It’s dead, Jim! And… it’s ALIVE!

My beloved mule work horse race horse, a wonderful  Early 2015 (A1502) MacBook Pro, died. Well – not completely. Over some weeks, the keyboard and touchpad took breaks from working. And just after I had completed my presentation at Force Academy LA, they completely passed away and never recovered since. The repair took more than six weeks – and today, my computer is back… they swiped the interior, replaced connectors, found that I was eligible for a display swap, enrolled me, got everything up and running again… AND REPLACED THE UPPER CASE! And that’s basically not just an uppercase, not just an upper case with some stickers. It was a diary. A friendship album. Memories of how I became the Salesforce professional I am today.

Flashback to April 17, 2016

A sunday that will be remembered: I had just taken my Pardot Specialist exam (my 11th cert just 15 months into my Salesforce career, then prepared a quote for the largest deal I had worked on so far… got up, and dropped my coffee cup just to kill my old machine.

The new one was an Early 2015 (A1502) MacbookPro, the last one with a “real” keyboard, the first one with a Retina display. Cheap graphics config, but the max RAM and SSD config (16/512).

Earlier this year, Beth Breisnes and Christian Carter had run the Big Thinks  solution design blog series, I was a participant and got some credit in the blog posts. And later this year, at my first Dreamforce, I met Beth, she gave me a big thinks sticker… and this is where the journey started. It was at the center of my top case, next to the Apple. And in some way, it always was the very center of  what I loved about the Ohana.

I was invited to speak at Tahoe Dreamin’ very soon after Dreamforce’16 and had a blast there (snow! snow!!! the truck ride with Zachary, Dan, Mark, Adam and Ryan!). Wade Wegner came to my session to take a selfie for his team, and I met Jean-Michel Mougeolle. And Meighan Brodkey. THE MEIGHAN BRODKEY, keeper of every bit, even the most arcane ones, of Salesforce swag and knowledge.

And he took me completely by surprise a few weeks later: I found a letter on my desk, I didn’t know the handwriting, and when I opened it, I found that it was from Jean-Michel who had remembered that I was so excited to see Appy, the new AppExchange mascot and sent me an Appy sticker and one for FrenchTouch Dreamin’

I became a User Group leader later this year, and there was a sticker for this milestone in my Salesforce career as well.  Hootie the owl, the Salesforce University mascot, found its place too (by then, I had reached 14 certs).

Joining my first Ohana Coffee call and meeting Lauren Touyet was another day I remember very well, and I got her Ohana Coffee sticker when we met for the first ever Real Life Ohana Coffee at Dreamforce 17.

… and Dreamforce 17 was just epic.

I met Corey Snow, and the thing I love best about his sticker is that in my previous career as a researcher in the Humanities, Harvard was “the dream place to be”. Corey’s sticker is bridging the gap between my previous and my current careers…

Chris Duarte… THE Chris Duarte… We met on the very last day, in the very last hour of my second Dreamforce. 20 minutes before everything was wrapping up.  Chris had her special “find me to get the limited edition stickers”, and actually, I didn’t find her – she found me. I still remember her words because they reflect the madness of Dreamforce: “Daniel! How’s your Dreamforce going so far … err … it’s actually almost over! Do you want stickers?”

A few minutes later, I connected with the one and only Rakesh Gupta, who was in hurry but left me a handful of Automation Champion stickers.

And I met Enrico Murru – Enreeco, Darth Organizer! Yet I had to visit Meighan Brodkey a few months later (Tahoe Dreamin ’18) to get his ORGanizer stickers. I asked him to explain this, actually to mock him, and had an envelope full of ORGanizer swag with a charming note just a few days later.

Well – that was my sticker album. And it’s gone now. I posted a sad note to Twitter today and within minutes, the replies were rushing in. Let this sink in: People from all over the world who knew what my computer looked like in the past… and offering their help to make my ohanabook great again. Thank you all, and Chris, Misty, Szandor, Lauren, Meighan, Jean-Michel, Leila in particular. You made the day I got my naked macbook back a very cheerful one, and made me reflect on how great my Ohana is!

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.