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I’m about to head to Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual user conference. Last year it was 5,000 people. This year could be as many as 10,000. It’s a big conference with tons of logistics.

But check out what the Obama campaign pulled off yesterday. They had an event in St. Louis with at least 100,000 people. And then followed it up with a 75,000 person rally in Kansas City.

These rallies require amazing logistics around parking, security, crowd control, secret service for Obama, PA, lighting, media, the list goes on and on. Check out this great post from Al Giordano about what it takes to do a 20,000 person rally.

And then realize that the Obama campaign did this twice in one day. Whatever you think about Obama’s policies, the man has pulled together an army for this campaign. On every level he’s out-organizing John McCain. That’s not a subjective feeling–it’s a clear fact. No doubt about it. Very impressive.

As I filled out my ballot today, I paused with the feeling that I was doing something I wanted to remember for the rest of my life. I voted for our first African-American President. Sure, it’s not over until Nov. 4th, but I’m confident he’s going to win, and I got to vote for him.

Even if you’re not going to vote for him, I hope the import of this moment for America hits you. It’s a vote 400 years in the making. It’s a vote we got to be a part of.

I want to tell you a bit about my parents. Bill and Beth live in Wisconsin, in the house where I grew up. They live in a pretty conservative world–Wisconsin is the birthplace of the Republican party, they know some real John Birchers, and until his retirement last year my dad was a CEO of a manufacturing company. Not the most liberal environment.

John McCain will lose this election because people like my parents are not supporting him. But it’s not just that they aren’t supporting John McCain, they are full-on Obama volunteers. And so are their neighbors and friends.

The school teacher across the street had never given to a political candidate until she donated to Obama this year. The neighbors behind them are taking up a collection to buy a $1200 full-page ad in the local paper. The ad will list the names of Democrats, Independents and Republicans in the neighborhood who are supporting Obama. My parents rang 50 doorbells in the neighborhood. They’ve never done that before.

And today my dad wrote this letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel, the local paper. I couldn’t be more proud of my dad for writing this great letter:

My wife Beth and I have lived in Wauwatosa for 35 years. We have voted for Republicans and Democrats during our time in Wisconsin.

Over the last 10 to 15 years we have seen the Washington political machine become more and more directed by special interest groups. During the last 8 years of George Bush’s Presidency, we have seen the “worst” of what our government can do for its people, and for the image we have with our allies overseas.

We have been lied to and deceived time and time again by this administration. The administration is corrupt and self serving, and it must changed to an Obama/Biden administration. Biden and Obama can be trusted. It won’t be easy to change Washington politics, but they will start to make the change that’s absolutely necessary for our future and our children’s future.

I’m a retired CEO, and am not faced with many of the tough issues facing our next generation (like job security, health care coverage, and the list goes on)

As a CEO however, I’ve seen the unbridled greed on Wall Street, and in the Board Rooms across the country. It’s incredible to me that we, as a people, have allowed these travesties to go on and on, until they have reached the size and scope that will now take years to correct.

I support Barack Obama 100% and hope for a landslide victory for the Obama Biden ticket in November. Hopefully that would send a message to Washington that the days of special interests, and lying politicians, are coming to an end.

Bill Andersen
Retired CEO Bradley Corp.

The Republicans have lost the middle of this country because of their incompetence and malfeasance. Folks like my parents won’t be looking to vote for Republicans any time soon, and I don’t think they are alone.

From the awesome folks at 538:

When local field organizer Christian Lund took the stage just prior to Joe Biden’s appearance on Tuesday night in Marietta, he asked those in the attendant crowd of about 4,000 to look at the sheets in their hands. Each sheet held four names, and each name had a phone number and a bar code for later data scanning. Lund asked the people in the crowd to make four phone calls to this targeted group, and then he demonstrated.

Lund got voicemail. Over the microphone, he left a message informing his phonee about where and when to early vote, as well as where and when the Obama volunteer office was located in town and what it’s hours were. After he was finished, it was the crowd’s turn. “We even got extra cell tower juice just for tonight” Lund told the crowd, so go ahead and make four quick calls on Barack Obama’s behalf. They did.

It’s 2008. Everyone has a cell phone. Any event can turn into a mass phone bank if you want it to. You just have to think ahead…

Shawn was doing a google image search and got this result:

Plone was the first hit. I guess Google is paying attention to the Plone Salesforce.com integration project!

Here’s a really clever ad that is trying to push older voters to Obama. I love ads that parody ad formats that have wedged their way into our brains over the course of years and years of watching TV.

This weekend I ran across a great way to collaboratively work on Salesforce.com code in Eclipse. The Docshare plugin for Eclipse that as part of the Eclipse Communications Framework allows you to collaboratively edit an Eclipse text document with another developer anywhere on the Internet.

DocShare is similar to subEthaEdit, a Mac text editor that allows multiple editors at once. It’s kind of freaky when you first see it, because it breaks one of the fundamental rules of how computers work. Two people can actually edit the document at the exact same time, making different changes, and all of it happening in real-time with very little latency.

There are a couple cool things about DocShare. First, it’s embedded in Eclipse where I already work on my code. Second, it works over XMPP, the Jabber protocol that Google Talk is based on. So, you can share your code with anyone with a Google Talk account. It also works with Skype, IRC, and a number of other protocols.

There is one limitation which makes this hard to use with Salesforce.com code–it doesn’t currently work with the Force.com editors (HTML, Apex). Aparently, it’s not hard to add it to the context menus, but I don’t have the info I’d need to make that work.

Even without working with the Force.com editors, it’s worth checking out.

Setting it up is pretty easy. First, go here to get the update site URL. Install the ECF.

Once you install it, you’ll need to modify your Force.com perspective to show the communications Views and Commands. Once you do that, you can add one of your XMPP accounts:

When you do that, you’ll see your list of IM contacts. You now have a full IM client in Eclipse.

Ideally, now you’d share your Apex classes. But like I said, you can’t do that yet. So take your class and copy the text.

Paste the text into a temporary txt file.

Then you’ll have a Share item on your right-click menu in that text file.

Pick your friend and share away. If they are logged into Eclipse, they’ll get a pop up asking them if they want to accept your shared file. If they do, you can both start editing! When you’re done, just copy the contents of the text file and put it back in the class.

It’s a great way to do remote code reviews. I’ve used it to get help with an issue today from Matthew in Bellingham–worked very well. And he even fixed my problem while I watched.

So, if any Salesforce.com staff are listening, make the minor changes necessary to have this work with the Force.com editors and you’ve got a killer Dreamforce demo!

Loved this!

If you use Salesforce.com, you must try Google’s new browser Chrome. For me, it is blazing fast. They wrote a new javascript engine which speeds up Salesforce.com pages, which are heavy in JS.

Give it a try. I haven’t experienced anything faster.

The awesome folks at CRMFusion have release their killer app–realtime dupe creation blocking in Salesforce.com.

DupeBlocker has been developed to complement the existing Salesforce data quality tools developed by CRMfusion Inc and used by over 2000 Salesforce administrators worldwide, DemandTools and PeopleImport. While DemandTools cleans duplicates out of Salesforce (among the 100’s of other things DemandTools does) and PeopleImport stops duplicates from being imported (such as from a trade show list), DupeBlocker stops the users from being able to create duplicates in REAL time.

I can’t say enough about DemandTools, and I can’t wait to try DupeBlocker. Go get your 30-day free trial today!