Dreamforce 12: Live Blogging the Benioff Keynote

There is plenty of buzz and excitement here at Dreamforce 12 right now, with an estimated double the number of attendees as last year (90,000 by last count), which is saying something. Peter Coffee is doing the pre-keynote hosting and showing off various aspects of Salesforce product. ZDNet’s Larry Dignan has already covered some of the new announcements this morning. I’m sure also we’ll hear plenty of details and success stories from Marc Benioff and other customers and Salesforce execs during the keynote session today.

Slide provided to industry analysts and press by Salesforce

Liveblogging and analysis of the Dreamforce opening keynote

9:00am: Peter Coffee is doing opening introductions and safe harbor notices.

9:01am: Now introducing MC Hammer onto the stage…

9:03am: Really trying to pump up the crowd, like it needs it very much… Singing Too Legit to Quit

9:07am: OK, MC Hammer is offstage after doing a quick shout out to social business platforms.

9:09am: Montage of Salesforce and customer stories. Burberry, General Electric, Men’s Wearhouse, Perrier, and many others.

9:11am: Plenty of pounding music and video about Salesforce products, customers, and stories. Quite a bit of mention of both social and sales. No one on stage yet, it’s all video.

9:13am: Now Marc Benioff is up on stage in front of a Business Is Social banner. “I’m going to help you walk through a door. You’ve created the world’s largest technology event. Saying 90,000 people registered for the event. “The Cloud is coming…”

9:17am: Reviewing Salesforce’s charitable efforts. Putting 1% of their equity, profit, and product into a 501(c)3 charity. Very proud of the 350,000 hours of service and $40 million in grants donated.

9:19am: Announces they’re giving away $10 million to San Francisco District 10, five grantees in all. Also grants to $4 million to JCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.

9:20am: “We are standing on the shoulders’ of giants.” Talking about mainframes, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and client/server computing. Google for creating the cloud. Amazon and Jeff Bezos gets a shout-out. Mentions the “late great” Steve Jobs as a visionary, gets a big hand from the crowd.

9:21am: “The social revolution is being led by many new prophets.” Mentions Mark Zuckerberg. Moving forward in the continuum. That’s why we’re all here at this conference. “This social revolution is unlike anything we’ve ever experienced before.” A single video on YouTube can cause massive disruption around the world. (Clearly referring to the Innocence of Muslims video.)

9:22am: Asking the audience how many companies use social in their busineses today in some way. Most of the audience raises their hands. Says 70% of businesses use social in how they work. Cites McKinsey’s $1.3 trillion economic benefit stat for social business. Most of the audience raises their hands.

9:24am: Says social is now the fastest growth investment of any IT category.

9:25am: CEO study reports that business leaders think social will be one of top 2 ways to engage with customers.

9:27am: “Our core mission is to help you connect with your customers in a whole new way.” It’s not just about how or why we’re connecting. It goes deeper. It’s getting down into the fundamental interaction between each one of us. Because we’re changing how we’re doing business. How we interact with our employees, customer, partners. It’s incredible what’s happening. It’s getting down to a fundamental change in business.”

Related: Eight Ways to Prepare to Socially Engage at Scale

9:28am: “About 5 years ago we went through a big transformation. We realized we had to change our core values. Customer success was our highest value. But we saw something else. To really be successful in this new time. We would really have to become a company customers could trust. We’d need more openness and transparency. Half transparency isn’t enough. We’d have to focus on individuals, with greater alignment, and leadership than ever before. To do this we’d have to get to a level of trust that would take our industry — and that would take us — to a whole new level.”

9:30am: “The social revolution is a trust revolution. The incredible value of trust.”

9:30am: “Are you and your company going through a social revolution? We believe that this will demarcate the companies that will be successful going forward. The future is about being connected to workers, customers, and partners.” Now talking about Jeff Immelt reaching out to Mark to talk about the future of GE. He went to talk to GE’s top executives.

9:32am: Continuing the discussion about talking with Jeff Immelt about the future of GE. Immelt said two things. First, said the future of GE is about the man/machine interface. They make CAT scanners, turbines, jet engines. Those machines are becoming more and more intelligent. The future of our profitability and revenue is about the effectiveness of their customer engagement. Talking about APIs and ‘socially’ collaborating with GE products which will get feeds, status updates, and other social trapping around their products. Side note: Social products is a hot topic.

Related: Last year’s Dreamforce 11 Keynote Live Blog

9:34am: Talking about the GE Share vision still and how GE is planning to connect with customers in a whole new way. Citing Toyota Friend from last year’s keynote. Now showing a video of how GE is using social to connect employees to customers to machines.

9:38am: Video is exploring how jet engines are being integrated into the social fabric of running GE. Social and Salesforce “helped connect the dots” and makes the business more approachable. “If you’re a business, you need to become social to get closer to the customer.”

