Within everyone’s career path, the journey will change. I went from WordPress Developer, to email marketer, to teacher to consultant to Marketing Cloud subject matter expert. No path is ever straight and yet again my path is changing once again. With the advent of the push of Data Cloud by Salesforce and with the Marketing Cloud Growth Edition push during Dreamforce, we are seeing the tide change and thus this means Marketing Cloud will eventually change. 

My new path that I have been digging into as of late has been Data Cloud. The reason for this push is indeed because of Marketing Cloud slowly being integrated into the core of Salesforce. No longer will Marketing Cloud be this thing that is off doing its own thing. Because of this, I have started the full path of learning Data Cloud as well as learning about becoming a Salesforce Admin and a Developer. Data Cloud is the new hot data warehouse system 

I have always said that when it comes to certifications, I don’t believe in being one of the people that gets certifications to just allow it to gather dust and to never use it. If I get a certification it has to be for a reason and it has to be something I will gain and build knowledge into which is why I am finally going after the core Salesforce certifications. I fully think Marketing Cloud becoming part of the core experience will allow others to build apps via the app exchange along with lighting web components and allow marketing cloud to become just as customizable as any other tools within the tool chest. 

There have been several paths I have been using to gain knowledge and understanding of what I am working on.

Trailhead: the defacto standard in starting a new journey within the Salesforce ecosystem. This is where to get the most up to date information. I always try to not just breeze through trailhead for points. I always try to focus and take notes and annotate everything. As I always say, the gamification of learning can be helpful but sometimes people just do trails for points and not for learning.

Udemy – Udemy is one of those resources that I use a lot but I use it like podcasting, while I work I passively listen to the Salesforce classes. It’s one of the passive ways I try to learn by just listening. It is especially helpful if I use my HomePod to hear better cause the iPad speakers are ok when compared to an actual speaker.

Hands On Data Cloud: one of the newest resources I have had bought recently. Sometimes just sitting and learning and reading on and taking notes college style is one of my favorite ways to learn. The old college style of studying and learning at your own pace.

Quizlet – this has been my go to learning because repetition and flash cards can help with learning so many acronyms. DMOs, data streams, segments, all of these terms can be very confusing in my own personal opinion. This is a way to get it stuck and imprinted into my brain.

As someone in technology, we gotta adapt fast because of all these new technology and changes coming out constantly. However if you are wondering what my opinion is on how quickly you need to get to learning? Marketing Cloud within core vs what Marketing Cloud is currently is not an overnight update, this update will take years because it will need to be a one to one feature equalization. It will be a massive Salesforce will need to build and it can’t be done by “acquiring” companies; it will need to be built with precision because it can’t be sloppy otherwise you will have companies not wanting to adopt this new system. But if Salesforce does pull it off, I fully suspect we will see a classic vs lightning situation with marketing cloud core vs marketing cloud legacy. 

And in closing, if you have been reading any of my previous blogs, you know I have been digging into python data analysis, and with data cloud and writing a lot of sql queries and getting into analyzing data with Jupyter notebooks, this seems like the most logical path in my career. So if you are wondering what I am diving into, this will probably be the path I am focused on for the next few months.