An Open Letter to Marc Benioff RE Dreamfest Logistics

Hi Marc,
First, let me say, thanks for replying to my tweet from the Dreamfest Event and thanks for requesting an email with details. While I know you requested an email, it seemed only fair to share aspects of it as a blog post since the whole thing started as a broadcast conversation.

First of all, let me start by saying that there are many aspects of Dreamforce that I think are great. I've been attending Dreamforce events since 2009, and I probably would have also gone to a couple of earlier ones, but I couldn't make it work. Not only have I always found the conference sessions to be helpful in gaining a much deeper understanding of the Salesforce platform, but it's also been a software/business/world eye-opening experience for the colleagues that I've brought to the event over the years. That being said, I've had my issues with Dreamforce over the years, like 2015, and my terrible Dreamforce 2013 that was so bad, I only came up for keynotes in 2014. As I've said in the past -- and once in a survey with your marketing people -- the biggest problem / challenge with Dreamforce is the crowds.

For all of the Dreamforce events that I've been to in the past, my gala concert count is far lower. Each year is different, but the biggest reason is logistics -- if you have to commute to the South Bay each night, staying late for a band after an exhausting day of running around for sessions is asking a lot. When I've stayed in the city, I've hung around for the band. At the same time, I remember seeing Stevie Wonder in the south hall of Moscone and thinking, firstly that the concrete walls and floors were the worst place that I've ever seen a band and, secondly, that it was only a matter of time before the size of the crowd overwhelmed the venue. Over the years, I've watched as the people and the venue grew, challenging the San Francisco landscape with a place large enough for the show. In that way, I think the Red Hot Chili Peppers was peak Dreamforce Gala. Closing off the Civic Center plaza was mind-blowingly awesome and, while it probably sucked for San Francisco that week, definitely ranked as one of the most amazing shows. Perhaps that contributed to making 2013 so disappointing. Last year, with the Foo Fighters, I actually considered going -- even though I was commuting -- until I saw where the event was located. While it was in San Francisco, it wasn't going to be an easy commute from the Moscone area nor back to the Caltrain for the ride home.

While I understand that this is a long opening, I want to provide a clear sense of history and, correspondingly, where my expectations and motivations were. This year, I registered on the first day of registration and secured a hotel room in the city. Despite having colleagues attending the conference, for various reasons, I found myself attending the Dreamfest event on my own. Prior to going, I was invited by our AE to use a special shuttle provided to SMB customers. After initially agreeing to that, when I discovered that the departure point for those shuttles was down in the Mission, I abandoned that plan. Instead, I walked down to Moscone West, figuring that there would be a number of shuttles there and that, traffic wise, it would be faster out of downtown than one of the hotel shuttles. I arrived at 7:00, thinking that I had left plenty of buffer before the 8:15 concert start. While the trip out of the city in traffic wasn't fast, overall we made good time, maybe 20 minutes or so, but by the time we got off 101 to make our way down to the Cow Palace, traffic was crawling. It felt like 15-20 minutes to travel a handful of blocks. I arrived at the event around 8:30, with U2 already having started their set.

While I've never seen U2 live before, I've seen a couple of their concerts on video in the past. When I saw the crowd and the way the event was set up, it was quickly clear that I would get no closer to the stage than the far back concession stands, and so I began, once again, watching a U2 concert on video using the large screen monitors near the back of the event. However, it quickly became clear that the actual audio was a second or two ahead of the video, and the irony of having had a better experience when I'd previously watched the video concerts struck me.

Leaving the Event
Around 9:30, I began wondering if I should just go ahead and leave, wondering whether there were early buses running back yet. By 9:40, I decided to head for the buses and was about out to the bus pick-up by 10:00. What I came across was a bit of a mess, to say the least. There were long, crowd control gates directing traffic through to the buses, but few people doing crowd control. You were supposed to follow these long crowd control gates (I was headed back to Moscone), but as you worked your way through them, you'd often see people climbing over them and jumping in front of you in line -- particularly since they weren't full and the "bus destination" on the street seemed so far away and, not even visible from the gates. As I started to get close to the street, more crowds, more people climbing over gates. In general, chaos.

