Every Salesforce employee’s bucket list includes attending Dreamforce, and as an intern, I never in my wildest dreams thought I would check it off.
I was fortunate enough to recently attend Dreamforce 2025, and it is safe to say that it completely surpassed my expectations. From San Francisco being taken over by Codey the Bear and walking Einstein Bots to the streets flooded with tech enthusiasts from around the world, here are a few of my top takeaways from my first Dreamforce.
Embrace Change
Change is often considered a daunting approach. It’s something that frankly intimidates me, especially when I’m used to the comfort of my circumstances. I notice this hesitancy in my everyday life, at school, and in work.
Whether it be switching my coffee order after religiously getting iced vanilla lattes, adding a double major in Data Science after my comfort of being an Economics major, or pushing myself to have a stronger technical acumen and pick up Tableau this past summer, change has never been effortless.
My perspective about change was challenged after attending a fireside chat between Nathalie Scardino, Salesforce’s President and Chief People Officer, and Mel Robbins, New York Times bestselling author, podcast host, lawyer, and expert in mindset and behavior.
In this chat, Robbins highlighted the mindset of “Let Them,” in which we can let go of the mental fear of what other people think (or what we assume they will think) so that we can focus on our own personal expectations or goals.
“Letting go of that fear of validation or failure is crucial for embracing growth and making actionable changes. It’s important to have our own definitions of success so that we can view change not as an obstacle to our goals but instead, something that is necessary to achieve these goals.”
Embrace Agentic AI
Traditional dashboards and reports are the iced vanilla lattes of the industry, safe and routine. However, technology is rapidly evolving and moving away from comfort, and it’s important that we do the same.
One of the booths I attended at Dreamforce was Tableau Next and Agentforce, and it expanded my view as to how we approach analytics. Currently, dashboards and report analysis are more of a reactive model in which they only respond to human inputs and changes.
With Tableau Next, people’s insights are taken into consideration, but an agent acts as a partner to complement these insights without needing a human to constantly serve as a prompter. I learned the importance of a seamless human-AI integration to reduce the manual overload and instead redirect people’s efforts to more efficient tasks, such as the resulting strategy or long-term business goals.
As an intern who spent the vast majority of my summer working with Tableau Desktop, I’m particularly excited to embrace this change in my own work going forward.
Embrace People
It would be an understatement to say that Dreamforce was packed with people, from enthusiastic Salesforce employees to customers and partners from across the world. While I was only able to talk to a small fraction of the attendees, I took away so much knowledge and gratitude from each person I came across.
At first, I was frankly overwhelmed by the sheer number of people, not necessarily sure where I should even start, and I was nervous about approaching strangers who were experts in their fields. The dense environment, however, forced me to step out of my shell and realize that the most important aspect about embracing change is intentionally being vulnerable to truly connect with others.
I noticed myself getting out of this shell simply by going up to a booth to try and win a prize. In order to secure the prize, I had to fill out a 10-to-15 minute survey, and I took the opportunity to talk to the employee leading the booth.
In a few minutes of small talk, I learned about his journey at Salesforce and shared parts of my summer and fall experiences, as well.
While his role in Solutions Engineering was widely distinct from my role in AI & People Analytics, we connected on our backgrounds, making a 50,000-person conference feel much more personable and authentic.
Now that Dreamforce 2025 has officially wrapped up, I’m incredibly grateful for the experience of a lifetime. An event that I thought would be filled with sessions, food, and merch (which it was!) left me humbled and inspired.
From redefining change as a driver to achieve our goals, embracing agentic AI in our everyday workflows, and being intentional with connecting with people, I hope to keep learning and innovating with this new purpose.
Ready to learn more?
Check out our Futureforce internship and new grad programs and apply today!