9:40am: Mark is back and talking about how social adds value to the business. Now inviting Charlene Begley the President and CEO of Home Product Division up to talk. Saying “GE is Social.”

9:41am: “Social is about accelerating learning, communication, and access to information.” Have 300,000 people that need to turn data into information. Social unlocks huge value.

9:42am: Mark: “How to transform the way that you sell to your customers? Market to your customers? Support your customers? How to do you transform the way that you collaborate with your customers? How to transform how you fundamentally work inside your organization.” Says Forbes has selected Salesforce has selected them twice as the most innovative company. “How do you transform how you innovate?”

9:44am: “Social Revolution: The New Social Front Office, Where Trust Lives.” Now breaking down the benefits of social business. “How do we give you the information you need to go back and transform your companies?” Going to tell six stories of six companies to illustrate how it’s done.

9:46am: Marc’s social business benefits summary slide: +32% sales productivity, +29% innovation, +34% employee satisfaction, +31% employee productivity, +37% campaign effectiveness, +34% customer satisfaction. Jibes well with our meta-synthesis of benefits as well.

9:48am: The first story is up. Rossignol discusses in detail their experience with social business and sales.

9:52am: Announcing Salesforce Touch: “Sales is now social. Data is now social.”

9:53am: Talking about Salesforce Partner Communities. Doing a demo of how companies can selectively open up to partners to enable them to collaborate better. Using example of REI, Rossignol, and skis where they can plan collaboratively using social tools. Really switching from the vision down to specific product information. Crowd a little less engaged but it is useful functionality in terms of getting the full context of what’s going on in terms of complex sales environments.

9:56am: Continuing the demo, showing mobile devices and Salesforce Touch in context of a meeting in the field. “Has everything she needs in her hand, can see her Chatter feed, last minute updates. Using ‘digital sales aid’ instead of PowerPoint. Doing a presentation with video and answering all questions on the fly, all using the Salesforce experience. Has integrated experience right to the customer signature and closing the deal in a single seamless experience from presentation to closed deal. Fairly impressive. Saying “That is social selling.” Seeing the power of “social data”.

10:00am: Switching back to Mark (didn’t catch the name of the last person.) Talking about seamless integration of Salesforce and Chatter. Says he lives in the app himself. Now introducing CEO of Rossignol, Burno Cercley.

10:01am: Going to explore how social is transforming Rossignol, says “saving time is part of the DNA of Rossignol. In racing, 100th of second can make you very sad or very happy. Time is of the essence. If we lose a day, we can lose a season. We need to understand the business as quickly as possible. The only way to get the info from the sales guy to marketing, product development, etc is key. We need to understand what’s going on. [Social] is how we will do this.”

10:03am: Now Charles Schwab’s CIO, Brad Peterson is up and talking about becoming a social business. I like what Mark is saying about trust (he should, given the industry.) “To be a social business, you have to have the DNA of your company support this.” 7,000 advisors are building on the Schwab platform, which Salesforce is providing. Advisors build the relationship with the customer, are building communities to improve this connection.

10:05am: Mark: “We are telling you these social business stories to help you transform yourself and your organizations.” 7,700 employees. #1 video game publisher. Rolling a video on how they’re using social. Says they believe that the “swarming aspect” of addressing an emerging problem is going to be key to success. Great Social CRM example, though would love hard numbers.

10:08am: Fergus Griffin, senior VP of marketing, is up. “We’ve just seen this fantastic social transformation of Activision.” Using Service Cloud to do this. Citing http://ideas.salesfore.com. Really pitching Service Cloud, includes federated search, internal objects as knowledge, external sources such as SharePoint. Available as pilot in 2013. Talking about new Chatter Communities for self-service. Combined best of social networking with customer self-service processes.

10:12am: Fergus is going through some detailed scenarios of how they support customers using social CRM. Examples include GameStop, Activision, and Twitter.

10:15am: “Bringing together people to support each other is a customer service dream.” Talking about how Activision has created a ‘Facebook for gamers.’ Have one for Call of Duty and shows examples of how customers support each other, including using gamers to rate the accuracy of socially co-created answers.

10:17am: Continuing very detailed scenarios about using multichannel customer support, including FaceTime and other ways to ensure customers can get the help they need.

Related: CRM investments ramp due to social media and smart mobility

10:19am: Using Service Cloud to redefine what customer service systems looks like. Inviting Robert Schmidt, global CIO of Activision up on stage. Interviewing him on his vision for the future. “Our games are very social, we have 1-2 million people play every day. What the future holds for us is that [social] is not just a technology change, it’s a cultural one.” Telling a story about how social networking in their company. How an employee was hesitant to respond to an issue because their boss hadn’t yet. Said this is the cultural change we need to enable.

