with attendees that there was standing room only. The next step was an annual user conference where we would have the opportunity to fuel camaraderie and further strengthen our community of evangelists. We named this event Dreamforce. Unlike a City Tour event, which ran for a few hours, the annual Dreamforce event was held over the course of a few days. Our first Dreamforce attracted more than a thousand attendees from countries as far away as Australia, Cameroon, and Israel, but it was our second Dreamforce that taught us some of our most valuable lessons in event planning.

Dreamforce 2004 was slated for the beginning of November—kicking ...