Star-studded second day of massive Dreamforce convention
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- It was a star-studded second day for the massive Dreamforce convention in San Francisco, and on Tuesday night Bruno Mars and Cake will rock the Civic Center in two benefit concerts that will raise $9 million for the Benioff Children's Hospitals.
Hilary Clinton got a standing ovation from the crowd at Dreamforce. She assembled care packages for new parents at Benioff Children's Hospital for a program called "Talk, Read, Sing."
"When parents read and talk and sing with their children from the very earliest days, we're talking about the beginning, it is helping them learn words, build vocabulary," Clinton said.
The Beach Boys made a surprise appearance in the afternoon keynote by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
Salesforce brings in big money for San Francisco
The billionaire philanthropist recently gave money to San Francisco schools.
And who better to get kids to love technology than pop star Will.i.am, who's about to launch his own wearable device.
"I was one of those disadvantaged kids from the projects. Education is what brings me here today," the star said.
"This is like the Lollapalooza of innovation in technology," Andrew Leigh, V.P. of marketing at cloud integration firm Jitterbit, said.
Veterans of Dreamforce know it's the one tech conference where product announcements can take a back seat -- even though this year's is big.
"It's probably the biggest announcement, honestly, that Salesforce has had I think in the last six, maybe seven years," Leigh said.
The new product, called Wave Analytics, is a software platform that lets even the smallest of businesses use big data.
"It allows them to figure out, really rapidly, that you know, if you meet a customer more than three times, they're never going to buy from you. They just want to talk to you," Selligy co-founder and CEO Nilay Patel said.
And because Salesforce sells service by subscription, when they're customers do well, they do well.
"What they're really trying to do here is they're trying to inspire all these people to go back and drag their companies into the future," Patel said.
