Get to Know Our Consultants: Angela Mahoney
April 2015 update: Angela Mahoney worked with Idealist Consulting from 2013 to 2015. That said, her insights on the MVP program and Salesforce ecosystem as one of the first female Force.com MVPs remain relevant. She is a founder of the Portland Girly Geeks chapter, co-founder of the Portland Salesforce Developer group, and active in the Nonprofit and user groups. Angela also volunteers with Code Academy to help kids learn how to code.
How have your first few weeks as a Force.com MVP been?
Exciting and overwhelming! There are lots of people to meet and make connections with. My main goal is to keep doing what I did that got me nominated (stay active on my blog as well as in local user groups) and get out there and promote the Salesforce platform.
Can you tell me a little bit about the local Salesforce groups you’re involved in?
Sure! Let’s start with Girly Geeks - this was born out of DF a few years back - the idea was to give women who are traveling alone a way to meet each other. Last year there was a Devzone day dedicated to women in tech. The goal this year is to set up local chapters. I recently co-founded a Portland chapter that meets every other month - it’s all for women involved in Salesforce or interested in learning. I’m also active in the Portland Developer/Nonprofit user groups and present to those periodically (including the recent Developer Week). And then I volunteer with code.org which puts out curriculum geared toward kids. We walk through code exercises and problem-solving. The idea is that people do what they know, so what a tremendous opportunity we have with our kids to make sure they know more things, like code! We want to capture them before they think math is hard or stop paying attention to science. A few weeks ago we visited the local Salesforce office - between puppy force and the pizza I think they were hooked!
What did you want to be when you grew up?
A bilingual math teacher. I loved math and Spanish and studied in Ecuador twice, finally moving to South America where I taught English for 3 years.
How long have you worked with Salesforce?
I started as an end user in 2001, then took an admin role in 2006.
How have things changed over that time?
That is a 2-part answer- how have I changed and how has the system changed. Personally, my awareness for systems has changed drastically over the years. Systemically, the cloud has become much more accepting - in the beginning [Salesforce] was just sales, now everything runs in the cloud and the general public are much more trusting of keeping data there.
How has your involvement with Salesforce changed over the years?
As I grew to learn and love the platform, I became more of an advocate of its abilities as a malleable system. It is really exciting to now have the ability to match a portal interface with a client website, for example. I’ve also been involved with mobile since 2006 (back then you had to work with 3rd party company) and it’s so cool to see how Salesforce1 is giving people new ideas of what mobile can do.
Have you had a recent Salesforce 'Ah-ha!' moment?
Chatter desktop is a truly beautiful thing when you are working with multiple orgs- for example now as an MVP I can set them up to click back and forth between MVP and Idealist without having to be signed into the org itself. Little stuff like this makes my day!
What do you see as the value in completing your Salesforce certification?
I have 3 certs now (admin, developer, sales cloud) and am a total evangelist for staying up on your certifications. Unless you’re completely disciplined to read full release notes, studying for the cert tests are a great way to make you focus on what really matters.
What's your top tip for encouraging user adoption?
Training! One of the best things an organization can do is to make their training materials available - it’s just not reasonable to expect that spending 2 hours on a Tuesday will give someone everything they need to navigate Salesforce. The typical user thinks that changes in Salesforce are a major thorn in their side. The most successful organizations are those that adopt change management policies that include appointing someone in charge to share communications and the inevitable questions that arise when changes happen.
What are your top 3 favorite apps?
DemandTools - it’s a beauty on steroids. Love this app.
Field Trip: this tells you if a field has been used or not - it’s a great tool for consultants
Grid Buddy: this replicates Excel in Salesforce, sort of like a list view.
Reflections on Dreamforce? Will you go again?
Yes I will most certainly be there! I have 3 top reasons:
- It is the cheapest training you’ll get - outside of Dreamforce, admin trainings are upward of $4k/week. Inside Dreamforce, you get HOTs (Hands-on Trainings)- take advantage of these! They all provide videos too.
- Hearing about other people’s use cases - learning what others are doing is so important.
- It’s just a shot of inspiration! Oh - and make sure to budget time when you return to go through your notes.
What do you find the most satisfying?
The a-ha moments that clients have: when they see the value and take it and run with it. This is really exciting to watch.
