Welcome to the awesome Salesforce Answers Community Leaders blog series!!
Inspired by Blog Series – Kevin Bacon by Eric ,Girly Geek By Lauren ,Admin Hero By Brent & the Answers Community forum of which I have been part from a long time,I decided to put this series and I hope that Stories of our Answers Community Leaders will motivate and inspire other Salesforce Community Members to contribute to community and know the guys who answer their questions 🙂
Special thanks to Eric and Phoebe for helping me for getting started.
So here I am with my fourth post in this Series introducing – Atul Gupta.
You can connect with him on Twitter ,Linked In, Success community and his blogs as well.
Tell Us About Yourself ?
Right out of college I was hired by Accenture where I got introduced to Salesforce. They told me that I can create whole Enterprise Applications by just Point and Click. Till then, I was only familiar with the Code your way to creating an Application paradigm.I became curious. I was fortunate to get Salesforce Developer Training in the starting only which really helped me in understanding the whole Platform and how to work with it.Accenture has got some awesome Trainers!!
I was also fortunate to work on some pretty big and complex projects where I got exposure to a lot of stuff.After working on a couple of projects in Bangalore, I got shifted to Delhi where I worked with some of the best guys working in Salesforce for Accenture. These guys could code and provide solutions to Salesforce Requirements/Problems in sleep.
I also got to know about Salesforce Community from these guys and started blogging on Blogger by the name of forcejunky.blogspot.com. Now I’ve shifted my blogging platform to WordPress, you can find all my blogs at www.cloudvandana.com.Blogging about Salesforce was my first time blogging about anything and I just love it now.I kept on getting opportunities to take up Salesforce Certification Trainings and I was finally able to get complete my Salesforce Certified Advanced Developer Certification in 2014 December. The assignment they give you are a pretty good test of your knowledge and skills Salesforce.
Around 6 months back I quit Accenture (with very heavy heart) and started working as a Freelance Salesforce Consultant and Trainer.It seems like a pretty good decision so far. For future I want to continue contributing to the Salesforce Community and working on interesting projects with Awesome people.Nowadays I’m Training a bunch of New Joiners at IBM Bangalore for Salesforce Administrator and Salesforce Developer.It’s an awesome experience. Introducing these guys to Salesforce and seeing their reaction on how easy it is to rapidly developer enterprise applications is just great.I would also like to bag some more Certifications esp. the Salesforce Certified Techical Architect (long shot :P) in future.
When Did You Start Answering?
I started answering the questions way back, but I was not regular with them. Although Success Community has been a great resource of learning for me, it has saved my neck in the early days a couple of times.In 2015, I was finally able to roll up my sleeves and I became serious about answering in the Success Community on regular basis.
What Inspired You To Do So ?
First, it was just for fun, then it got addictive, and now it’s a habit. I think it is the best way to learn Salesforce. Plus, one develops the skill of coming up with solutions to real world problems. That is indispensable and I’m continuously growing and learning. Plus when I see people’s issues and problems get sorted out because of my answer it feels really good.
How Do You Feel Contributing To Answers Community?
“Just Awesome !!” We have got an awesome and pretty active Salesforce community here. One can contribute and learn in any way he/she likes. You can do so on Twitter (#askforce), Success Community, Developer Community, Salesforce Stackexchange, Developer User Groups and if you are little Old School you can check out Salesforce IRC Channels here and here.
And how can we forget the greatest and best Blogging and Podcasting community we have in the Salesforce Ecosystem. You can check out a curated list of all Salesforce Blogs here compiled by Oliver Hansen.
And the great thing all of these channels is all of them are pretty active. Salesforce Community members share and care with open heart and contribute.I want to continue on contributing to the community via my current channels-My Blog,Twitter,Success CommunityPlus I’ve been contributing by release useful applications for the Salesforce Users/Admins and Developers like
“Re-Rate Knowledge Articles” AppExchange App,“Multiple Change Set Component Selector” chrome extension,Visualforce Preview Library and
Add Trailhead Badges to LinkedIn Library
Any Tips For Our Community Users & The Contributors?
To people who have a good understanding of the platform, be specific with your answers and anticipate where people might get confused while solving their issue.I have myself been guilty of being vague sometimes but now I try to be as specific as possible.
What Would You Say To People To Inspire Them To Contribute To Answers Community?
Don’t just ask questions, start giving out answers as well. I got to know about the community at a quite early stages in my career but I thought once I have a certain level of knowledge then only I should start contributing. Don’t think like this and start answering. Obviously, you should answer logically and you can actually help the other person come up with the answer themselves by guiding them in the right direction.You can start contributing from very beginning as well. Have a look at the questions, you don’t know the answer, no problem, open you Free Developer Edition Org and try to build out a solution.It’s about learning, it’s about helping the other person find solution.I know you might feel like we are spoon feeding people with answers. But I can tell most of the people once they realize that how easy was the solution and they reach a certain stage in their Salesforce Knowledge, they will start finding solutions for themselves using Google or referring Salesforce Help.After Trailhead came out, I don’t think anybody could give out an excuse of not knowing about something. They can just go to the Trailhead module and learn about that aspect of Salesforce.
Any Additional Point/Tips/Comments
Salesforce and its Ecosystem is continuously growing and it has stood the test of time. Now Salesforce is not emerging but it is mainstream technology. You can build out your whole career on Salesforce.It is an awesome technology to be in. There is no dearth of Jobs and work. If you are in Salesforce you are in good hands.
