Martin Humpolec - Salesforce Prague, Czech Republic User Group

This blog is part of a blog series to highlight Salesforce Community Champion, from user group leaders, developer group leaders, and members from around the world #Ohana

Today, we have Martin Humpolec from the Czech Republic would like to share Salesforce Prague, Czech Republic User Group for the successful on the 1st meetup.

Hi Martin, tell us about yourself, which User Group you lead, are you the founder of the group? and what made you start the group?
I started with Salesforce 5 years ago as a consultant and learned more and more. At the same time, I blogged about my experiences and findings, tweeted links to interesting articles. I also became members of the Prague Salesforce User & Developer Group, but as Salesforce doesn't want to combine users and developers, I started the Prague, Czech Republic User Group and right now I'm trying to promote it to existing customers. 


I heard that your User Group just launch a few months ago, would you like to share the journey? 
Yeah, I've been accepted as UG leader in February 2017 and it took me a while to find the free time to organize our first meetup, which we held just in the middle of May 2017. We had 15 people signed up to learn more about Lightning and I was really surprised that ALL of them attended. 

It wasn't as hard as I expected, the hardest part was to find the right theme which might be interesting for a lot of people. And the second hard thing, in which I really haven't been successful, was reaching out to the customer. I emailed those I knew, I asked other Salesforce partner to promote it among their customers and also reached out to Salesforce's account exec for the Czech Republic. I hoped to be able to reach out to more people, but at the same time, 15 of them isn't really bad for such small market, which the Czech Republic is.


How often you plan for the group meetup?
I hope we'll have at least four a year, as Salesforce requires. But I hope to have them every two months. It is all just matter of how many interesting ideas we'll come with and will find someone to talk about them.


How big is your user group member, meaning the number of members attend for the meetup?
At the moment only those 15 who attended the first meeting, but there is a Czech and Slovak user group on the success community, where is more people, so I hope to convert more of them into our group and motivate them to attend our meetings.


What have you learned as User Group leader?
That it isn't as hard as one would expect to organize the meeting, at least at this size. And that it is a lot of fun to meet with other people and hear their stories, problems, and successes. 


What do you love being a User Group leader?
It is great to be part of the Salesforce Ohana and the feeling, that you do something to promote this great platform. I also love answering peoples' questions and finding the answers. 


What do the challenges become User Group leader and how to overcome it?
I think that for me the biggest challenge about being User Group leader is to stay ideally behind the scene. As I work for the Salesforce partner I don't want to be seen by other partners as someone, who do this to get their customer, I really want the user group to be a user group of all Prague users, no matter which partner works with them.


What do you think the "uniqueness" about your User Group compare to others?
How about 100% attendee on the 1st meetup?


Share us tips that make your User Group success
Care about people, let them ask questions and find answers if needed and no-one else knew it. Start the conversation and involve all in it. 


What would like to see your User Group in the future? 
Grow bigger, be known by every user in Prague and around, be respected and motivate its' users to share their knowledge with each other, not just listen. 


One last thing you would like to share with the community
Don't be afraid to start User Group in your city and help spread the word about Salesforce. It is fun and it also helps you to learn more about this technology and meet great people. 

Simplysfdc comment: Congrats for the 1st successful meetup Martin, and the group photo looks really cool!!!

Shinya Yamada 山田真也 - Salesforce Kansai Osaka User Group

This blog is part of a blog series to highlight Salesforce Community Champion, from user group leaders, developer group leaders, and members from around the world #Ohana

Today, I would like to introduce a leader from the land of rising sun - Shinya Yamada 山田真也, leader of Salesforce Kansai Osaka User Group, he would like to share with us how awesome is the Japanese user group. If you can't read Japanese, google is your friend :)

Yamada-san, tell us about yourself, which Salesforce Group you lead, and how many co-leaders in your group?
SFUG ルーキー会関西でリーダーをしてます。


I heard something called "Umekita Force" related to your group, would you like to share more on it?
Umekita Force は、関西のSalesforce 開発者が集まるコミュニティとなります。
※Salesforceさんが主体ではなく、ユーザー主導で活動してます。

活動内容は以下となります。

関西において
ビジネス抜きに
開発者がワイワイと気軽に集まり
コミュニケーションを楽しみつつ
お互いいい刺激を受けながら技術力アップをめざし
Salesforceを愛でる