I was standing behind the gates, on the sidewalk near the road, when the "first wave" of buses arrived (about the time the concert ended -- probably about 10:00). Rather than going through an orderly loading like was done back at Moscone West, suddenly people just started swarming toward the bus doors. It was forget about the crowd control gates, suddenly, people were three and four deep in the road trying to shove their way toward a bus door. Once the first buses were full and started to drive off, a handful of crowd-control people came through telling people that more buses would be coming and to wait where we were. Meanwhile more and more people kept streaming down the street. The crowd, from sidewalk towards the middle of the street, grew from 2-3 people deep to 6-8 to 8-10. Half the side of the roadway was filled with people standing around waiting to rush the buses doors when they opened.

There were some of us, sitting back, trying to behave with order, asking for guidance, but there were so few people. And the crowd was just getting more aggressive in trying to get buses whenever another row of buses would come through. At one point, the cops were there, attempting to help manage people getting into the bus door. Perhaps you've seen it all when you see a cop in SWAT gear trying to do people traffic control at a charter bus door. Meanwhile, with all of the crowd chaos, my thoughts kept going back to The Who concert in Cincinnati, hoping that somehow people would get this under control. Seriously. At times it felt like the crowd just might be that crazy.

The thing that really cracks you up though, that makes you think twice -- this crowd isn't soccer hooligans, it isn't "kids that don't know any better". The crowd is, theoretically, business people, professionals, grown-ups who've spent the day listening to stories of philanthropy and charity. And now, to watch them push and shove for buses. It's a reminder that crowds change people and that herds behave differently. Sadly, the whole thing also reminded me of the last Grateful Dead tour in 1995.

By 11:00, they started to try and control the people standing in the road, trying to push them back toward the sidewalk with yellow hazard ribbon, but it wasn't until about 11:10 when the cops started actually forcing people back that things started to move. Finally, I made it on the bus around 11:30 and back to the hotel. The finally funny part was that the bus driver dropped us off -- first stop -- at "The Hilton", but he was about a block away, across from Glide Memorial behind Parc55. Frankly, by that time, I was just glad to escape, but I was glad I wasn't one of the people from out of town trying to geo-locate using the map on the back of my Dreamforce badge.

Since the event, I've reflected on what was wrong and what should have been done differently. While I'm not someone who plans events on this scale, observation wise, I do have a couple of thoughts about what went wrong.

• Too much unmanaged space between open areas and traffic controlled areas. By that I mean, there was a lot distance in crowd control gates with nobody there to manage the traffic and provide authoritative guidance. Like having one of those ribbon guides with nobody in line, people often believe that they can just jump ahead. 
• Not clearly managed bus loading areas. At one point someone said they'll be loading at the cone. Then a bus pulled up 30 feet from the cone and a mass of people rushed the door from both directions.
• The remote location. The Cow Palace is just too far away from San Francisco and from BART. When I checked with Google maps about walking to Balboa Park BART, it said 45 minutes walk. While finding an event location to handle the huge Dreamforce crowd is San Francisco is probably impossible, for myself, I wouldn't go to another event that isn't within walking distance.

While I waited for a bus to extract me from Daily City, I wondered if there was a band that I would be so interested in seeing that I would do another Dreamforce Gala again. At this point, I can't think of one.

Marc, I want to thank you for the conference and all of the effort that you and your team go through to make Dreamforce happen. And again, thanks for reply and the email request.

Wired Looks at iTunes Alienation of Music Lovers

I've written about it a number of times before, Apple has taken a design and product strategy that is alienating and abandoning many of their most passionate users. In Apple’s iTunes Is Alienating Its Most Music-Obsessed Users, Jesse Jarnow explores how iTunes has evolved into a platform that sucks for people with giant music libraries. Earlier this year, I'd come across an article with related complaints held by classical music fans.

Essentially, all of the crap that they've added into iTunes, plus this overwhelming requirement for iTunes to phone home to Apple, really sucks if you've built a music library. In that way, the core functionality of iTunes has been superseded by stuff that doesn't really relate to music library at all.

