practice inspired a new ethos and bold
environmental initiatives at the auto
manufacturer. Gelles’ reporting road
trip ended in Silicon Valley, where
the concept of mindful leadership has
inspired startups to start meditating.
Given the sheer number of tech companies that have created custom mindfulness initiatives, it’s no wonder that
cloud-computing giant Salesforce.com
built a half-day of mindfulness programming into Dreamforce, its innovative, see-and-be-seen megaconference.
Nearly 170,000 people flocked to San
Francisco — Salesforce.com’s hometown — last September for Dreamforce
’ 15. Held at the Moscone Center, the
four-day conference included more
than 600 sessions organized across
28 themes. Most sessions were built
around technology, but Dreamforce
struck a meditative note with four
hours of mindfulness programming on
the final day of the conference.
“Dreamforce started off as a small,
1,000-person gathering in San Fran-
cisco of our most avid Salesforce
customers learning how to be more suc-
cessful,” Julie Liegl, Salesforce.com’s
senior vice president of strategic events,
said in an interview. “But as we’ve
evolved, we’ve also made inspiration a
key part of what we do, and to that end,
we bring in world leaders, industry dis-
ruptors, inspirational speakers, philan-
thropists, and even some movie stars to
talk about topics and trends impacting
the industry at large.”
At Dreamforce ’ 14, media mogul
Arianna Huffington spoke about mind-
fulness during a keynote address, then
led attendees through a short medita-
tion. The buzz generated by the session
inspired Liegl’s team to carve out more
space for mindfulness programming
at Dreamforce ’ 15. “We wanted to have
a strong theme to tie the day together.
We had a short list of ideas, but mind-
fulness was the one that excited us the
most,” Liegl said. “Our main goal was to
deliver an experience on the last morn-
ing of Dreamforce where our attendees
could do something different, and leave
inspired and personally transformed.”
Psychologist and meditation
instructor Tara Brach kicked off the
mindfulness programming with a
guided meditation, while Google’s
Chade-Meng Tan — who at the time
ran the tech behemoth’s Search Inside
Yourself Leadership Institute — spoke
on the many benefits of mindfulness.
Author, activist, and meditation teacher
Jack Kornfield entered into a dialogue
‘People often correlate
event design to
cool furniture and
interesting seating
styles, because it’s a
very physical thing that
we know. Yet event
design goes beyond
that, integrating our
senses as well as
including the whole
spiritual and wellbeing
side of it.’
Dream a Little Dream
Salesforce.com received
enthusiastic feedback on the
mindfulness programming at its
Dreamforce ’ 15 conference.
Eric Forbis
‘ We look for a
mix of people who
can speak on
mindfulness and
compassion, and
give practical
advice on how to
be a mindful leader.’
