Salesforce.com Foundation - EMEA

Lockwood Donkey Sanctuary

Isabel Kelly — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:56:21 -0500

Summary

The Salesforce EMEA Education Team went en masse to The Lockwood Donkey Sanctuary to help with much needed maintenance.

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10th Dec 2008 Surrey UK

With the Christmas festivities only a few weeks away it made sense that the EMEA trainers should engage their foundation hours preparing a facility for a family carol service. It was even more apt that the facility should be a stable, in fact a donkey sanctuary...

Now it happened in those days, that a decree went out from on high (from Francesca Donaghy who set it up and then was poorly) that all the world (of trainers) should be involved and so Chris Rauch, Emma Gale, Eric Kelleher, Clive Hollingshead, Jon Oatham, Marc Kuster, Sebanstiano Costanzo, Shelly Holten, Amy Harbin, Alim Uddin and Brendan Peterson did make their way to Lockwood Donkey Centre for a day of contemplation, manual labour and the movement of manure (lots of manure). Fortunately there was room at the Inn, where much refreshment was made. The donkeys were much admired (as were the Llamas - don't ask) and the sheep.

Outbuildings were cleared, windows were set gleaming and lights strung from rafters. Holly, ferns and branches of other green type plants (look, we are not horticulturists) were used to decorate the tea rooms in a festive manner. But all looked in wonder to see Chris and Amy clear so much... fertilised ground.

A good time was had by all, the donkeys were royally entertained and the staff at the centre was very appreciative of our efforts. And the Alimcarol service went well.

Nota story: EDHEC Business College Lille and salesforce.com CRM course

Elena Rossi — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:24:19 -0500

Summary

EDHEC, one of the top 10 business schools in Europe, asked Salesforce.com staff to participate in delivering a course on CRM and Cloud computing. The course was 10 weeks long and Loïc Mosse and Robin Daniels successfully delivered a comprehensive program.

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Lille, 01December 2008

Jean-Pierre Dolait Marketing Instructor from EDHEC Business School told us about the last session of the CRM class of the ‘MSc in Marketing Management at EDHEC College', which took place in Lille, South of France. Nine teams of five students each presented their results of the case study using a CRM from salesforce.com. The presentations were of very good quality, four of them excellent.

Mr. Dolait: ‘After the class, many students came to tell me how much they appreciated the course and the hands-on experience with a "real world" CRM. It was also an enjoyable and great teaching experience for me. The students are grateful to salesforce.com for the prizes and in particular for the invitation to Europe Dreamforce in April 2009 for the best student of the class.'

This project wouldn't have happened without Loïc Mosse (AE EMEA) and Robin Daniels 's (Senior Manager, Product Marketing) dedication and passion to put the program together. Since February Loïc skilfully and enthusiastically lead the project and animated several classroom sessions. Robin Daniels ended the course in great style by giving an inspiring presentation about CRM future trends.

The project was also supported by Guillaume Lenoble (SE EMEA) who transferred the 20,000 data of the case into the CRM customer database and build the application and Isabelle Havre-Chillaud and Isabelle Berge from the EMEA Marketing team for all the material provided for the course.

Robin Daniel tell us his side of the story: ‘I delivered the last session, which was on The Future of CRM, allowing the students to put their heads in the cloud and think ahead. The class was really about how CRM can extend beyond just helping a business internally, to how you can interact with customers and combine CRM with social networking to create long-term customer loyalty‘

Some quotes from the class about the course and in particular the final presentation:

‘I am writing to thank you for giving us so wonderful presentation on Thursday and Friday. It was really inspiring, the example of Starbucks was so vivid, before I only thought CRM as boring data processing software, now I have a better understanding of CRM.' - Louise Ying Zhang

‘I would like to truly thank you for your very interesting presentation concerning CRM future trends. This inspiring presentation was the most suitable ending to the course Customer Equity that was a great new insight into the area of customer relationships. Thank you again very much.' - Konstantinos Koniaris

‘Thank you for your dedication to our CRM course here at EDHEC. I doubt the course would have been so colorful and interesting without salesforce.com's contributions. My colleagues and I really appreciated this one-of-a-kind experience! Thank you for your time and effort.'- Maria Jalasvirta

‘It was great taking part in the seminar today, I enjoyed it.'- Mayde Seeman

‘I'm one of mister JP Dolait's students and I just wanted to know that we really appreciate that you have taken your time to share a little bit of your knowledge with us.' - Alexandra Bejan

France community event: 2008 Madeleine Paris

Elena Rossi — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 08:19:50 -0500

Summary

From 20 Nov one of the most central areas of Paris saw a 4-day community event organized by le ‘Totem.org’ organization. The event aimed to celebrate all children’s rights. The first day was run entirely by salesforce volunteers.