主にApexやVisualforceを利用されるDeveloper系の方が対象となります。（ポイント&クリックの宣言的開発を行うAdministrator系の方は若干外れるかもです） これからの方もエキスパートさんもお気軽にどうぞ。

一緒に関西でもSalesforceを盛り上げていきましょ～

https://www.facebook.com/groups/266521910164921/
https://umekitaforce.connpass.com/


What made you interested in accepting the role as the group leader? 
日本のSFUGでもっとも古いグループとなります。
私は6代目のリーダーで、推薦によってリーダーに選ばれました。
近日7代目リーダーに引き継ぐ予定です。


How often your group meetup?
3ヶ月に1回開催してます。


How long have been your group established?
2011年ごろから開催しており、４半期に1度の開催を目標としてます。


How big is your user group member, and in average how many members attend for the meetup?
メンバーは219人(2017年５月)で、参加者は40人前後となります。


What have you learned as group leader?
システム管理者同士の悩みの共有、
懇親会まで参加していただくことで情報共有頻度がUG以外でも行われるようになりました。

D&Dで簡単に機能追加ができるSFの手軽さを皆さんに伝えることができた。


What do you love being DG/UG leaders?
関西でTOPクラスのSF愛
新しい人にも積極的に話をすることで周りを巻き込む


What do the challenges become a group leader and to overcome it?
SFのCSMメンバーと打ち合わせすることで、何に困ってる人が多いから解消するために、
どのような勉強会をするかを検討、開催すること。


Tell us what is unique about your Kansai Osaka group
懇親会までが勉強会（お酒を飲んで仲良くなる）

自社のSF環境を隠すのではなく、見せ合うことで他社、他業種を超えて、
いい部分は共有しあう。

ギブアンドテイクの精神


Share us tips that make your group success
懇親会までが勉強会、積極的に周りを巻き込む。

聞いてるだけじゃなく、参加者も手を動かす、ディスカッションを行う。


What would like to see your DG/UG in the future? 
ずっとリーダーはしないですが、どんどん世代交代をしていき、
10年、20年と見続けていたいと考えてます。


One last thing you would like to share with the community
コミュニティのおかげで自分がここまで成長できたので、
この感動をもっとたくさんの人に広げていきたい。

また新しいグループも積極的に作っていきたいです。

Simplysfdc comment: people say a picture is worth a thousand words, thanks for your kindness and showering us with Osaka hospitality, personally I like the food in Osaka, think of Namba, and Dotonbori!

#Ohana means - you know that you have friends at the other side of the world, all thanks to Salesforce for building this community, check out this tweet! 

Rajiv Bhatt - Ahmedabad Salesforce Developer Group

This is a blog series to highlight Salesforce Community Champion, from user group leaders, developer group leaders, and members of the community from around the world #Ohana

This blog will share about Ahmedabad Salesforce Developer Group - Rajiv Bhatt. Rajiv is Technical Architect at the world Leader in Quote-to-Cash - APTTUS.

Tell us about yourself, which Salesforce Developer Group you lead, and how many co-leaders in your group?
I am currently working as a Technical Architect at APTTUS, and I co-lead the Ahmedabad Salesforce Developer Group along with two other co-leaders - Gaurang Bhatt and Anil Yadav.


But, I also heard that you also build Chrome extensions related to Salesforce, would you like to share a bit?
Record and Metadata Comparator: This extension lets you compare Record data values and object metadata in Salesforce and compare the differences in just four clicks! Get it from here
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/record-and-metadata-compa/laghgcpekjofijkmojnhfeiplbffaljp?hl=en

SOQL Extractor: Extract SOQL queries with their execution counts from Debug Logs of Salesforce. Helps you analyze the 'Too Many SOQLs' error. For installation instructions, users should check the instructions under "Support" tab. Get it from here
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/soql-extractor-and-analyz/deihalhihjdilndoidoclmhmgllebkfj


Can you share how do you become group co-leader? and what make you interested in accepting the role as the group co-leader? 
Last year few college students reached out to me as they were curious to know more about Salesforce and they had no idea where to get started. Trailhead came to rescue but they had a lot of follow-up questions. Around the same time, I came to know about #SalesforceSaturday from Atul Gupta. It was just a perfect click. 