If you think about that on an abstract level, this product that used to cater to a very specific set of requirements -- typically the most demanding, passionate users of an application -- has evolved into a giant business engine shaped around promoting selling you crap that they want to sell you. This is less aligned with Steve Jobs, the guy that took days and weeks to decide on the right washing machine, and more aligned with the fluff and seasonality of the fashion industry.

Apple's UI Design Sucks: More Examples of How Apple has Lost it's Way

I happened to catch a clip of an old interview with Steve Jobs on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday. It was early 1990s Steve Jobs, but one of the things that he said about the Macintosh was this notion of bringing "a liberal arts mindset to the computer". If there is anything that embodies a classic Apple value, it is -- or was -- this notion of good design.

Good design isn't simply interesting colors and appearances that make you go wow, it's functional, meaningful, and with purpose. And this aspect is where Apple has totally gone off the rails. A perfect reminder of it, one that I find myself interacting with nearly every day, is the iTunes interface on the phone. I've collected some screenshots for you.

This shot is taken of a view inside a playlist. Each time I launch iTunes on the phone, Apple defaults to taking me to "My Library". It doesn't matter whether I use playlists or whether I was last using playlists. While this is an improvement from the previous generation that always took me to Apple Radio, it's annoyingly dumb.

But there are multiple aspects that suck. Here you'll see the tiny control for playing the playlist. Alternatively, you can click on the specific tune to get it to play.

Another aspect that sucks is Transparency. I've already written about how frustratingly in the way transparency is on the desktop. Here, it's grabbing color from the album image to shade the background, making the UI more difficult to navigate. Even more useless is if you build a playlist using multiple artists. It uses the background from the first album in the playlist.

The team at Apple is probably patting themselves on the back for how they extract color from the album image to define the color palette, selecting the background and then the contrasting colors. But being clever doesn't make it good design. Here's an example of a playlist that is quite difficult to read.

Controls that don't work well suck, regardless of how cool they look
The primary function of iTunes is to make it easy to organize and play the electronic music files that you have stored on your device. If it's difficult to operate the controls, then the UI sucks. If your using iTunes and you're listening to a track, the track progress indicator is a thin little line around the play button on the track and a thin line running through the middle of the controller at the bottom. If you want to fast forward or rewind, you need to interact with line -- or attempt to find another screen to control the software.

You might expect the three dots on the right side of the screen to open a set of options including the option for a larger set of controls, but it doesn't. Instead, it opens the option to add or remove from the playlist.

The main function of this software is to play music and yet it makes the controls for doing this nearly impossible to access.

This is why any love that I may have had for Apple products is being trampled and crushed. New Apple is high fructose corn syrup sweetened and tastes nothing like the product we've grown to love over the years.

Big Star Documentary:Journey to a Place You Probably Won't Understand

Netflix streaming service is a funny place. There are a ton of things to watch, but at the same time, it's kind of like watching last year's cable TV -- lots of channels really equates to a ton of things that you don't want to watch; but they are playing all of the episodes of that WB show that you never considered watching when it was on.

Having just finished binge-watching whatever show it was, I was browsing through the Netflix muck looking for something to watch when I happened upon this documentary about the band Big Star.

For me, it was one of those awesome trips down memory lane. It's loaded with interviews with key figures in the Memphis music scene -- not the Sam Phillips / Sun Records / Elvis scene, more the It Came From Memphis scene. Without specifically saying it, this movie connects to the difference between what rock and roll was and what it has become. You can learn a lot about music in between the lines in this movie.

10 Reasons I Can Skip Dreamforce This Year

I never wind up registering early for Dreamforce because I'm always a mix of one part skeptical that I'll go, one part skeptical as to who (if anybody) will attend with me, one part skeptical that I'll still be working with the platform in the same capacity, and two or three parts soured on the entire experience (adjust to taste).

Now, as the conference approaches, it's not too hard for me to find more reasons why it may not be worth me attending this year.

