My Experience at Dreamforce 2025
Asher Best • October 24, 2025
Throughout the year leading up to Dreamforce, you see the advertisements when logging into Salesforce and browsing the internet. You see big names such as Matthew McConaughey, Metallica, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai and think “that’s pretty cool” before getting back to work. Fast forward, you are at Dreamforce in San Francisco watching Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on the big screen describe the next phase of digital transformation—what he refers to as the “Agentic Enterprise.” You could feel the energy as the audience erupted into applause at the prospect of this new artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.
Before Dreamforce
Goals and Expectations
I decided to attend Dreamforce to learn new or existing Salesforce technology—particularly Salesforce’s AI-powered virtual assistant platform known as Agentforce—that could enhance my organization’s business operations and customer experience. I also wanted to network with other industry professionals in order to share ideas and hurdles. Plus, who does not want to take a trip out to California?
I attended an Agentforce show-and-tell locally in Dallas earlier in the year. I expected Dreamforce to be similar but scaled up significantly. I knew that AI was the hot topic in tech so I expected there to be many keynotes and sessions on the subject and many a keynote and session there was. Perfect. My primary objective was to explore Agentforce and all it had to offer.
During Dreamforce
What Stood Out, Changed My Perspective, and Surprised Me
On the first day of Dreamforce, I attended an executive lunch where I learned about how other businesses similar to and different from my organization utilize Salesforce’s field worker management solution known as Field Service. I also had the pleasure of networking with a gentleman named Nicholas who worked in a similar role and industry to mine at a company called McKenney’s. We had a great discussion about challenges in our roles as technologists and with Field Service as a whole. On the second day of Dreamforce, I attended an Agentforce keynote where I learned about new and existing Agentforce features through live demonstrations.
Learning about the different ways other organizations are utilizing Agentforce was eye opening and sparked some ideas to apply to my organization. Also, the speakers at the main keynotes were extremely adept at public speaking and presentation. From the pacing of their speech to their interaction with the crowd, these are skills I wanted to take back home and improve upon during my presentations and live demonstrations.
It surprised me to see such a large area dedicated solely to DevOps and Security. These are two fields that I find great interest in and it was nice to see a portion of the venue dedicated to these subjects rather than Agentforce everywhere all at once.
Favorite Moments, Who Made An Impression, and the Overall Vibes
One of my favorite moments was talking to a staff member at the Field Service booth in the Campground. She had a great energy about her and I am remiss to have forgotten her name. She was also helpful and took the time to answer my questions as well as demonstrate new and existing features available in Field Service. I also spent some time in the Agentforce voice booth where I got to create my own voice agent prototype. The prototype is active for thirty days and you are given a phone number that you can send to others so they can talk to your agent.
From chauffeuring us to and from meetings to having dinner with our team, our Salesforce account executive Bryan Walwyn made the conference that much more enjoyable. Getting to meet the Field Service team—Nitasha, Michael, Andrew, Chad, and Chris—definitely made an impression on me. They took the time to hear about what is working and what is not working for our organization and offered suggestions as well as follow-up. Getting to learn more about and hang out with my work colleagues Elliott, Trevor, and Aaron both inside and outside of the event was fun as well.
The overall vibes felt great. You could certainly feel the energy and excitement in the main keynotes as new Agentforce solutions were demonstrated on the big screen and at the one-on-one booths in the Campground. That being said, it seems the capacity for the venue was over-exceeded. The venue felt way too crowded and staffing could have done a better job of directing traffic to and from keynotes. Waiting in line for an hour means nothing when waves of people can merge their way into the front of the line ten minutes before the keynote begins.
Practical Takeaways
New Tech and Features to Try
No matter where you looked at Dreamforce, AI definitely took center stage so the bulk of my takeaways are centered around Agentforce in some form or fashion. However, I was able to catch some developer-related sessions that left me with some tools and methods to bring back home that were not solely focused on AI.