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France community event: 2008 Madeleine Paris 2

Paris, 20 November 2008

'20 novembre 1989 a été adoptée la Convention des Droits de l'Enfant, bientôt 20 ans, et la question des droits de l'enfant est encore d'actualité. ‘‘Le Totem des Droits de l'Enfant'' constitue le symbole des dix droits fondamentaux de l'Enfant, sa mission est de promulguer la Convention des Droits de l'Enfant dans les lieux publics : mairie, écoles...'

25 volunteers from the newly acquired Instranet and Salesforce spent a day in the community running ‘2008 Madelaine Paris' event.

The event aimed to celebrate 20 years of the ‘Convention on the Rights of the Child' which is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights. In 1989, world leaders decided that children needed a special convention just for them because people under 18 years old often needed special care and protection that adults do not give them. As sad this might sound, this was a fundamental step to insure the world communities recognized that children have human rights too.

The Organization ‘Le Totem.org.' which organized the event, designed 10 totems displaying 10 basic principles regarding children's rights and used them to teach those principles to passers-by and school children. The totems were dotted around the square and Salesforce volunteers managed the whole event, from setting up the venue to communicate with the schools. Each class would go through a questionnaire for each totem and answer to questions which will teach them about their basic rights.

The feedback from the organization about the running of the day was very positive and the volunteers enjoyed spending the day in the community and getting to know the new team members.

Message in a bottle: multimedia project connecting Germany and Japan youths.

Elena Rossi — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:49:44 -0500

Summary

Every year the Waisenhaus Home in Munich organizes a cross-cultural multimedia project with another orphanage around the world. This year they chose an institution in Sapporo, Japan. Andreas Rösch acted as facilitator.

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Andreas RoschMunich, 04 November 2008 For their yearly cross-cultural multimedia project the educators in Waisenhaus always come up with fun and educational ways to get their kids to learn how to use new Medias together with getting to know other youths from different cultures.

Andreas Rösch (Sales Consulting EMEA) acted as facilitator in this project and told us a bit about this project:

‘Today I had a chance to moderate an intercultural multi-media project called ‘Message-in-a-bottle' connecting our orphanage in Munich and another one in Munich's partner city Sapporo, in Japan. These cities were chosen because of their involvement in the past with the Olympics games.

It was an awesome experience and a lot of fun for everyone! First of all the kids were blown away by the experience of communicating in real time with the other side of the world. In particular was the understanding of the time difference that came as a shock to them - in Germany was morning time but in Japan was already becoming evening!

They used video-cameras to see each other as well as chat-lines and instant messaging tools with several hands-on exercises. One exercise I really enjoyed it was about learning the life of William Adams, the first European Samurai and his three years journey in the 16th century. The kids enjoyed drawing Pirates flags and singing sailors songs together: too funny! At the end of the 7 hours session both teams baked Japanese pan cakes and exchanged culinary recipes. I love this Foundation work!'

Burnham Beeches

Isabel Kelly — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:12:28 -0500

Summary

Seven Salesforce employees revisit Burnham Beeches for our regular conservation exercise.

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13th November, Burnham Beeches UK

Burnham Beeches is a large City of London owned conservation area which is bizarrely situated 13 miles from The City of London in a Westerly direction. This 540 acreAmanda site was bought by enlightened Alderman of The City back in the 19th Century. They wished to buy a piece of land and protect it from development for it to be enjoyed by the citizens of London.

The largely beech woodland has been regularly pollarded, with many trees now several hundred years old. Their age, and the amount of deadwood in and around them, means that the woodland is rich in wildlife. More than sixty of the species of Dougplants and animals here are either rare or under threat nationally. The area is protected as a National Nature Reserve, Site of Special Scientific Interest and a candidate Special Area of Conservation.

Salesforce regularly send groups of employees out to Burnham Beeches to do their bit for conserving the site. As well as the useful work undertaken, the day of hard work and fresh air makes a welcome break from computer screens and blackberrie.

Weekend with The Childrens Country Holiday Fund

Isabel Kelly — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:54:35 -0500

Summary

Four Salesforce employees give up their weekend to chaperone a group of disadvantaged kids on a weekend break they otherwise would never receive.

