Enterprise Meets Polyglot: Jonathan Baltz on Salesforce and Heroku Integration

Enterprise Meets Polyglot: Jonathan Baltz on Salesforce and Heroku Integration

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🚀 Discover the unique dynamics of the Force. com and Heroku user groups in Chicago! 🌐 Learn about the differences between the two groups and the impact they have on the developer community. 🤝 Don't miss this opportunity to connect with other developers and learn from the pros! 🌟 #ForceCom #Heroku #DeveloperCommunity #TechTalks #Chicagowebconf
The Interviewer

Mike Hall

Interviewer, UGtastic

The Guest

Jonathan Baltz

developer education and learning

The Conversation

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Hi, I'm Mike. I'm here at Chicago Web Confident, and now I actually have this shirt so I can represent. I'm sitting here with Jonathan Baltz. Jonathan runs the Force. com and the Heroku user groups here in Chicago, and that's kind of an interesting combination of groups Salesforce and Heroku. One's very lean and light, and the other one is a little bit more enterprise-y, and why the two groups?
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
Well, I started organizing the Force. com developer user group in Chicago around, I believe it was April or May of 2010, and over the time, it became one of the largest or the most impactful user groups in the nation, and in, I believe it was the middle of 2011, Salesforce actually purchased Heroku, and I was actually asked to start one of the first Heroku user groups here in Chicago because Salesforce knows how big the technology community is in Chicago, and they wanted to start building up a community, and community user groups around America, and they wanted us to be one of the first. Okay, and so when you say the most impactful, like what is, what is, what do you do at a Force.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
com meeting?
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
It's, like with the enterprise groups, I'm not too familiar with those.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Do you present on product, or how to use the product, or?
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
Well, I guess I might have used the word impact, like involved, I guess.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
By involved, meaning we're continuously having meetings every month, and I, you know, we continuously post things on Twitter and on the internet. Sometimes a lot of the, a lot of the, you know, there are a lot of user groups, Salesforce user groups around, but there aren't that many developer user groups who go in-depth into the platform, the Force. com platform, rather than the administrators, and how to use it, and how to administrate, do the administration stuff. So, and we also have a lot of developer evangelists come talk, or, you know, do a Google Hangouts with us. So, it's a continuously involved, and, and, and by involved, you know, and then, so through the involvement, we sort of make an impact, and people like look at us as a, a pattern.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
And, so like other user groups in other cities are looking at what you're doing and saying, "Oh, how can we, we can replicate some of what they're doing in Chicago. " That's a really interesting position to be in. The, the, the, the two different groups, I have to imagine you get a different audience between Heroku and, and Salesforce. Yes.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Do you get the same people in both, or is it totally different?
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
Well, sometimes you can, you get a few people who are, do go to both, both meetings, and these are the people who, you know, it's Force. com, it's, it's Heroku, which is a polyglot platform, um, meaning you can use, you know, different languages on it, um, and they're not interested in, sort of, you know, only learning what they want to learn.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
They want to learn everything. They want to learn technology. They want to learn how, you know, maybe the way that certain people use, use some, you know, Java on Heroku, maybe that can, you know, I can use that, that idea, that concept in my Force. com development. And so, so those are the people who go to both, but, you know, between the two of them, it, you know, with the Force. com user group, you find some administrators who want to learn more about development, um, to hardcore invested, uh, other statesmen, if you may, uh, Salesforce developers who, you know, want to either present or hear other people present on the platform. Whereas Heroku, you get a wide variety, um, it supports Python, Java, Ruby, Node, Scala. And then that's just the official build pack. Yes, exactly. And so, you get a wide variety of people who just, you know, depending on the topic that's going to be presented, uh, they will either come or not come.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
And, um, with the, so would you say that the, the Force.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
com group is a little bit more pragmatic? What can I do to make my life a little bit better?
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
Whereas maybe the Heroku group seems to be a little bit more, hey, let's, this is neat.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
Yes. Yes. A hundred percent.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
And, um, you know, I, I have to say I've, I've had to touch some Salesforce and I didn't have nice things to say about it. It was, uh, and that's not an indictment of this.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Do you get people coming to the group?
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
Um, and, and some of that is probably just not knowing the platform well enough, but do you get some people that come to the meeting and have maybe a chip on their shoulder about Salesforce? Because I, those, I, I, sometimes I, I have mixed feelings about enterprise software. They, they're trying to do something good, trying to create something, but sometimes people get frustrated and we might take our frustrations out on a corporate vendor a little bit harsher than we would an open source vendor. So they get a little bit more of the venom.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
Do you get, ever get, uh, sometimes, I mean, you don't get that many. I mean, a lot of times people don't go to the user group if they don't want to know about the topic. Um, it's a lot of the people that do come are using it or are interested in using it. Um, or have, like you mentioned, have used it and, but want to know more about it. Um, those people that do have the vet, you know, that, that venomous feeling, they just need to, I mean, a lot of times that when that happens, it's someone will talk to them and then show them the right way to do it. Um, or suggest that you go to the user, or the discussion boards of developerforce. com and ask questions about it because there's, it's a wide variety on the discussion board or wide variety, variety of people on the discussion boards who are willing to help everyone. And, uh, that, that will actually probably give them the answer. And then, you know, the whole idea is like, don't get frustrated, just ask someone and then you, you know, you might, it might make it better.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
