Thursday, April 16, 2015

My addiction to Trailhead goes to San Francisco

Back in January I got hooked on Trailhead, the new and fun resource for learning about Salesforce technology on the Salesforce Developer Community site.

Trailhead offers numerous lessons, each of which can be tackled in 10 to 25 minutes. At the end of each lesson is a challenge which either involves either answering some questions or logging into a free developer org and doing some work. Trailhead verifies if your answers or work are correct, and if they are, gives you points for completing a challenge. If you complete a set of challenges, you can earn a badge which is displayed on your Salesforce Developer Community profile.

Because Trailhead tracks your progress and offers lessons that can be finished in as short as 10 minutes, it makes it easy to chip away at training even if you don't have time to sit down for a long length of contiguous time. You can just log in whenever you have a spare 10 to 25 minutes and knock out a lesson.

Tonight I got to attend a "Trailhead LIVE" event in San Francisco. At this event, all attendees were asked to bring a device to enable us to work on Trailhead at the event. I worked on one "real" lesson, and then I worked on the "Catter" badge, a special badge launched on April 1. (The date might give you a clue as to the seriousness of this badge. Take a look before it disappears!) We also got to play a trivia game and meet fellow Salesforce enthusiasts.

Even though you can always work on Trailhead anytime and anywhere that you have access to a browser and an Internet connection, I highly recommend attending a Trailhead LIVE event for a fun change of pace. This was the second Trailhead LIVE event, and more should be coming soon, so keep a lookout on Twitter and other channels for announcements of future Trailhead LIVE events.


Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Introduction

Welcome to Rick's Salesforce Journey!

In this blog, I'll be sharing insights and resources that are directly or tangentially related to the world of Salesforce. I currently work for Sony Electronics, Inc., and have been responsible for Salesforce platform solution delivery and support since 2012. I am also responsible for solution delivery and support for Sony Electronics' SharePoint platform and an e-commerce and support site called ServicesPLUS. Over the years, I have led the development of and managed the support for a wide variety of systems using a broad array of technologies.

Please feel free to comment on my blog posts or contact me on one of the sites listed in the left navigation bar's "Rick Upton on Social Networks" section. I look forward to not only sharing information, but also interacting with others interested in the world of Salesforce.