• Considering that I was already researching hotels several months ago, I know that there isn't any available hotel space. That means commuting to the city and I now live 30 minutes further from San Francisco after moving out of Mountain View last year.
• I've already been reminded of their loyalty to me as a customer when I was recently contacted by the phone sales guy offering me a 10% discount. The same sales guy told me that they still have access to great nearby hotels, and with shuttles, it shouldn't be a problem. Sales guys, Salesforce.com sales guys, or people telling me things that I know are miss-information -- I'm not sure which is worse.
• I just got the email announcing the band for the Gala this year, and it's Bruno Mars. I saw his act during the Superbowl Halftime show and that was more than enough for me. At least if I do go to Dreamforce this year, I know one night I won't feel compelled to stay late.

I know that this is only three reasons, but it's three reasons that speak loudly to me when I wake up to find the Bruno Mars announcement in my inbox. Three big loud reasons not to go. And it makes me grumpy. Not feeling positive about the platform or about being a customer. Grumpy.

Add to all of that contract renegotiation, threats of price increases, and I'm not really feeling the love from Salesforce. Instead, I'm wondering how I would design an exit path from Salesforce for the company.

Then again, I didn't get the tele-sales guy's Dreamforce ROI calculator. That probably would have solved everything.

Late Night Mix Tape

The downside of the modern world is that your not supposed to stay up late listening to music and doing stupid stuff -- there's work to do. And yet, somehow we find a way.

This is sort of like a late night mix tape. We'll kick it off with a great little piece, filled with marketing nuance. It's a story that somehow seems all to familiar. You feel like you're being sold. You have a choice, the complacent, easy choice, or the thing that you know you want, the bigger prize.

Next, we have a tune linked in the sidebar that reminds you incredible influence of Bob Dylan. Think about all of those pop tunes that echo Dylan's style, from Donovan to Don McClean. Where would this tune have been without Bob Dylan?

Next, and strangely linked to the last one by YouTube is this one. I remember this as a kid, but I didn't really remember it until I listened to it again.

And finally, for another period piece that serves as a great reminder as to the difference between today's pop-music performers that dance, auto-tune and lip-sync, here's the a nice clip of the Wilson sisters playing music live in the 1970s.

Dreamforce 2012: Red Hot Chili Peppers were #Amazing

So last night was the Dreamforce gala event where they host a musical guest. This year they had the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and instead of playing in the echo-chamber nightmare of Moscone South, they closed off Civic Center Plaza and played there.

Using the Civic Center as a backdrop, the show featured an incredibly awesome display of lighting. While they flooded most of the surrounding buildings in blue, the played host to a series of visual effects ranging from video imagery and cartoon-like graphics to a deceptively simple illumination of the structure of the Civic Center building. Way cool.

The music was great too, but the bands that they choose for Dreamforce often seem like an contrast against the backdrop of an enterprise software demographic. So while the park was full, you had an odd assortment of experiencing the show -- everything from people singing along and dancing to guys standing around looking uncomfortable and trying to 'fit in'.

Politics and Brand: Paul Ryan and Rage Against the Machine

I came across this rather amusing story this morning on Crooks and Liars. What you have here is the rather strange story of how GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan says that one if his 'favorite' bands. The piece then goes on to quote Tom Morello, one of the guys from the band, writing in Rolling Stone. In short, the values and the message expressed by Rage Against the Machine is not well aligned with Ryan's message and GOP values. Here's a snippet.

Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn't understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn't understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.

Ryan claims that he likes Rage's sound, but not the lyrics. Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage.

I wonder what Ryan's favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of "F*ck the Police"? Or is it the one where we call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!

Music and Identity
Music is something that we all have a strange relationship with. For many people, it's not something that they think about very deeply. Often people's tastes are shaped by the endless repetition of radio and television. How many men out there found themselves singing lyrics from "My Humps" -- I'll bet the demographic is quite a bit larger that you might guess. In that way, much of pop music isn't about message, it's about repetitive association with other activities, moments and places. All that being said, I'd bet that few of those same men in the "My Humps" demographic would claim it to be their favorite song.

