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@@@ 鈥淭he really neat thing about Dreamforce this year is not just the size and the innovation,鈥?Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said as he stood next to a symbolic 6-foot wall of cans built near the Dreamforce entrance on Howard Street. 鈥淓ach and every year, Dreamforce gives back even more than ever before, and this year is no exception.鈥? Salesforce did focus on some business. As expected, Benioff promoted Wave, a new cloud analytics platform introduced Monday. The platform helps Salesforce business clients glean more information about their customers from the data already gathered by other software. Salesforce hopes Wave taps into an estimated $38 billion market for data analytics.
The overriding theme Monday, though, was community service, a sensitive topic given the record number of people attending the conference and the street closures around Moscone Center.
Company officials insist that its efforts this year are not a meaningless salve to make San Franciscans forget about the traffic headaches.
鈥淲e鈥檙e doing this so we can inspire others, not because we鈥檙e trying to pat ourselves on the back,鈥?said Suzanne DiBianca, president of the nonprofit Salesforce Foundation. 鈥淲e want to inspire all the new technology companies that are here in our city.鈥? The billionaire Benioff and his wife, Lynne, are major benefactors to children鈥檚 hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland. Tuesday night鈥檚 benefit gala and concert in Civic Center Plaza and City Hall, headlined by singer Bruno Mars and the band Cake, are expected to raise another $8 million for the hospitals.
But this year, Dreamforce also asked top-level corporate executives attending the conference to volunteer some of their time Monday to fill bags that will be donated to local food banks. Salesforce hopes the event will inspire the executives to start their own food drives to help the 1 in 8 people worldwide who struggle with hunger.
Benioff set a goal to collect enough food and donations to feed 1 million people. Self-help coach and motivational speaker Tony Robbins, who joined Benioff at the conference kickoff, pledged to match the financial cost of feeding 1 million people.
On Tuesday, Dreamforce participants will also stuff 5,000 bags with flash cards, calculators and books for early childhood education. The foundation last month, and has invited about 100 schoolchildren to watch a keynote address by Hillary Rodham Clinton and World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab.
Also for the first time, Dreamforce has taken over one hotel to host 80 sessions designed expressly for the 7,000 attendees who are from nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations.
On Wednesday, Dreamforce organizers will take corporate executives on helicopter rides over the Bay Area as part of a goal to get 500 employers to hire military veterans.
With the chopper rides, staffed by vets, and a panel discussion about veterans, 鈥淲e really want to get our attendees thinking bigger about how they can hire veterans,鈥?DiBianca said.
Benny Evangelista is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: . Twitter:@ChronicleBenny
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