10:22am: Mark: Introducing the CEO of Yelp, Jeremy Stoppelman, says he’s the “Father of Trust.” Mark: “Give us some insight on the medium of social networking.”

10:23am: “We have so many tapping into content on the go. All over the country and all over the world. Mobile is one of our key focus areas as social goes mobile.”

10:24am: Mark: “We want to start a new journey with you. We’re going to show you a brand new application today. It’s really incredible. The company that we’re going to use to illustrate this is Commonwealth Bank. Australia’s largest bank.” Rolling video.

10:25am: “You can extend this new world to any one, any time. If you look at the social integration in the business, things like Chatter allow the narrative of the organization to be captured and shared.”

10:27am: Mark: “By 2017, CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs.” Sidebar: My take on the future of CIOs and CMOs.

10:28am: Introducing Brett Queener, EVP of Marketing Cloud. “Social represents the biggest change to marketing in the last 60 years.” We’re hearing: “We’ve been managing social with one or two people over here in the corner. That’s not going to work any more. They need to manage marketing over every one of their workers and customers.” Talking about the integration of Radian6 and BuddyMedia. “The industries first integrated marketing suite. We all have the ability to do social marketing right.” Certainly, this is a hot space. Note: We’re not doing so bad on this either, as are some others, but it is a compelling story.

10:34am: Brett continuing to show the integrated vision of Marketing Cloud, with real time connection between mobile, Facebook, Twitter, and the social Web. Showing campaign performance, dashboards, demographic breakdowns, and drill downs using Commonwealth Bank as an example. High polish, all in the inimitable Salesforce style. Mobile is a major, if not the primary, focus here, which is interesting.

10:38am: “We can employ the marketing cloud to use the voice of our customer. We can show ROI across both paid and earned media. Can clearly show the number of new customers that we’ve brought into Commonwealth Bank through the power of social. Can you really easily engage and advertise, and understand the return on social? Yes, you can.”

10:40am: Mark is back thanking how everyone collaborated together to create the Marketing Cloud, “it’s a new door for us, an incredible new capability. Bringing up Andy Lark, CMO of Commonwealth Bank. “What is your vision for marketing?”

10:41am: People don’t have PCs as much, now they have smartdevices. Marketing has had all these point solutions, unlike ERP and other IT systems, it’s been hard for companies to adopt. The implication is that Marketing Cloud is an integrated enough solution to be the face of marketing capability.

10:43am: Introducing George Zimmer, CEO of the Men’s Wearhouse, famous gravelly voice and all. “Well as you know, we built our business on baby boomers and a billion in advertising. We’re now transforming our company to address the millennial generation. Using Marketing Cloud to find out what they like and don’t like.” Nice: “You’ll like the way Salesforce works, I guarantee it.”

10:45am: Now Mark is talking about Virgina America, a $1 billion airline with 2,500 employees. “Culture is something the other airlines can’t replicate. The people are our business, it’s the one thing that makes us a lot different. We’ve been through a rapid growth phase that’s been challenging. This linear communication era that we’ve come out of is no longer happening. How can we make our customers part of the conversation? We found Chatter to be part of the solution. Chatter will let us give customers a personalized experience.” They’re showing how the airline can engage with customers right in the seat, on the screen they provide.

10:49am: Now Salesforce co-founder Parker Harris is up on stage talking about Salesforce Chatter. “Chatter brings social to collaboration.” Introducing Salesforce Chatter for Communities. Facebook for Customer, Partners, and Employees. Trusted security and sharing, pilot with Winter ’13 release.

10:51am: “I’m here today to announce Salesforce Chatterbox.” Sync files across any device. Preview/read documents. Secure File Sharing. Essentially a social Dropbox. Showing a Virgin America skinned version of Chatterbox, “because it’s a platform”, says Parker.

10:54am: Continuing a demo of Virgin Atlantic with many specific examples and using Chatterbox. Interesting demo of sending a Chatter message to an airplane in flight. “Sees a message popup in his seat back.” Shows how Virgin America can provide information on his late flight, his next gate, etc. using Salesforce Chatter Communities. Looks like real functionality from their Red platform. Hands it back to Mark. “Isn’t that an incredible demonstration of the future, integration.”

11:00am: Inviting CEO of Virgin America, David Cush, up to talk. “Social is the best way to get a tip about an airline.” Typically airline communication is very chain of command, we’re changing that to be very egalitarian.”

11:01am: Just brought up famous motivational speaker Tony Robbins, who has a keynote on another day. Aggressive user of Chatter in his organization, they are creating communities where customers can solve their own challenges (using Chatter of course.) Talking about the notorious firewalk emergency recently, how they used Radian6 to manage the crisis. “I’d say the future is connect or die, connect and you win.”

11:05am: Showing a video about how the workplace is changing. “In today’s world, how work gets done is very much social. With your peers, co-workers, and customers.”