A lot of my peers and Salesforce devs from other organizations agreed to volunteer and we planned to meetup every Saturday and do trailhead modules together. We wanted to reach out to as many people as we could so we created a meetup group and started sharing information on social media. These #SalesforceSaturday sessions were not just for students but for anyone who wanted to get started with their career on Salesforce or wanted to learn more about Salesforce. 

Our first meetup was in April '16 and then we did around 10 #SalesforceSaturday sessions until August'16 to complete the Admin trail. The group went on to have 500+ members however the sessions came to a halt as colleges started again and the students could no longer make it coz of their exam and other busy schedules. 

Thanks to Kiran and Gaurang for recognizing our community efforts around the same time and they appointed me as one of the co-organizers for Ahmedabad DG to take the community ahead. 

Unfortunately I was on back to back business trips after that so I could actually start contributing to community efforts only since Jan '17. 

Btw, I am now looking forward to collaborating with student leaders from different colleges who can be the co-organizer of that group and make it an official "Student Salesforce Developer group". We can provide them the required guidance and mentor-ship and this way they also get to inculcate leadership and other skills during the course of their education. It would be a win-win for everyone!


How often your group meetup?
We try to meet up once or twice in a quarter. 


When is the Ahmedabad Salesforce Developer Group established?
 It was founded in September 2012 though I got involved and started contributing only since last 6 months.


How big is your user group member, and the number of members attend the meetup?
The user group is around 450 members of which at least 100 are active. We usually have around 30-50 people attending the meetups. 


What have you learned as group co-leader?
There is definitely lots of learning involved, be it organizing skills, managing skills or people skills. Through these meetups I learned that there is nothing more fulfilling then giving back to the community.


What do you love being group leaders?
The best part is getting to interact with everyone in the community and a platform to give back to the community. It offers excellent networking opportunity as group leaders are the hub connected to different spokes. We help people by connecting them with each other. 

Like few months ago few students reached out to us when they needed guidance for their final year project. We called out for few volunteers who would be interested to help them. Initially few volunteers helped them and after they got busy I took up the challenge and guided them through the entire phase. It gives a tremendous sense of achievement when we heard back that because of this project and their hands-on experience they managed to crack an interview and got a job even before their results are out. 


What do the challenges become a group leader and how to overcome it?
The biggest challenge is to get more active participation from the community to attend the meetups. We are trying our best to get good speakers with relevant content so that more people attend meetup and understand the value of attending these meetups. 

We have also planned to invite MVPs and other DUG leaders to our meetups so that they could share their experiences and motivate others. 


Tell us what is unique about your group
We have a very diverse audience - admins (aspiring to be devs), devs, entrepreneurs having industry experience of 1-10+ yrs.


Share us tips that make your group success?
We give equal opportunity to everyone to present at the meetup. Many people want to present but have no idea about the topics and need some guidance to get started. 

With little push and guidance, we try to encourage new speakers to present at the meetup. This is an excellent platform to develop personal/professional skills and everyone should get to leverage and experience it. 


What would like to see your group in the future?
Of course, growth in terms of participation in meetup group. We would also like to see more people stepping up to present at the meetups. We have plans to kickoff new batches of #SalesforceSaturday, trailheadathon or if possible even a hackathon.


One last thing you would like to share with the community
Don't wait, just get started! Many people wait to take initiatives i.e. they want to do things only after they get officially appointed as DG leader or MVP. I would say if you really want to contribute back to the community then never wait for anything. Just start contributing in a way you want and things will fall in place. #SalesforceOhana is always there to support you.

Simplysfdc comment: that is awesome to see the students in Ahmedabad are so enthusiast in learning Salesforce and how awesome Trailhead for this. I see you guys doing a very good for the community with #SalesforceSaturday, thanks again for sharing!


Good to see you in Apttus, it is a big name and great product in Salesforce ecosystem, and Apttus just sponsor our last Singapore meetup with a great speaker.

Salesforce Community Champion map, who next? Find out here...

Simon Driscoll - Salesforce Scotland User Group

This blog is part of a blog series to highlight Salesforce Community Champion, from user group leaders, developer group leaders, and members from around the world #Ohana

Simon Driscoll, leader and founder of Salesforce Scotland User Group would like to share with us on how awesome Scotland user group. 

