On March 23, 2016, Salesforce hosted its 4th Annual Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner. In honor of Women’s History Month, we wanted to recognize inspirational women of our past and present. As each of our guests entered, they were greeted with a blue carpet walk and a paparazzi moment as they posed with several women leaders that have influenced millions: Maya Angelou, Sheryl Sandberg, Malala Yousafzai, Eleanor Roosevelt, our own Cindy Robbins, and more. As 130 girl geeks gathered, the Salesforce cafe radiated with energy and excitement.
Here are our favorite moments:
Networking: The first half of the evening focused on women from all backgrounds and experiences getting a chance to meet each other and connect on their shared love for being girl geeks.
Demos: During the networking hour, we also featured three interactive demo stations from our Trailhead, SalesforceIQ, and Heroku teams. The demos were packed non-stop with curious minds throughout the evening.
Bala Subramanian kicked off the evening with a lightning talk on building for scale. Bala has been at Salesforce for 16 years and has learned that it’s important to build for today. Because what’s not too big today, will be tomorrow, and you can always iterate on your solution.
Molly Ford turned her passion for diversity into a career. Molly wowed the crowd with her energy, transparency, and trending Twitter tips: “If you’re going to be a bear… be a Grizzly!” and “Always have your elevator pitch in your back pocket.”
Chris Duarte, our editor-in-chief of Trailhead, shared you don’t need permission to be rad. Chris is in the middle of a 90-day experiment to focus on her priorities. How did she inspire us? She challenged all of us to choose 3 things that make us feel rad, create 3 strategies to focus on them, and tell the world what you’re doing.
Caroline Roth opened up about her biggest mistake, which she turned into her biggest opportunity. Caroline assured us that it’s normal to make mistakes and gave 5 tips she used to turn hers into a great success. What are those tips? Mistakes will happen; own up to your mistakes; don’t hide from the folks who are really angry at you; crisis is opportunity; and talk about your mistakes openly to invite others to do the same.
Swag: Each attendee was loaded down with plenty of swag from SalesforceIQ, Heroku, Trailhead, and SalesforceUX. To continue to celebrate influential women of our past and present, we also collected quotes that inspired our SalesforceWIT followers and our Women in Technology group to feature on a keepsake that attendees could take home with them.
And, last, but definitely not least, was the inspiration we felt from each of our 130 new girl geek friends.
We went into this event hoping to have fun and to host a memorable evening for our attendees. We left feeling energized and excited to be a part of the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner community.
Did you attend Salesforce’s Girl Geek Dinner? Share your favorite memory in the comments below.