11:07am: This is going to be a spectacular new journey. Introducing John Wookey, EVP of Work.com, and Social Applications. “The world of work is changing. Work is social, business is social.” When they see high performing companies, they see alignment. “We talk about leadership, passion, and hard work. But we don’t talk about human resources.” We have to align our team and drive our teams to give great performance over and over.”

11:09am: Announcing Work.com, and a social HR Performance Management Platform. “Completely redesigned from the ground up. We’ve created a continuing evolving vision of work.” Giving a demo of how Work.com supports the culture of the company and helps organizations come together to create success. Can help create motivation, “like a Tony Robbins avatar.” Work.com is a set of applications that will motivate, align, and create great performance. It will drive engagement and impact. Work.com is goals, it’s the foundation. Created with a manager and their team.

11:12am: “Traditional performance reviews are demotivating. They don’t work.” “Creates a single simple real-time performance review. Employees or managers can have a conversation at any time about their performance with the company.” Walking through Facebook’s recruiting process.

11:14am: Have created a new iPad recruiting app. Now talking about Facebook, about how it has created a holistic talent management platform with Workday and the Work.com platform. Pretty impressive stuff and a good view of the workings inside of Facebook.

11:17am: Back to Mark. Welcoming Tim Campos, Global CIO of Facebook, to talk about their story. “Social is inherent in who we are. And it’s helped propel us to have more than 950M people on the site. At Facebook, we say the site is only 1% finished. The way we’re going to get there is through our workforce, and it’s about the people. We have incredibly intelligent individuals. But it’s not about the org chart or structure. It’s about the relationships. We need tools to help us facilitate that.”

11:19am: The new view de-emphasizes the the cost center. “Our workforce is encouraged to provide continuous and authentic feedback every day.” Talking about how they use Work.com presumably. “The next generation of workforce tools is going to create this kind of relationship between employees.”

11:21am: Introducing Aneel Bushri, CEO of Workday, thanking Mark and talking about their partnership. Now switching to the social business story of Coca Cola and how they’re making their beverages social. It’s clear Salesforce is trying to show how social is really happening, now.

11:25am: Continuing video of Coca-Cola, which is talking about mobile, cloud, social, networked environments, and how they are trying to embrace consumerization and mass personalization. I expect another executive introduction.

11:27am: Introducing George Hu, COO of Salesforce. “I want to bring it all back to the most important question. How do we get there? How do we get our organizations get to that level of innovation that we’ve seen [here.] How do we get there. The how is at the heart of Salesforce.com. We want to make the social transformation as easy as a post on Facebook.” Giving a hard pitch for the entire Salesforce.com platform and all its many component for cloud-enabling social.

11:29am: Talking about Touch and Identity as two major announcements. AppExhcange, 1,700 apps, 70% of Fortune 100 customers have installed apps. I think he said 1.4 million users.

11:31am: Looks like Salesforce Identity is going to open the social graph for enterprises, very interesting. All standards-based says George. “Many of us have thousands and thousands of apps written on other platform. We want to create a seamless social identity for them.” Potentially bigger news: Introducing Force.com Canvas, Gets enterprise apps in Salesforce, just like Facebook. “Can unlock a tremendous innovation. Makes all your legacy applications social and mobile.” Wondering how OpenSocial fits in.

Related: Enterprise Social Networks Need Open Standards

11:34am: Now announcing Salesforce Touch Platform. Write Once Deploy Anywhwere. HTML 5, Native, and Hybrid. Secure as well they say.

11:40am: Very detailed demos continuing. Lots of mobile and social.

11:42am: Back to Mark. “I’m so excited about this vision. We keep seeing this same thing: We’re connected to our customers, to our companies, and products.” Introducing Ed Steinike, CIO of Coca-Cola. “Ed, you’re an amazing CIO. One of the industry leaders. Made a major investment in SAP in the back office. Now you’re making a major investment in the front office in social.”

11:44am: Ed: “We do 1.8 billion servings per day of our product. We want to connect those 1.8 billion happy customers with all layers of our company. Mobile is the way this happens.” Mark thanks Ed, that was quick. Now talking about the mobile tsunami.

Related: The “Big Five” IT trends of the next half decade: Mobile, social, cloud, consumerization, and big data

11:45am: Final vignette of the keynote: Burberry. Their CEO, Angela Ahrents, talking on video.

11:50am: Now she’s actually here up on stage. I’ve told their social business story in detail before, which is quite impressive. Talking about their mobile engagement at the Olympics in London. “This is the future [holding her mobile device.]”

11:52am: Going over their new mobile experience and putting RFID into the products and immersive virtual experiences that gives the backstory of the products your holding. Thanking Angela, who is definitely a social business and next-generation enterprise leader.

11:54am: And that’s a wrap. Marc finishes and the lights and music turn up. I’ll post analysis on ZDNet as soon as I’m able.