Tell us something about yourself, which Salesforce User Group you lead? 
Simon Driscoll, Salesforce user since 2009 within the Sales, Service & Communities Platforms. I’ve been the User Group Leader of the Scotland User Group since 2013.


How do you become User Group leader? are you the group founder? what is your journey when starting your User Group? 
I founded the group in 2013, based on feedback from other Salesforce users within the Scotland region.  At the time, there were several user groups south of the border and mainly London based which some people struggled to attend due to travel costs, therefore the first user group in Scotland was formed.  A couple of years down the line we now have 3 User Groups in Scotland; the main Scotland User Group, Scotland Women in Tech and Scotland Non-Profit User Group.


How often your User Group meetup? 
Our user group meets 4 times per year; March, June, September and December, along with hosting social meetups at events such as the World Tours and Dreamforce.  


How big is your user group member, and in average how many members attend for the meetup? 
We currently have over 300 members within our Communities Group and have an average attendance of 50-60 people per meetup. 


What have you learned as User Group leader? 
That the Salesforce Community is awesome to be part of! I don’t think I fully appreciated the experience and knowledge you can gain from the Community before leading the Scotland User Group. 


What do you love being a User Group leader? 
I love creating an experience for our members to learn, share and network with other Salesforce users. We all have challenges in our day to day roles but don’t always have someone within own our businesses who do the same type of role so it’s great to have somewhere to bounce ideas off each other. 


Any challenges to run User Group and how you overcome it as a leader? 
Sometimes getting customer speakers! For me this is the most important part, members are coming along because they want to hear how other customers have utilized all areas of Salesforce, what they should and shouldn’t do.  


What do you think the uniqueness of Scotland User Group? the traditional costume ;) 
The Group has a very relaxed, open and honest feel about it. Whilst we’re very serious about the business end of things it’s also about creating a great social atmosphere and we love a good after-party! 

For the last couple of years, our Christmas Specials have not to be missed, every member gets a Christmas goodie bag along with us holding raffles for Helicopter Rides, iPads, Weekend Breaks, Paintballing and some other fantastic gifts. We’ve also now aligned our group to the Scotland Women in Tech Group led by Jennifer Laing, this session runs directly before the main User Group. 


Share us some tips that make your User Group success
The members firstly have helped drive the success of the group with their feedback on the types of topics, sessions, and speakers they want to hear about. Planning also helps, we schedule our user group meetups a year in advance and share the dates at the beginning of each year with our group making sure everyone then has it in their diary. 


What would like to see your User Group in the future?
Our group continuing to be the success it has been over the last few years and continuing to grow. 


One last thing you would like to share with the community
The Scotland User Group is a group I am extremely proud to lead and have huge support from Francesca Donaghy who is one of the Salesforce Success Manager.  You can follow us on twitter @SFDCScotland 

Simplysfdc comment: although there is no snow in Singapore, but we celebrate User Group Christmas party every year in Singapore. Seems like you got quite a good of sponsorship from partners in Scotland User Group, it still pretty rare in Singapore.

Community Champion published and who next, find out here...

Amy Oplinger - Salesforce Cleveland Ohio User Group & Women in Tech

This is a blog series to highlight Salesforce Community Champion, from user group leaders, developer group leaders, and members of the community from around the world #Ohana

Who doesn't know who is Amy Oplinger? The most awesome people in the Salesforce community, Queen of GIF #GIFSquad! She also leads not one, but two Salesforce User Group in Cleveland Ohio.

Tell us about yourself, which User Group you lead, and how many co-leaders in your User Group?
Hello, I am Amy Oplinger, 3x certified Salesforce Consultant with Coastal Cloud, a Platinum Salesforce partner. I currently lead two user groups in Cleveland Ohio: The Women in Tech, and Non-Profit User Group.


You are the leader and also the founder for 2 user groups in Cleveland, what make you interested in starting those user group?
I became a user group leader after speaking with Kristi Guzman and Toya Gatewood at Dreamforce '15. I was complaining there was no WiT group in my area, and both of them said the exact same thing: START ONE! So, returning from Dreamforce, I applied and was approved, with our first Cleveland WIT meeting in December 2015! 

As for the Non-Profit (NP) Group, I recently met with a Salesforce NP Account Executive who suggested the NP users in our area was underserved, and would I be interested in starting the group. I said I would be happy to, and our first meeting will be in June! 
The user groups are a fantastic way to connect with local users and I love that I am able to facilitate that in some part. 


