Dreamforce might be the biggest cloud conference anywhere, and it’s quickly becoming one of the largest technology conferences in all the land.
With that growing reputation, the industry has come to expect big names when Salesforce announces the conference’s keynote speakers (and music acts). From Dreamforce’s first year, CEO Marc Benioff has spoke alongside vice presidents, actors, CEOs, and tech luminaries.
Here’s a comprehensive history of Dreamforce keynote speakers that have spoken since 2003, the first year of the Salesforce conference. In the first few years of the event, Dreamforce was also known as a “User and Developer Conference” and the speaker list wasn’t headlined by the household names as it is today. Still, Benioff managed to stock the speaker list with well-known leaders in the technology field:
- Dreamforce 2003 (November 9-11) Adam Bosworth (SVP of BEA Systems), Halsey Minor (Chairman and CEO, Grand Central), Chris Thomas (Chief E-Strategist, Intel), David Vaskevitch (SVP and CTO, Microsoft Corporation), Ernie Cormier (VP of Business Solutions, Nextel) and Jim Balsillie (hairman and co-CEO, Research In Motion)
- Dreamforce 2004 (November 1-4) Brad Boston, (SVP and CIO, Cisco Systems), Adam Bosworth (VP of engineering, Google), Marie Wieck, (GM, IBM)
Ray Lane, (General Partner, Kleiner Perkins), Danny Bowman (VP of Wireless Data Services, Nextel) Jim Balsillie (Chairman and Co-CEO, Research In Motion)
Jonathan Schwartz (President and COO, Sun Microsystems), Joe Rymsza, (President and CEO, Vettro), and Subrah Iyar, Chairman and CEO, WebEx) - Dreamforce 2005 (September 11-14) Chris Anderson (Tech Luminary, Editor-in-Chief, WIRED Magazine), Adam Bosworth (VP of engineering, Google), John Freeland (Global Managing Partner, CRM practice, Accenture), Laurent Philonenko (VP & General Manager, Cisco), Chris Thomas (Chief strategist, Intel)
- Dreamforce 2006 – Colin Powell
- Dreamforce 2007 – George Lucas
- Dreamforce 2008 – Michael Dell, Neil Young, Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Dave Girouard (President of Enterprise, Google)
- Dreamforce 2009 – Colin Powell, Shantanu Narayen (President and CEO, Adobe), Dave Girouard (President of Enterprise, Google)
- Dreamforce 2010 – Bill Clinton
- Dreamforce 2011 – Eric Schmidt, Gary Vaynerchuk
- Dreamforce 2012 – Colin Powell, Jeff Immelt, Tony Robbins, Sir Richard Branson
- Dreamforce 2013 – Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer (CEO and President, Yahoo!), Deepak Chopra.
Also speaking Sean Penn and Alec Baldwin. - Dreamforce 2014 (October 13-16) Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Max Levchin
- Dreamforce 2015 – ??
From 2006 on, Benioff started to draw bigger names, mostly outside of the tech field and the ones that were in technology were names that transcended the industry:
The list of keynote alumnae is kinda ridiculous with Presidents (Bill Clinton) and Vice Presidents (Hillary Clinton and Al Gore).
Dreamforce isn’t just about tech, its featured Former Secretary of State (Condaleeza Rice) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Colin Powell), big name motivational speakers in Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra. That’s not to mention the biggest names in technology: Marissa Mayer (Google and Yahoo!), Eric Schmidt (Google), Chris Anderson (Netscape and WIRED), Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), and Michael Dell (Dell).