Back on August 25th 2009 I registered by first Salesforce Account. Since that time Salesforce has been the driver of my personal and professional life. I’m very thankful for the time and the people I met.
It is time to look back:
Salesforce as a University Project
In 2008 I started studying at the University of Mannheim. In our 3rd semester one of our new professors. Professor Mädche announced that a project will be part of his course “Wirtschaftsinformatik 2” (Information Systems 2). In the project we had to use a new Cloud Computing Platform to build a simple business process: The platform was Salesforce.
To learn more about Salesforce we, a group of friends and I, visited one of the early Salesforce Events “Cloudforce Essentials in Stuttgart”. We met Andreas von Gunten. Andreas called himself a Cloud Evangelist. He was the founder of a small Salesforce Consultancy called PARX and convinced companies in a speech to use future technology: Salesforce.
I was very impressed and tweeted that I met my the first “Evangelist” in my life. During lunch Andreas came over. He saw my tweet. We started chatting and explained the purpose of our visit: Learning more for our project. He offered to help us and we stayed in touch.
Back in Mannheim, I talked to our professor and he right away invited Andreas to give a speech in one of his lectures.
With two of my friends we started the Salesforce project. Lucky me, I took a video of it:
After our project was over, I started my first Salesforce Job as a Hiwi (Student Assistant). My job was to implement Salesforce for the chair of the professor. I implemented automations for book orders, chatter, opportunities and more.
During that time I visited my first Salesforce Conference in Frankfurt and took a photo with Sassy:
Salesforce Consultant @PARX
At the end of the 4th semester in Mannheim, I had to find an internship. It was part of my curriculum. I reached out to Andreas. I asked if I can stay for a 3 month internship. I did my first interview and was asked to say for 6 months. My university teachers told me that the curriculum was designed to run in sequence, and that missing half a year will get me out of the rhythms of studying. I decided to extend my work at PARX by another 6 months.
My first year in Zurich. PARX was a very small company. The company was already mainly focused on Salesforce. I got a lot of freedom for a 21-year old. One of my first projects was building a Web-Shop based on Salesforce Sites (a brand new technology).
This project became my companion for the next couple of years. I’m still proud of it. Especially since I developed multiple versions of it. Including a small framework for Websites on the Salesforce Platform: Die Akademie.
After the first year, I decided to stay with PARX and continue studying on the side. Over the years at PARX, I met a lot of great people: Beat, Manuel, Thomas, Michel… all great people. As in very job we had great and not so great clients. However, the majority was amazing: starting with the local groupon clone, an energy grid provider, a fashion company and more. More of my friends needed jobs / internship. Overall 5 people started, 4 of them are still very successful in the Salesforce World.
In 2012 I finally finished and got my Bachelor’s degree.
I worked for a year full-time at PARX. In Summer 2013, I decided to study again and moved to Mannheim. I kept working for the Swiss firm and later for the German subsidiary.
I finished my master’s degree in 2015 and moved back to Switzerland.
After returning to Switzerland I got more project management and technical architect tasks. I attended my first Dreamforce in 2015 and met my girlfriend. In winter 2017, I attended the CTA review board for the first time. I made it in all categories except 1. 😦
In the same year I decided to quite PARX and move on.
Deloitte and becoming a CTA
In April 2017 I started at Deloitte Digital Switzerland. A great place with incredible people. (I’m not sure if they want to get named… but the whole team was amazing.) I cannot say a bad word about Deloitte. It was a good place. Salesorce offered me to redo the one category of the CTA certification. I passed in May 2017 in London. The day before I attended the Salesforce Conference in London and took another photo with Sassy:
Deloitte was a great place. However, it was time to move forward.
Accenture
In November 2017 I started at Accenture as a Manager. One of the first things I did in Accenture was going to my 2nd Dreamforce. As always a incredible experience. Accenture is a fantastic employer. I feel home at Accenture.
Next Steps
For me the last years have been amazing. I’m very thankful for what I have achieved.
What’s going to happen next?
- Accenture is a fantastic employeer. This year I’m allowed to go there again.
- I will marry the girl, I met at Dreamforce on August 30th.
Besides from that… let’s see what happens next..
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