Salesforce TrailheaDX: Path Toward Redefining Developers
To help businesses adapt to a world of omnipresent software, Salesforce aims to create more programmers. Here is a look at the company's first developer conference, where it explored that mission.
![](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt69509c9116440be8/bltc17382b0f8deecd9/64cb42b31c36f0b5483804f7/Salesforce_TrailheaDX_SS_Intro.png?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
A software platform requires developers, but developers aren't easy to come by. By Salesforce's count, there are about 20 million of them in a world where demand for software could support 50 million of them.
There's also a counterargument that the ostensible shortage of tech talent is really reluctance to extend excessive managerial pay to software engineers, even if top software engineers have been known to get significant bonuses in recent years.
A less controversial claim would be that among the developers out there, few are likely to have the exact skill set sought by employers, because two out of three are self-taught, which doesn't make for a consistent skill foundation.
But taking Saleforce's assertions at face value for the moment, it's understandable that the company might want to open development up to a broader group of people than the relatively limited set of computer science graduates.
That's what the company is trying to do with its Lightning tools and with its online learning environment Trailhead. Salesforce sees value in creating more developers capable of improving Salesforce and associated apps.
[See the Top Programming Languages That Will Future-Proof Your Portfolio.]
To make more Salesforce-savvy developers and support existing ones, on Tuesday and Wednesday the company held its first developer conference, TrailheaDX. It was a far more modest affair than the company's sprawling Dreamforce extravaganza, which had about 160,000 attendees last year.
Setting aside the event's excessive use of capital letters, TrailheaDX presented Salesforce's latest developer technology in a positive light -- the pleasant spotlights and fill lights from the Warfield Theater lighting grid. As a point of contrast, the blazing sunlight illuminating the outdoor Google I/O developer conference last month made that event more of a trial than it should have been.
In keeping with the wilderness theme suggested by the conference name, TrailheaDX tried to evoke the outdoors inside its two venues. The Warfield and an event space called The Village across the street were appointed with fakes trees, fake grass, a taxidermy bear, and a person in a bear suit.
One of the vendors I encountered while wandering the exhibit floor claimed that Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff wanted a real bear for Dreamforce last year but was denied a permit. Asked about this, a company representative said it wasn't true. A USA Today report from last year recounts Benioff suggesting a live bear as a jest. There's still hope for Dreamforce '16.
Quirkiness and simulated trees aside, Salesforce is onto something. A lot of programming involves reinventing the wheel. Turning those wheels into ready-to-use modules that anyone with a bit of ambition can use to build an app has real promise.
Here are some scenes from the event. Take a look and let us know what you think about Saleforce's first developer conference and its goal to redefine the term "developer."
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff normally presides over much bigger gatherings, like the massive crowd at Dreamforce. He's a compelling public speaker, with a level of gravitas and comfort onstage that his peers haven't quite found, apart from perhaps Eric Schmidt.
The woodsy theme of TrailheaDX had a sort of hokey charm. At the same time, Salesforce was trying too hard to deny that technology and nature tend to be opposing forces. No doubt everyone had fun pretending they were off on a bucolic camping trip. But as phones and laptops ran out of battery power, you can bet everyone there was glad to have a wall outlet to recharge. And that's to say nothing about bugs …
… or bears. Clearly, not enough people at Salesforce watched The Colbert Report or The Revenant. Bears are not to be trifled with.
Seriously. Enough with the bears already. The more interesting aspect of this picture is the presence of a child at TrailheaDX. There were kids at the show who were learning how to write code. What a great opportunity.
Salesforce doesn't only talk about bringing unrepresented groups into programming. It's driving change by involving companies like Mission Bit, which teaches kids to program.
Salesforce formalized its approach to philanthropy with its 1-1-1 model. As outlined in the image above, 1-1-1 refers to Saleforce's practice of donating 1% of employee time, in the form of service hours; 1% of equity, in the form of grants; and 1% of its products to non-profit organizations.
Plenty of other companies participate in philanthropy as well, but as Marc Benioff has noted, Salesforce integrated philanthropy from day one. Benioff talked about philanthropy at TrailheaDX before he talked about the technology being introduced. It's easy to like a company that puts people first.
Would it be too much to hope for 5-5-5?
Salesforce's pitch for its developer technologies and its Trailhead online learning environment is based on jobs. IDC research suggests that by 2018, Salesforce and its ecosystem of customers and partners will create one million jobs and generate $272 billion in GDP worldwide. That's a good thing, assuming Salesforce retains its massive popularity. But employees thinking about their job prospects might also want to have some vendor-neutral developer skills under their belts, to avoid employment lock-in.
Salesforce's App Cloud Lightning is a development framework that allows people with little or no programming experience to create apps. By dragging and dropping Lightning Components on a page, those without formal development backgrounds can shape the tools they use. Lightning doesn't eliminate the need for computer scientists. Rather, it allows a broader set of people to become involved in the making of software. That's likely to be good for businesses.
"We absolutely want to be the platform of innovation for every company," explained Adam Seligman, EVP of App Cloud, at a press briefing following the keynote. For businesses trying to adapt to the software-driven world, he argues, Saleforce's tools can help companies "activate everyone" to build the applications they want.
Salesforce offered a glimpse of future features destined for its Lightning framework. Lightning Branding, for example, will let companies load their own web page branding, rather than the Salesforce logo.
The company has also started talking about AI on the Salesforce platform. It demonstrated how a Facebook Messenger chat bot hosted on Heroku might be used to provide real estate clients with home inventory data.
Next week, Apple is expected to continue the AI conversation as it talks about Siri's anticipated API.
There you have it: The great outdoors in a concert setting. Somehow Salesforce made it work. It may just help more people find work as developers. We'll have some measure of that next year if Salesforce has to look for a larger space to hold its second developer conference.
There you have it: The great outdoors in a concert setting. Somehow Salesforce made it work. It may just help more people find work as developers. We'll have some measure of that next year if Salesforce has to look for a larger space to hold its second developer conference.
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