Politics and branding is different. Things are done with intent, with purpose. Stated values contribute to positioning. Knowing that, we're left to wonder, why would Paul Ryan claim Rage Against the Machine to be one of his favorite bands? I mean, I don't follow them nor do I know much about their music, but I do know enough to know that their values don't appear to align with Ryan's. This isn't like Chris Christie and Bruce Springsteen -- in New Jersey, that would be kind of like saying you don't like the national anthem.

Remember back in the eighties when heavy metal hair bands were all the rage. For whatever reason, the sound and the imagery appeals to the teenage spirit. Suddenly Christian parents found their kids listening to devil music and looking at imagery that scared them. Suddenly, Christian rock bands came into being (I think it was on the eighth day, but I don't recall any particular big bang). Now Christian kids could listen to music that sounded similar to the popular music of the time, but it was safe. Sort of. The reality was that you'd be hard pressed to remember a band name that really competed with Motley Crue, Metallica, or Iron Maiden. Embracing a Christian rock band meant embracing a odd-ball brand -- definitely not cool.

So there are lots of safe 'favorites' you can claim, but that don't help you out with your brand. Mitt Romney could claim Pat Boone as a favorite, but it wouldn't reinforce anything other than how white he is. In the same way, can we really imagine Romney driving down the road blasting NWA or Snoop Dog through the speakers?

So, for Ryan, we want something young. Something edgy. Something that makes a statement. That's in your face. Rage Against the Machine's music certainly fits that. Of course, there is that little problem with content, but how many traditional GOP constituents actually know Rage Against the Machine's music anyway?

For most of his constituents, they probably won't listen to it or question it. So whose to say they aren't 'Raging' against the metaphoric bad guys of the GOP? In that same way, "My Humps" could be a political ballad celebrating economic growth or perhaps a recipe for surviving austerity like a camel...

In that way, the positioning probably works well for Ryan, even if it's a disconnect from the core values of the music. But it's too bad that candidates don't have to eat their own dog food as the saying goes. Imagine if Tom Morello got to help them select the best Rage Against the Machine tunes to play during all of Ryan's campaign events.

Frank Zappa Albums are Available on iTunes

News Flash: Tons of Frank Zappa albums are available on iTunes now. I'm not sure when this went live, but I know that a few months ago I was looking for Zappa and couldn't find anything. I went around to all the CD shops looking for used, out-of-print Zappa CDs and that turned out to be less fruitful that I expected. Then tonight I fired up iTunes and one of the promo images was Zappa!

Good stuff. Joe's Garage. Zappa in New York. Lot's more. Check it out!

#OccupyWallStreet Versus Astroturf: Jefferson Airplane and Hearing The Sound Of Real Grass Roots

My original thoughts for this post started a couple of months ago, but the coverage surrounding the #OccupyWallStreet protests re-energized the idea. As you listen to the media talking about the #OccupyWallStreet protests, you keep hearing a couple of themes being echoed -- small, lacks organization, lacks a single voice, lacks a goal, lacks focus.

To a certain extent, you can contrast aspects of this to the coverage of the birth of the "Tea Party", which seemed to start with a host of generally focused messages, bus tours, and press exposure, even while the actual number of people in the crowds were rather lackluster. And yet, despite connections to conservative political organizations like FreedomWorks, many in the media characterized the Tea Party Movement as a grass roots effort.

Part of the problem -- and it's inherent to the nature of astroturf -- is that it can be difficult for people to tell the difference between a grass roots voice and an astroturf voice, between an authentic crowd and a sponsored crowd. While there are organizations and sites that attempt to drill down into media campaigns and look for astroturf roots, even if you're interested in those kinds of issues, you probably don't go check those sites regularly. 

In today's media culture, it's easy to forget what a crowd sounds like. From television shows like American Idol to the musical world of Autotune, modern music is usually harmonious and on-key. Even crappy-in-real-life performers can go into the recording studio and receive enough audio processing to make them sound like they have talent. Modern audiences expect harmony. They expect orchestration.

