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Low income SF students from Mission nonprofit ejected from Dreamforce

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11–20 of 43 posts

Re: Low income SF students from Mission nonprofit ejected from Dreamforce

#11
post #2

This has the markings of a PR stunt. As a reader of the article, I'm very curious what the badges look like, as those are a legitimate cause for concern for security. Any legitimate reporting on this issue would investigate that detail.

Why should it matter what they look like if someone from Salesforce says they are legit?

Re: Low income SF students from Mission nonprofit ejected from Dreamforce

#12
Personally, I would like to thank Salesforce for a strong security presence at the event. There were bomb sniffing dogs, many security staff, and vehicle barriers with armed guards at street entrances.

Despite being a sponsor and speaker at the event, I was denied access (due to different badge type) to the expo hall to help the rest of our company setup our booth. It was frustrating, but at least the security was paying attention.

It is very unfortunate that this group had problems getting in. I would have enjoyed talking to their group, as I did with the Girl Scouts group and other non-profits that sent STEM students to the event.

Re: Low income SF students from Mission nonprofit ejected from Dreamforce

#13
While I agree that security guards are most responsible here at the end of the day they are correct to blame Salesforce. If you hold an event you are ultimately responsible for what the staff does, even when they are just contractors. And that's both from a legal, and optics perspective. In this case, Salesforce did these kids a disservice by providing them substantially different badges from other attendants, and by not doing enough to keep them in once they confronted problems. The head of the outing mentions that their contact tried to keep the guards from kicking them out but I have to question how an actual employee vouching for them wasn't enough. Seems like the ball was dropped several times, by multiple different parties.

Re: Low income SF students from Mission nonprofit ejected from Dreamforce

#14

Personally, I would like to thank Salesforce for a strong security presence at the event. There were bomb sniffing dogs, many security staff, and vehicle barriers with armed guards at street entrances. Despite being a sponsor and speaker at the event, I was denied access (due to different badge type) to the expo hall to help the rest of our company setup our booth. It was frustrating, but at least the security was pa…

I'm curious about the demography for this event ... do you have sense for the attendees? Would be genuinely interested in what you get out of it. I've never been and am really curious what draws such large crowds.

Re: Low income SF students from Mission nonprofit ejected from Dreamforce

#15
post #2

This has the markings of a PR stunt. As a reader of the article, I'm very curious what the badges look like, as those are a legitimate cause for concern for security. Any legitimate reporting on this issue would investigate that detail.

Why should it matter what they look like if someone from Salesforce says they are legit?

Because it explains the behavior of the security guards, presuming they didn't "get the memo" about a small group of people with fake-looking badges that are actually legitimate.

Re: Low income SF students from Mission nonprofit ejected from Dreamforce

#18
post #8

Let me guess. Salesforce will blame the guards. Because the workers with the least amount of influence share an inordinate amount of blame. Some platitudes about being a welcoming company when clearly they weren't. Finally, a small donation to appears the media. And things will continue on as usual.

The security guard doesn't exactly come across as lacking influence:

> That’s when the male guard reportedly told the students, “You don’t belong here,” and, allegedly, “Your kind don’t belong in here.”

This whilst the Salesforce employee was trying to convince him to allow the students to stay.

Re: Low income SF students from Mission nonprofit ejected from Dreamforce

#19

> He credited Pineda with trying to straighten out the situation. “Angelica did a fabulous job, she did everything in her power to keep us inside,” Sosa said. But the two security guards, who Sosa described as a black man and Latina woman, ejected them. Having read the entire article it seems this was a case of uninformed security grunts doing what they usually do. The race of the security guards gets mentioned as a…

Don't worry, the race of the conference attendees was also mentioned along with the race of the victims. It's to help progressives apportion blame.

> It's to help progressives apportion blame.

Does this materially contribute to the conversation? What's your motive for saying it?

Re: Low income SF students from Mission nonprofit ejected from Dreamforce

#20

Personally, I would like to thank Salesforce for a strong security presence at the event. There were bomb sniffing dogs, many security staff, and vehicle barriers with armed guards at street entrances. Despite being a sponsor and speaker at the event, I was denied access (due to different badge type) to the expo hall to help the rest of our company setup our booth. It was frustrating, but at least the security was pa…

I'm curious about the demography for this event ... do you have sense for the attendees? Would be genuinely interested in what you get out of it. I've never been and am really curious what draws such large crowds.

I attended this event because I do some work with Salesforce and my company was willing to pay for it so it was basically a cheap vacation. I feel like it's largely a marketing event to showcase new features of Salesforce and showcase companies that have been successful using it and to that end it's effectively a big party.

There are useful aspect to it, though. It's an opportunity to network with people and other companies that use Salesforce and there are a lot of presentations on topics ranging from technical details of Salesforce to oceanography which can be useful for getting ideas on how to better utilize Salesforce. Salesforce has a large secondary market for applications built on it and Dreamforce is pretty good for companies with products in that market.

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