Would you like to share what is WIT(Women In Tech) success community group, are all the members' women only? 
Men are welcomed and encouraged to attend our WIT meetings! We appreciate their support and willingness to hear issues affecting WIT. 


How often your group meetup?
Last year, the WiT group met every other month, and we will continue that cadence this year. Depending on the input from the group, I foresee the NP group following a similar schedule. 


When is your User Group established?
Cleveland WIT was established December 2015.
Cleveland Non-Profit was established April 2017.


How big is your user group member, and in average how many members attend the meetup?
For the WIT group, I have 86 members in the Success Community group and the core set of 10-15 members that attend every meeting. 


What have you learned as UG leaders?
As a UG Leader, I have learned that it is very important to listen to your members, and facilitate the group in a manner consistent with what they want, be it learning, hands-on demos, or just a nice dinner to catch up on everything!


What do you love being an UG leader?
I love that it’s another way to connect with the Salesforce Ohana. 


What do the challenges become UG leader and would you like to share how to overcome it?
My biggest challenge is attendance. My goal is to really invigorate the local Salesforce community and ignite the same Ohana passion locally, face-to-face, as I see online. 


What would like to see your DG/UG in the future? 
I would love to see our WIT group grow our membership in NE Ohio. 


One last thing you would like to share with the community
Anyone that knows me for any period of time knows how much I love the community! I am happy that I am able to serve and give back via my User Group Leadership. I encourage everyone to get actively involved in user groups and if there isn’t one in your area, START ONE! 

Simplysfdc comment: Amy, thanks for everything you did for the community and sharing with us your User Group story with us. I believe the 1st meetup for new Cleveland Ohio Non-Profit (NP) Group will be a success under your leadership. It's a big #Ohana and it was nice to meet you in person in MidwestDreamin last year in Chicago.


Salesforce Community Champion map, who next? Find out here...

Douglas Ayers - Salesforce Nashville Developer Group

This blog is part of a blog series to highlight Salesforce Community Champion, from user group leaders, developer group leaders, and members from around the world.


In this blog, I would like to introduce another awesome leader from Nashville, Tennessee - Douglas Ayers is Salesforce Nashville Developer Group co-leaders, and also Salesforce MVP. 

Doug, tell us about yourself, which Developer Group you lead, and any other co-leaders in your group?
Funny story, my first encounter with Salesforce was my first job out of college in 2007. Ironically, my first project was to migrate the company from Salesforce to an in-house CRM our team was building. Fast forward 5 years to 2012 and the IT regime had shifted and I then was leading the migration from in-house applications back to Force.com and “the cloud”. Since 2012, I’ve focused my career heavily on the capabilities and agility of the platform and have personally grown from being an Administrator to Developer to Architect and MVP.

I began leading the Nashville Developer Group in 2015. There are 2 co-leaders with me, Mark Morrison and Chris Kelley.


Sidetrack a bit, I heard that you recently develop open source projects related to Lightning, would you like to share what is that?
Thanks for thinking of my conversion project! Yes, to help customers migrate to Lightning Experience and adopt the new Files and Notes related lists I've developed two open-source projects aptly named "Convert Attachments to Files" and "Convert Notes to Enhanced Notes". 

I also provide managed packages for each project too for easier install, or developers can install the source code directly from GitHub if they wish to customize the conversion logic. 

The projects have received high praise from Salesforce Product Managers including Arnab Bose, Henry Liu, and Cari Aves; as well as other customers. I'm very honored that the projects are being talked about at the Lightning Now! tours and user groups around the world.


How do you become Developer Group leader? What made you interested in accepting the role as Developer Group leader? 
I had been attending the group since 2014 and at the time they were hosted quarterly by a local Salesforce partner, Virsys12. In 2015, I joined Virsys12 and, having really enjoyed the meetups and got a lot of value out of them, offered to take on responsibility for organizing the group and move to a monthly cadence. A year later I joined another Salesforce partner, GearsCRM, and continued to organize the monthly meetups as I do today.


How often your group meetup?
We meet every month and alternate between Admin-focused content one month then Developer-focused content next month.


How long have been your group established?
I think the group has been around about 4 years and I’ve been involved with it for the past 2 years.