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October 24th-26th Hassocks, UK

One hundred twenty-five years ago, Baden-Powell was still in Malta and someone in Britain had an idea: Take inner-city children on a country holiday. Free them from the overwhelming traps of London by whisking them to the country to play games and breathe fresh air and participate in activities that their urban lives simply Kidsdid not offer. The children would get to be kids, even of only for a weekend at a time. Specifically these holidays were intended for children from underprivileged, abusive, or other wise difficult homes. The idea grew into the Children's Country Holiday Fund (CCFH). The CCFH is not nearly as well known as the Boy Scouts, but to this day they continues to humbly offer this same incalculable gift to children as the day they were founded.

Over this past weekend four salesforce.com employees Monty Hoeft, Joseph Brady, Wendy Newbold and Philip Kenley, agreed become the most recent additions to the CCFH's long list of victims (though, to be fair, they called us volunteers).

Now, before I go any further, I feel like I should share a general observation of mine. The perception of what every volunteer activity ‘will be', ‘is' and ‘was' usually adheres to one rough pattern. You hear about the activity and think it ‘will be' great. You show up on the day and you think it ‘is' a nightmare. It turns out to be far more difficult than you imagined. Your ears hurt from shouting children. You've run out of ways to ask nicely. You go to bed nights thinking, "I gave up my weekend so I could take eighteen of someone else's snivelly, hyperactive, ungrateful children on a glorified family vacation. What was I thinking???" And then the final phase, when the dust settles, you realize that the activity ‘was' simply beyond fantastic.

KidsOur weekend at the CCFH was no different. A weekend in the country? Free meals? Playing games? Abseiling and bungee? Sure, they did say we'd have to take care of kids, but they also said there would be a zip line! What could be better??? This, I thought, will volunteering in style.

However, as anyone who has ever known a child will attest to, the holiday was hard. We were supervising from dawn until late at night. We dealt with regular temper tantrums, constant shouting and enough raw energy to power Asia. We even had to intervene in a fist fight (actually that one was all Monty, but I felt his struggle). It was a tough group of kids, and for good reason, these kids have tough lives.

In exhausted desperation, after a few hard fought hours to get the kids into their beds on Saturday, I spoke with one of my fellow volunteers. He said he would never volunteer again. At the time he thought the CCFH offered a good but one time only volunteer opportunity. I silently agreed. But when we spoke on Monday morning, after just one night's rest and reflection, we both enthusiastically declared our desire to return. We started remembering the good moments; moments like learning to play touch rugby, reading six extra chapters of James and the Giant Peach, watching a ten year old overcome his fear of heights or another one overcome her fear of the water and how the constant struggle was heavily peppered with subtle moments of genuine relief and gratitude from children who otherwise don't have much opportunity for either. Somehow, like all of the most challenging volunteer activities, you look back and settle yourself right the line between having had an unforgettable Kidexperience and having had an invaluable one.

Plus, in the end, I did get to ride on a zip line. Which wasn't too bad either.

Clive Hollingshead's effort for Fair Trade

Isabel Kelly — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:46:53 -0400

Summary

Clive Hollingshead spends his Saturday manning the Fair Trade stand at a local Liberal Democrat Party meeting attended by the leader of the party, Nick Clegg.

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October 18th UK

Clive Hollingshead is a volunteer for Fair Trade. He gave up his Saturday to man a stand at a regional meeting hosted by Ther Liberal Democrat Party and attended by its leader, Nick Clegg. The Fairtrade Foundation is the independent non-profit organisation that licenses use of the FAIRTRADE Mark on products in the UK in accordance with internationally agreed Fairtrade standards. The Foundation was established in 1992 by CAFOD, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Traidcraft and the World Development Movement, later joined by the National Federation of Women's Institutes. Member organisations now also include Banana Link, Methodist Relief and Development Fund, Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign, People & Planet, SCIAF, Shared Interest Foundation, Soroptimist International , Tearfund and the United Reformed Church.

BizAcademy 2008 UK

Isabel Kelly — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 06:51:01 -0400

Summary

September saw the UK Round of BizAcademy - 12 teenagers from East London spent a week on our programme supported by over 30 Salesforce EMEA employees with the immense change seen in all of them making the whole event so worthwhile.

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September 1st - 5th, London UK A truly inspirational week making the most of our spectacular new offices in London, Public Relations agency to the Government Lewis PR, inspirational ex international athlete Derek Browne, recruitment agency Propel, and over 30 Salesforce.com presenters and mentors.

