Introduction :

India Dreamin is a community-led, community-run event for professionals around Salesforce. This event witnessed all Salesforce users who share a passion for innovation – developers, admins, partners, customers, and students around the world. It aimed to bring us all together and give everyone access to the best content available to help educate and provide value for everyone. It was an entire day of inspiring keynotes, speaker sessions, partner and customer success stories, and a great chance to meet your peers from the Salesforce world – all under one roof!

India Dreamin’23 was a huge success and one of the maestro behind it was Mitul Patel. Mitul is the Chairperson of India Dreamin. She started her journey with a company called Apttus. She started as a Technical Writer. She wanted to do something unique and took on many roles like Project Manager, Business Analyst, and Configuration Engineer. She then switched companies and took on many other roles. 

She continues that he journey has been a combination of community and professional life. She highlights that ‘Community’ is very important in the Salesforce Ecosystem. It is something that cannot be missed out. This is where India Dreamin comes into the picture. She continues to talk about how India Dreamin’23 become a complete picture and what were the challenges and achievements in her journey of organizing such a big-scale Salesforce Event like India Dreamin’23

Further Insights into the session:

1. What is India Dreamin'? How was the 2023 edition of it curated?

India Dreamin’ is a conference that is led by the community, run by the community and it’s for the community. The first India Dreamin’ was held in 2017 and had 1700 attendees. In 2018, when she was a core member, there were 2200 attendees. Now in 2023, they decided to do the event in Ahmedabad. The city was decided after Mitul expressed her love for her hometown and decided to do the conference in her town. She wanted to do something big in her town. Here it was suggested that she could take on an existing event rather than doing something from the start. That is how India Dreamin’ 2023 Conference commenced.

2. What were the challenges faced while organizing the event?

Mitul states that there were two major challenges that they faced while organizing the event.
The first one was the sponsors which eventually worked out and the second one was the place itself.

Initially, India Dreamin’ took place in Noida, where many companies are based.The change of place to a tier-two city like Ahmedabad made it difficult to convince people to attend the event.

3. What strategies do you use to promote and create awareness about India Dreamin'?

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Mitul starts by saying that it is important to have a dream team of your own.

Then she continues by saying that one can register by being a Volunteer and Brand Ambassador.

They reached out to the Social Media Influencers and of course, the Sponsors did a huge job in promoting the event. They were also associated with a lot of NGOs

4. What has been your most memorable moment or achievement while organizing India Dreamin'?

Mitul mentions that the most memorable moments would be the brainstorming session that she had with the core team. The long stretch of those sessions and the overcoming of the hiccups through the journey through the teamwork were memorable for her. She finds her achievements in the posts that attendees posted after the event. The various videos and photos along with the words of appreciation touched her heart. She also mentioned the senior Salesforce team giving their take and narrating their experience.

5. Can you share any insights or lessons learned from organizing India Dreamin'23?

Mitul with a good laugh says that she needs to write a blog on this one. There are many lessons that she learned, one of which she wanted to mention is that there has to be no vagueness in the proposal of topics that one sends as a speaker for the event.

6. How do you ensure that India Dreamin' provides value to attendees and meets their expectations? 

The Golden Rule that was followed while organizing the event was that ‘ You have to treat how you want to be treated’. Mitul says that throughout the process of getting the event in place, they followed that rule. They paid attention to every small detail from the registration to the food.

7. Are there stories from the speakers or attendees that greatly impacted you?

Mitul answers this question by saying that there are too many stories that can actually be mentioned. It is the small things like the members themselves or the stories from the posts of appreciation that are something that keeps her going. She also remembers attendees coming from the US or canceling their plans and planning way ahead to attend the event.

8. Why should one be a part of the community? What is the power of community?

In her own words, Mitul explains that if on the internet there are 3 places that talk about what is going on in the community or the ecosystem then in the meet-ups and conferences there are 30 things that one will get to learn.

The events or the community lets one meet people with more than 20s years of experience which add ons to the growth ten times more than normal. It is also about the help that everyone gives each other in tough times. These things are only possible through the community.

9. What advice do you have for aspiring event organizers or those interested in getting involved in the Salesforce community?

To this, she says that there 3 things that she would love to highlight.

1. Figure out the ‘WHY’-The reason to organize the events and work for it. Mitul says that her ‘why’ is that she wants to provide a stage for people.
2. Bring a Dream Team- Teamwork acts as an important element.
3. The Golden Rule- Treating people the way you want to be treated is an important aspect of organizing any event.

Conclusion

The session concludes with the last question. The question was ‘What advice do you have for aspiring event organizers or those interested in getting involved in the Salesforce community?’ To this, she says that there are 3 things that she would love to highlight. One is about figuring out the ‘WHY’. The reason to organize the events and work for it. Mitul says that her ‘why’ is that she wants to provide a stage for people. The second one is to bring a dream team. Teamwork acts as an important element in such high-scale events and the last one is to follow the Golden Rule, treating people the way you want to be treated is not only an important aspect of organizing any event but also the relationships that one carries in their life.

Summary

The following mindmap is the summary of the whole session. If a detailed session is required, please refer to the link given below: