You are a Salesforce developer (or maybe soon?) and you would like to become an expert on that platform but unfortunately in your company, you are working on alone and you don't know how to progress?

No problem ! You have two possibilities. First of all you can go on the Trailhead website (it's a web platform dedicated to how using Salesforce as administrators, developers, architects, ..). Second option, you can join the local Salesforce Developer Community in your city !

Of course, both possibilities are good solution !

But what is a Salesforce Developer Community?

It is a community where developers, administrator and architects are gathered.

This community takes part to different meetings organized outside work, where they speak about the Salesforce technology and exchange best practices.

Ok dude it's clear, I know what is a Salesforce Developer Community but where can I find one and when meetings are scheduled?

You are lucky because you have a lot of chances to find one on the meetup website by writing « Salesforce » into the search tool. You will see meetups scheduled closed to your position.

What is a meetup?

Meetups are meetings about Salesforce (in our case of course, there are a lot of other themes) where several subjects are debating like best practices, new technology and tool to use it.

Large part of time, meetups are scheduled after your workday in a company's building and you can eat some pizzas (all developers like pizzas !)

From my experience, I joined the Salesforce Developer Community in Paris since 2 years, thanks to a colleague who is registered too, and I have never been disappointed at all.

I met a lot of interesting people and I learnt a lot of things that I didn't know on the Salesforce platform. I made a lot of progress by applying the best practices I have learnt during these meeting, this way I was able to fix all the mistakes I have done in the past.

Moreover, you can build your own professional network and have great opportunities. ;)

You will discover people in a different and more relaxing atmosphere than at work.

So, if you are not registered yet on the Salesforce community, I suggest you to do it as soon as possible, to not miss the next meeting !

This is the link of Paris Salesforce Developer Group (France)

Below, you will find a list of all the past meetups and their topic :

• installation of PAD into a Salesforce organization (a framework to improve the development of a project) ;
• Wave (a tool to analyse data in a short instant) ;
• sensitizing to the security into Salesforce ;
• Salesforce1 Lightning ;
• Trailhead.

The next meeting's topic is the installation of a CTI tool in Salesforce.

And maybe one day, you will be the one who will present a topic about the Salesforce platform.

Don't waste your time and join the dark side, we have cookies !

Of course, if you don't want to attend meetups and ask your questions before, you can do it on internet. There are a lot of good advisers on websites and they will be able to help you to become a Salesforce expert.

I can recommand StackExchange, Stack Overflow or the Salesforce forum.

I also take this opportunity to promote myself by mentioning my own website. I share articles and tutorials about Salesforce tips and best practices both in french and in english. :)

To conclude, I hope this article will convince you to join the Salesforce community in your city, and I hope having the opportunity to speak with you a day !