'Simply Thank You. I enjoyed my whole experience and am so glad I went through the process to get here. Thanks again. I've learned things you can't really Derek Brownelearn without people taking time to break it down' said Lucy Verlander. Lucy was one of our 12 students who came through the interviews organised by Landmark Training to get on the course. Landmark Training is an East London based Non Profit that work with young people lacking educational qualifications, and help them get started in the world of work.

The aim of the week was to help the students learn how to sell themselves, by organising them into teams playing the part of a youth employment agency, encouraging employers to take on their young people. The programme was based in Tower 42, the central London office of Salesforce.com and the 3rd tallest building in the UK.

The students were taken through all aspects of the Sales cycle. From teamwork, branding, why people buy, handling objections, marketing and then onto preparing and presenting their pitches. A particular highlight was guest speaker Derek Browne who told us of his inspirational journey from school drop out to becoming the first ever black trader at Barings Bank - via the Bank of England, and combining this with a career as an England International Triple Jumper! We also had the treat of a morning spent at Lewis PR. As well as a fabulous lecture by Will Sturgeon on the do's and dont's of presenting, the students then had a chance to practice what they had learnt from the very stage in the 200 Lewis PRseat auditorioum where countless Labour Politicians have presented their policy in the past. It was fabulous to see how the terrified students put their inhibitions behind them and by tHe end we had to drag them away.

Of the Salesforce employees who took part, simply too many to mention. From those that led te presentations, to the mentors who gave up an entire day each to sit with the students, help them through their role plays, and play the roles of the presentees - YOU WERE ALL FABULOUS - and we couldnt have done it without you.

THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYBODY. Lee picking up his prize from Julia

Introducing Schoolgirls to the World of Salesforce.com Sales Engineers

Isabel Kelly — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 02:35:27 -0400

Summary

A team of Sales Engineers lead by Dominic Dinardo went to a school in South London and organised a competition to design an application to help a London charity - KEEN London - eliminate their cumbersome paper trail, and simplify their administrative burden.

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14th - 17th July, 2008 London UK

Building Custom Objects, Custom Tabs, Custom Fields, Custom Reports, Dashboards, Workflow, Email Alerts etc are every day tasks for Sales Engineers...but our task this week was to give a group of 14-15 year old schoolgirls an overview of the Salesforce.com platform, and to see if they could design their own app.

We introduced the School Girls to a charity KEEN London, a charity Andy Jacques supports, that help link up children with special needs (Athletes) with volunteer Coaches to help organise sports activities for them (giving the parents some much needed recuperation time). The Girls divided into five teams of 5, designated a project manager, researcher, configurators, presenters and spent 3 days constructing a CRM solution for KEEN. Suffice to say, it was a tremendous success. It was amazing how far the Girls came to building a real solution for the charity.

The following team pitched in to give support & guidance over the course of the week: Dominic Dinardo, Tom McDonagh, Mark Woodward, Peter Aubrey, Darren Smith, Philip Kenley and Isabel Kelly. Big thank you to the team - the results were amazing.

‘Business development’ class at Whitechurch Youth Development, in Dublin.

Elena Rossi — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:01:52 -0400

Summary

Phil Dunne, Richard Hasslacher, Scott Brown, Jamie Lekvanichkul and Enda Eames from ‘ibinetworks’ run an afternoon class with Whitechurch Youth Development

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Dublin, 14 April 2008

Whitechurch Youth Development is a community based, not-for-profit, voluntary organisation instituted by the Department of Education and Science.

The students of Whitechurch are all bright teenagers working on potential business' ideas. Aiming to hold a trade event at the school, they welcomed professionals to come in to their class and talk to them about their career while also giving them tips on sales and business development.

Phil Dunne (EMEA corporate sales), Richard Hasslacher (EMEA corporate sales), Scott Brown (EMEA corporate sales), Jamie Lekvanichkul (EMEA Sales Engineer) and Enda Eames got invited as ‘guest speakers' to run an afternoon class on ‘Business development'.

Enda Eames tells us about the experience: ‘I was very pleased to be able to collaborate with SFDC on the new NFTE initiative for the Whitechurch Youth Development Project. It is refreshing to see SFDC staff giving their time to assist young people who have a lot of social challenges to overcome. I was delighted with the response to the module I delivered on ‘Business Development' and I anticipate all of the participants will achieve their project goals - they are a clever and energetic group. Thank you for that opportunity to contribute and congratulations to SFDC's Community Development team for this initiative.'