Contrast this with the Jefferson Airplane. Jefferson Airplane songs often sound like a collection of dissonant voices trying to shout over one another. They are loosely harmonious yet packed with discord. On occasion, they seem to come together to a chorus, but even in those moments they're clearly composed of separate voices. But don't think that this is simply the result of a bad sound system or poor live performances -- listen to several live performances and you'll see the same songs performed in a similar style. This is protest music. This is the sound of a crowd. This is what grass roots sounds like.

Late Night Music Posts

Here it is, another late night. While I started to crank out a bunch of marketing posts, I found myself in another late night of downloading and listening to music. On my listening list for tonight is David Bowie.

One of the things that I've always liked about David Bowie (at least, through some of his hit songs), is the way that he structures the song. Bowie really understands the classic structure of a rock and roll song, building tension to a dramatic primal scream moment, then... "ah... wham, bam, thank you ma'am", you get the classic rock and roll scream moment... and release. The classic feel is supported with rich full sound and a nice blend of guitar, keyboards, and horns -- depending on the tune. Each little clip is a story, an event, a trip from one place to another.

Sadly, when I've tried to watch things like the Ziggy Stardust concert movie, it doesn't really work for me -- it just seems to wander into spaces that I don't go. And it's not like watching it I can figure out why. It just doesn't work for me. In an odd sort of way, that's one of the cool things about Bowie -- I think that there's a bunch of things that he does that don't work. But whether it works or not, Bowie goes forward, planting fields of sod, looking for that special fruit -- or reinterpreting the things that he does or has done, seeing if it will yield fruit in a different light. There is a core art to everything, even the things that don't work.

Seriously though, take a song like "Suffragette City". While it's sound certainly draws upon the roots of rock and roll, it's new, different and unique. It captures one of those essential elements that makes Bowie so cool -- a classic feel that takes you some place entirely new and also noteworthy in it's own way.

An Interesting Bowie Juxtaposition
Recently, I happened to catch Bowie performing for an Isle of Wight festival on one of the HD channels. I caught an interesting song performance that my "old Bowie" sensibilities had missed. "I'm Afraid of Americans" is an interesting song. Contrast it with "Young Americans". The whole comparison/contrast is full of surprises, but possibly the biggest one is that, while "I'm Afraid of American's" seems like a Bush-era protest song, it actually goes back to a 1997 album. That being said, the performance that I watched in the Isle of Wight Festival rang deeply as a Bush-era protest song.

Here's hoping that your music library keeps you up later than you expected...

Rahooo... Werewolves of Silicon Valley

2:00 am. Another one of those nights where I got caught up in listening to music too late into the night. As a creative person stuck in the corporate world -- a rock and roll person trapped in a world where you don't have time to connect with your music -- it's easy to forget the spirit of things that inspire you. And that's why, sometimes it's nice to just get caught up actually listening to the music that fires your soul.

With that in mind, here's my creative question for you.

In 1966, Bob Dylan, noted folk singer who wrote great protest songs like "Blowin' in the Wind" picked up electrically amplified musical instruments and started down a brand new path. His new path was not well received (many in the folk scene didn't like electric rock and roll). A sample of this can be heard in the recording (available on CD), The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live, 1966. During the tour, the electric set generated anger and controversy. In the recording, you can hear someone in the audience yell "Judas" at the end of "Ballad of a Thin Man", followed by lot of applause from the crowd. There's another person that yells something (one blog says it was, "I'm never going to listen to you again"), but it's hard to tell what it was. Dylan responds with, "I don't believe you. You're a liar." But one of the best parts of that recording is where, as the band starts to crank up "Like a Rolling Stone", you hear Dylan turn to the band and say, "Play it f___g loud." If you've ever wondered about "Like A Rolling Stone", there is a piece of its soul captured in that moment -- the essence of rock and roll.

We can't all be Bob Dylan. Most of us won't reshape the way the word perceives art, culture, and life. But, as Joseph Campbell might say, the tale of the hero is allegory, the story of an individual, faced with adversity, and demonstrating exceptional behavior. Idealized behavior.

Have you channeled your creative hero recently?