And, and also, I mean, along the lines of receiving the venom, the, uh, sympathy for the developers, I, I, I know some, uh, Salesforce developers and, um, those, those poor, poor souls with, with, because they have to take on all the responsibility because a lot of other people aren't as either as well, uh, either lack of interest or, or just, um, just don't know it as well, tend to try to push as much responsibility on them as possible. Uh, is there, is there some, uh, sense of relief maybe coming into a force.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
com group?
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
It's like, ah, we're, we're the blood brothers. We've, we've done battle together. Is, is, is there, uh, maybe a little bit more, um, identification with, uh, with, uh, force.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
com developers?
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
There is in, I mean, there is somewhat, uh, but it, that's not what we're looking for. I mean, it's not really a closed neck group of like, okay, now, you know, like, I don't know, I don't know, but soldiers or policemen or firemen or people who have, you've been in, you know, you've been in things together, you're, you, you, you, like, you're, you have this camaraderie, this, this, you know, sympathy or empathy. Um, it's actually just like, I want to learn more. I want to see how things are, you know, what's the positive.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
And then, you know, we mentioned that, uh, regarding, you know, that people just push, um, tasks or issues onto the Salesforce developers. And the reason is because not many people do have this knowledge and, and that's really part of the reason that I took over the user or I started the user group in Chicago. And my, one of my main focuses is like this platform is completely wide open. If you want to learn it, you don't have to pay a cent.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
At all. Um, you get a free developer, um, environments, all the documentation is free. And if you have questions, come to a user group, we'll help you and we'll provide, you know, information or help or, or, or direction. And it's hard to get that message out. And it's hard to find people who are interested or want to know more. Um, most of the people are recruiters who just want to hire someone. And it's like, you need to grow people before you actually put them up towards the world.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay. Is there any plans for a force oriented, um, conference or anything in Chicago?
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
Um, upcoming, uh, right now the plan is, uh, uh, in the works for a, um, a sort of a developer, a small developer, you know, evening conference, uh, in the 24th of October.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
Um, no locations set yet, but it's coming up. Um, one of my main ideas and then for 2013 is to either have a force. com, um, cloud, uh, you know, web camp day, like, like, like this conference here today, or say cloud computing web conference, where you bring in Azure, you bring in AWS, you bring in force. com.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
Roku and developers that work on that platform together for a day, just talk and compare notes and compare platforms and, and get that together and sort of build up the, the user group and the community within Chicago.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
And you know, before we wrap up here, you're going to be doing a lightning talk on user community. You had some, you had some thoughts about that.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Uh, what was, what was the topic of the, uh, lightning talk?
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
It's, uh, it's called community, not dictatorship.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
It's community, not dictator.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Okay. So what does that mean?
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
Um, a lot of people go to user groups. A lot of people enjoy going to user groups and they look at the people who host them or organize them, or set the meetings up on either Eventbrite or meetup and they look at them for, okay, tell me where to go. Tell me what to do.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Um, who am I going to see?
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
And it's like the, they're organizers. They're not leaders.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
It's a community. The organizers are there to organize and to say, hey group, this is where we're going. I've talked to this person. I've gotten this location.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
I, on this day, we're going to go there. Uh, it's not saying, hey, I did, I found this place. I found this speaker. It's going to be on this day. You know, they're not dictators. You know, if you want to hear a topic.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
If you have a good idea of a speaker that you want, I want to hear. If you have a place that's a host, let us know. Let the organizers know.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
It's, it's not, it's a very subtle difference between I got us, uh, a meeting place on this day versus we're going to be meeting at that place on this day. Yes. Correct. There's, there's a subtle, a big difference. It's that I went through the effort to get this, you know, I hope it's nice and I'll be a joy.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
You know, versus if you don't like it, just, you know, you don't want to come.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
And the other thing is that like, if you are interested in it, that sounds like a great meeting to you.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
Put it on Twitter, put it on your blog, put it on your website because as of right now, I mean, we, you know, the way that meetup works, you can only email members of the group and if people don't know about the group or not signed up, they're not going to know about the meetings. Yes. And it's that networking, it's that marketing, that message to be sent out that it, you know, in order for these user groups to be, to thrive and to grow and to build, we need that work. We need that, you know, extra step for each, from each member to push the message out. And every link back helps. Yes. Correct. Every, you know, and it's not just Twitter. If you can blog about it, if you can even put it on the Facebook or even set up a Facebook fan page for your user group.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
What is this Facebook?
Jonathan Baltz developer education and learning
No, I'm kidding. But no, you set up the fan page because every place you can help disseminate the information. Yes. Correct.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you very much for taking your time. Thank you.