A Software Company Promoting No Software?

The cloud has been all the buzz lately in the tech industry. While some software companies have been slow to adopt this new technology/service-delivery model, salesforce.com has been a pioneer in the space since the early 90’s.

This summer, I worked at Salesforce as a product marketing intern with the Sales Cloud team. One of my main responsibilities was to help with Dreamforce, the company’s annual conference. Over a 4-day span, close to 40,000 attendees will have access to 750+ breakout sessions, where they can learn about our products and hear from our customers. I helped our team manage over 90 of these breakout sessions by finding session moderators, vetting through customer stories, and more. I also helped build out demo stations for the expo grounds, where attendees can experience our products first-hand.

Aside from Dreamforce responsibilities, I was asked to create a demo video for our Forecasting feature. The demo video will go up on the features section of the Sales Cloud website, and is used to attract new customers who want to learn more about our product. I worked closely with the Product Manager of the feature and my teammate to create a storyboard and script, and recently went into the studio to record the voiceover for the video. So if a career in the tech industry doesn’t pan out, there’s always the possibility of being the voice behind commercials or movies.

Outside of those major projects, I got to experience the day-to-day life of product marketers. I worked with and learned from a cross-functional team that had marketing campaigns people, SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) specialists, a software developer, and a copywriter and artist. It was interesting seeing how the different roles worked together towards a single goal.

And of course there were the great intern events and company perks. I got to hear from company leaders including COO George Hu (a former summer intern), Chief Creative Officer Bruce Campbell (who created the “No Software” logo), and even Peter Schwartz (a renowned futurist). And because Microsoft is a competitor, and their summer interns got a live concert at Gasworks Park (ask fellow Foster MBA candidates Taj Mathews, Aaron Shepherd, or Jessica Martin about that…), I have to ask…

Is there a better way to finish an internship than seeing the Red Hot Chili Peppers live, outdoors at the San Francisco Civic Center?

~Guest Blogger Nelson Haung, Full-time Class of 2013