How big is your user group member, and in average how many members attend for the meetup?
We average 10-15 attendees each meetup but the group overall has about 30-40 active members.


What have you learned as Developer Group leader?
As they say in Real Estate, “location, location, location!” Nashville and surrounding areas is a large city and drawing a large audience, in my experience, really depends on how conveniently located the venue is. To accommodate our members across the area we alternate each month meeting in a different location. I’ve also learned how valuable the Salesforce Community really is by networking and talking with the members, the business problems they’re solving, and the creative solutions they come up with. It is a vital support line for many of our Nashville admins and developers.


What do you love being a Developer Group leader?
My two passions are teaching and Salesforce. The opportunity to lead the Nashville Developer Group brings those two passions together. I really enjoy helping people learn how to use the platform and grow their careers.


Any challenges become the group leader and how to overcome it?
As they say in Real Estate, “location, location, location!” Nashville and surrounding areas is a large city and so finding locations that are convenient for most of our members is difficult. Honestly, I think geographically the area is large enough that we need more groups.


Tell us what is unique about your Developer Group
We are relatively close to Atlanta, GA where a major Salesforce office is located so we’ve been fortunate to have hands-on workshops presented by Salesforce and partners.

I also think our camaraderie among the members is special too. People don’t just attend, listen, leave; no, they come to hang out with their friends who are also doing awesome things with Salesforce. New friendships are forged and they begin to meet for lunch or coffee between meetups to talk shop and grow. 


Share us some tips that make your Developer Group success
Be proactive and frequent about communicating with the group on upcoming meetups, special events, tips and tricks, and overall just trying to be a helpful resource. Understand the needs and interests of the members and cater to them with the types of presentations, workshops, and vendors that are brought in to speak. Encourage members to speak and share their story and successes.


What would like to see your group in the future? 
I would like to see more groups form to help cover the whole greater Nashville area. We have lots of users, admins, and developers in the area but not all can be accommodated with a single monthly meetup that doesn’t cause some portion of the group to have to commute an hour or more.


One last thing you would like to share with the community
I love the Salesforce Ohana! I’ve never come across a tech community so friendly and eager to help each other out, encourage each other, and want nothing but the best for the community.

Simplysfdc comment: Doug, thanks for sharing with us, great to see what you did for the community, your Lightning conversion project, and yes, we are a big #Ohana

Personal notes: thanks for sharing and promoting Nashville - Tennessee, a city that I believe not many people outside of the United States heard about; this is the magic of #Ohana

Cyril Louis - Geneva Switzerland User Group

This is the 4th blog from a blog series to highlight Salesforce Community Champion, from user group leaders, developer group leaders, and members from around the world.

I would like to introduce Salesforce expert from #SwissForce Community, he has many certifications under his belt, he is also founder and leader of Salesforce Geneva Switzerland User Group - introducing Cyril Louis. 

Tell us something about yourself, which Salesforce User Group you lead, and any co-leaders in your User Group?
I'm working in the CRM industry since 2006 and fell in love with Salesforce on 2012 to never come back. I'm now 8x certified and have planned to update the certs, especially on the Marketing track and Architect track.

I am the co-founder and co-leader of the Geneva Switzerland User Group. The 2 others co-leaders are Mehdi El Bilali and Hicham Tabbak. 

My 2 co-leaders have moved to Lyon, France, and as Geneva is less than 2 hours from Lyon, we still can manage our meetings with the three of us onboard! Actually, it was also the perfect opportunity to start a similar initiative in Lyon, that we have launched in December 2016 ;-)

I've also been involved in several Salesforce World Tours as speaker. And more recently, I have been kindly invited to be a speaker at the very first French Touch Dreamin event, and I really enjoyed this Ohana feeling, "kind of Dreamforce spirit", run by the community for the community ;-) 
I liked it so much that I should be more involved in the organization team for the next FrenchTouch Dreamin (chut...)

During the FrenchTouch Dreamin, I had many talks with so many awesome people, but I will particularly underline one discussion with Sergey Erlikh as he asked me why Geneva has no Nonprofit User Group yet...  For the notice, Sergey is the Netherlands Nonprofit User Group co-leader and is the very first non-US-based Nonprofit Salesforce MVP. The discussion was so interesting, and we do have numerous of the non-governmental organization and small organizations that we can help here in Geneva, so we committed to starting the Geneva Nonprofit User Group with Sonia Karkare. And we are proud to confirm that the group has been officially launched in January 2017.


