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...