I found the breadth of applicability for Agentforce agents to be quite interesting. Agentforce can be used to spot process bottlenecks and efficiency improvements. You can also utilize Agentforce agents for voice calling and messaging. Our organization recently rolled out Field Service pre-work brief during a test pilot and I found using this pre-work brief agent for helping the field technician up-sell a compelling and useful idea. Watching a live demo of someone build an entire quote for computer parts with an Agentforce agent sparked some ideas. They demonstrated a few key new features coming soon with Agentforce during one of the main keynotes and those included the new Agent Builder including conditional logic, Agentforce Studio for visibility, and Agentforce Grid for AI automation at scale. Agentforce appears to be versatile in the Salesforce ecosystem.
Some other takeaways from the event were learning more about how to configure and utilize capacity planning and schedule optimization for Field Service. This is something our organization has been talking about since we first switched to Salesforce and I believe this to be a beneficial feature to implement. I also learned a little bit about deploying AI agents at scale with common DevOps principles and how to create OpenAPI specifications / API catalogs for Apex REST endpoints through the Salesforce VSCode extension. Last but not least, Revenue Cloud (a Salesforce product for managing revenue processes) was a product I had not heard of prior to Dreamforce. It appeared to be a similar product to Salesforce CPQ (a third party package acquired by Salesforce for configuring and pricing quotes) that certainly warrants further discovery.
Outside the Conference
Great Food and Great Company
I ate a lot of great food with work colleagues and Salesforce reps outside of the event. R&G Grill had some amazing Cantonese food and one of the best Old Fashioned drinks I have had in a while. We mixed and matched dishes to try a bit of everything. Acquolina was a great Italian food spot where my colleagues and I met with Bryan, Uday, and Chad from Salesforce. Everyone was beat from day one of the conference so conversations were light but it was still an enjoyable experience overall.
Family Time
Outside of the conference, I got to spend time with my wife and daughter at the beach, walking around the city, and eating ice cream at the Ghiradelli Experience. Since I am a total nerd (and proud of it), we also made a stop at the California Academy of Sciences where I got to watch a showing at the Morrison Planetarium called Impact! which was about the asteroids in our Solar System and how they came to be throughout the formation of our Solar System.
How San Francisco Shaped the Experience
San Francisco is a beautiful city. It is definitely the right atmosphere for an event such as Dreamforce. The city screams technological innovation. You realize technology has come a long way when you peer over into one of those Waymo cars and realize no one is behind the wheel or see a robot dog trotting in place. Everything in the city is very walk-able and it is fascinating to watch how alive and busy the city is. Everything is constantly on the move which can be exciting and overwhelming at all once.
Conclusion
The Event in Retrospect
The event exceeded my expectations overall. I came away with what I believe to be valuable insights to not only advance my skill set but also to bring back to my organization and the great people within it in hopes of empowering their every day tasks through technology. Notwithstanding the logistical execution of the event, Dreamforce was an overall great experience and I would recommend it to anyone interested in Salesforce and San Francisco.
What I Would Do Differently and Advice for First Timers
If it were my second time at Dreamforce or if you are reading this and plan on attending Dreamforce for the first time next year, I would definitely try to spread out sessions on the agenda so everything is not so crammed. Having to rush from session to session will burn you out rapidly and is virtually impossible if you have to cross the street from Moscone South/North to Moscone West if it is busy. I would also spend more time networking and interacting with the one-on-one booths while trying out as many technologies as possible. The sessions were beneficial but I found the real value to have come from interactions with others and getting my hands on the technologies that were showcased.
How Dreamforce Influenced My Thinking
I have much to learn when it comes to public speaking, presentation, content, and technology. I was inspired by the speakers at the main keynotes and will definitely spend more time honing in on my soft skills such as public speaking and presenting. My career trajectory will certainly include a more AI-focused approach to accelerate not only myself but others through this technology by empowering rather than replacing.