Understand you are the user group founder, what make you start the group? And how is the journey when starting the User Group?
When I moved to Switzerland, I've been regularly involved in the Geneva Developer Group lead by Gnanasekaran Thoppae aka Gnana, and I really enjoyed to share knowledge, to help people, to meet other Salesforce fans. As this group was "developer oriented", I thought it was an ideal timing to set up a User Group with more generic content and more "Admin oriented". And this is how all of this started with my 2 co-leaders.


How often your group has meetup?
We try to meet every 2 to 3 months, and we at least do a meeting to focus on each release in order to highlight best new features.
For some meetings, we try to host special guests like Salesforce MVPs (and Johan, you are still more than welcome if you stop by Geneva).


How long have been your group established?
The Geneva Switzerland User Group has just celebrated its first anniversary!! Woot woot!!


How big is your user group member, and how many members attend the meetup in average?
We have the community of nearly 200 members in the Geneva area, and we have between 20-30 people attend the meetup.


What have you learned as user group leader?
The power of giving back! It is so pleasant to be able to help people: help with my experience, or just help by connecting people :-) We have a community of awesome people and they are all ready to share tips and tricks! 


What do you love being a user group leader?
The best part is to be so close to the Ohana! As a leader, you have this particular position to animate the local community, to build your local Ohana. And as User Group Leader, you are also part of a bigger Community of all User Group Leaders on which you can rely on if you have questions on how to animate your group, to find topics, to promote your group, etc.


Any challenges when you start the user group and how you overcome it?
The biggest challenge was to start from scratch... Build the group, promote the group, animate the community, involve people, engage with members, select interesting topics, find speakers... it's a lot of work :-) 
We deal with all challenges thanks to a mindset: Start Small and Keep it simple! 
"Rome wasn't built in one day" ;-)


Tell us what is unique about your user group?
The view!! A meeting between the Lake and the Mont-Blanc is something you should see ;-)
The diversity of our audience is also what make us unique: from newbies to Salesforce superstars, from Admins to Developers, IT-side & Business-side people, operations, and C-Level...


Share us any tips that make your user group success
Keep the community engaged: ask members to be a speaker, as the biggest value is Knowledge Sharing! 
Don't let people think they only come to a User Group to learn from you; they do have something to share too ;-)


What would like to see your user group in the future? 
I would love to see the Geneva Community keep growing... and I would like to see more User Groups in Switzerland!
For now, Geneva leads the country with User Group, Nonprofit User Group, Women in Tech and Developer User Group... 
This is what I call the #SwissForce Community ;-)


I would like to name all the leaders and co-leaders of the #SwissForce Community:
- User Group: Cyril, Hicham, and Mehdi
- Nonprofit User Group: Sonia, Dalvinder Chandok Singh aka DC, and Samy Boumala
- Women in Tech: Laura Diaz
- Developer Group: Gnana 


One last thing you would like to share with the community
DO JOIN A USER GROUP ;-) If you are not yet in a local user group, go and join a group nearby.
If there is no user group, create a new one! You don't know it, but you already have tons of friends in the Community to support you in this initiative.

The last thing, if you see me in a Salesforce event, feel free to ask for chocolate! I always have some real swiss chocolate to share with the Community ;-)

group meetup

group meetup

the leaders - in the order left to right: Hicham, Mehdi and Cyril

#SwissForce leaders having a drink (WiT, DG, UG)

Astro and me at Dreamforce ;-)

Sunset over the Lake on mountains with Mont-Blanc (pink at sunset) and the famous Jet d'Eau :-p 

Simplysfdc comment: I just feel that Ohana is all over Geneva Switzerland User Group, and yes it's my debt for a trip to present between the Lake and the Mont-Blanc, hopefully, can make it this year. Just a simple input if you haven't done so, in Singapore User Group, we create a full year calendar for meetup, so we can plan properly plan in advance to avoid holiday break, dreamforce, F1 race, etc., it also help us to promote the event, and get speakers or sponsor with a fixed date.

Personal notes: #SwissForce is awesome and what kind of the most famous chocolate in Swiss, but don't tell me it is a Toblerone!