Great Tools for Business Getting Better: Salesforce.com's Dreamforce Event

 It's a cross between a great, huge trade conference plus theater plus concert - the annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco put on by Salesforce.com which kicked off formally today at Moscone Center. We're not just talking one building but three - and nearly everyone on the street nearby has a big cloud nametag.

Certainly, if you are into cloud computing, this would be paradise for you - especially if you are a Salesforce user - but even if you were not - it is an amazing show-and-tell on all things business cloud - and gets the conversation going about ways that large and small organizations are using a methodology and tools enterprise-wide to grow their businesses with efficiency.

This post and additional future follow-ups will be around what the whole "cloud" thing is in computing and business applications today (assuming you have been under a rock?) which tools help small businesses grow - how to move to the cloud, and of course why.  This cloud computing conference theme is collaborate - which is a tip of the hat to integrating social habits and social media into the daily plan of a salesperson.

Salesforce.com's vision is as  cloud computing driver, catalyst, & evangelist to the world. From my vantage point of audience member with 15,000 others in the room, and with 87,000 customers - I'd say they are on the fast track.

Questions that attendees are talking about are basic ones - how to grow revenues using all sorts of web tools, how to integrate social media into CRM (now a category called Social CRM), and how to change at what seems like the speed of light.

Day 2 keynotes can be seen and heard. Also check out the Dreamforce site for more information and stay tuned for what industry analysts are saying about collaboration, sales tools, and revenue growth.