TOP 3 HIGHLIGHTS FROM CNX25
CNX25 is over, and I am drinking a pumpkin spice-flavored coffee.
We are approaching the first official days of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, but after wrapping up another exciting Salesforce Connections event, my mind and gaze are focused on the month of October.
Why October? Do I crave pumpkin spice-flavored everything in my (non) diet? Do I like Halloween costumes? (Yes, but hot weather pushes costumes to the bottom of my to-do’s … for now.)
The reason behind my fall fascination can be found within my list of top three CNX25 highlights below, so let’s dive in!
1. Two Connections keynotes, one big announcement!
I squeezed into the Main Keynote conference room in the nick of time, and boy I was so happy to make it in! Ariel Kelman, president and CMO of Salesforce, was this year’s lead keynote speaker for the first time since I started attending, and he kicked things off with the usual song and dance that some conference attendees have grown accustomed to; thanking me (and I guess others attending) for being an amazing Salesforce community, how Salesforce is doing and what their goals are, their commitment to sustainability, and keeping up with the past year of excitement around Agentforce. Then lo and behold, a slide pops up that introduces an agentic MarTech stack that subtly includes something called Marketing Cloud Next (image above).
2. You can break Tony Hawk’s leg, but you can’t break his entrepreneurial spirit!
Beloved Reader, I cannot skateboard, nor have I owned any clothing from a skateboard brand. Yet, over the years I have embraced and felt like I grew up within the ESPN2/X Games skateboarding culture that spanned across music, video games and fashion. At a minimum, if you asked me to name a skateboarder at any point over the past three decades, I would have at least one name for you. To err is human, but to get air while doing a 900-degree aerial spin is the one-and-only Tony Hawk!
The now 57-year-old confessed to the crowd that he went to Chicago’s local skate park in the morning, which is inspiring for several reasons and completely mind-boggling in terms of his physical fitness. I’ve reached an age where I feel pain in my legs watching someone else fall.
Hawk talked about his most recent gruesome skateboarding incident while trying to impress his son’s college friends at his home, resulting in a badly broken leg that required multiple surgeries to weld the bone back together. While not the first, or probably last, injury he experienced, this inspired him to take advantage of every day and not take anything for granted when he approaches life and his professional endeavors.
Hawk has an impressive entrepreneurial portfolio that includes video games, clothing, bicycles, skateboards and more. His latest endeavor is a nonprofit organization called The Skatepark Project, which creates public skate parks across all 50 states. His foundation has raised nearly $13 million and created 661 skate park projects. Tony spoke of how skateboarding is a hobby and supportive community that transcends age, gender, skill level and nationality, so creating a space that brings folks together is critical.
3. Agents for sales, service, Slack, sandboxes, scaling, supercharging, and more!
Just a year ago, we were in the same conceptual state as we are today with Marketing Cloud Next. Back then, during Dreamforce 2024, we heard the first official announcement of Agentforce and the exciting potential agents could bring.It was amazing coming back to CNX25 to see how creative and busy our Salesforce community was with ideating agent use cases.
Most of the conference sessions contained an Agentforce element across many different industries and Salesforce platforms. Our team actively attended and learned about agents in the airline industry, financial services, retail, manufacturing and more. If you’ve ever read my past articles covering sessions that I’m most excited about before a conference, you will see a consistent pattern that I’m a big fan of hands-on workshops. This time around, I was fortunate to attend the Test-Drive Data Cloud event, which allowed me to build various Agentforce prompts within Data Cloud. I must say that things are feeling easier than the year before when I was building my first agent at Dreamforce and a couple World Tour events, so that was very exciting for me!
Before the conference, our team had been active in our own Marcus Thomas Hackathons and various client proofs of concept and MVPs, allowing us to develop powerful and innovative AI agents for marketing use cases (learn more here) While we didn’t make the top three for the U.S. version of the competition (this time), we were excited to see the top three present their agents in the Project CNX Agentforce competition event (watch the showdown video here).
How can agents bring efficiency and automation to your business?
Feel free to reach out, and we’ll happily show you!
Bonus highlight: Brandy the Fox. That’s it. That’s the title.
Whether she stood beside you in your group photo or you collected your takeaway plushie, Squishmallow™ or Funko Pop! figure, I’m happy to report that Brandy the Fox was in the building. For those not familiar, Brandy is the animal avatar that represents a Salesforce Marketer, and it only made sense for her to be the focal point of CNX25 with the unveiling of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next.
Brandy is a tall glass of water that wears a black hoodie and jeans, and you would assume that she probably has a million followers on some Discord or Twitch channel that livestreams whatever trendsetting and cool topic is on her mind. I would tell her that I love her, but I already know I’m not her type. Below is a picture of me being a third wheel with Brandy and Agentic Astro (Astro and I aren’t on speaking terms, btw. We’ll save that for another story). Thanks for tuning in to my article, and we hope to see you at CNX26!
Have a marketing challenge that keeps you up at night?
There’s an Agent for that! And we can build it for you! Let’s talk.
You might also be interested in our custom Agent for Marketing Cloud Engagement, designed to speed up campaign creation, boost team efficiency, and streamline your daily marketing operations. Curious how it works? Check out VP Pablo Salazar’s article for a deep dive.
Want to see it in action? Contact us for a live demo and free consultation.
Wrapping up #CNX25! Inspired and packed with fresh insights, ideas, and connections. From diving into agentic 🤖 marketing to catching the Cubs vs. Pirates game⚾️with clients and teammates—what a ride!
— Devs United (@DevsUtd) June 13, 2025
Heading back agent-first!
See you at #CNX26! @MarketingCloud @salesforce pic.twitter.com/Xedn8doOwD
#Day1 #CNX25 is in full swing!
— Devs United (@DevsUtd) June 11, 2025
Our team’s on the ground ready to dive into the agentic 🤖marketing future.
🤯Big reveal: @MarketingCloud Next https://t.co/hfuxml5bHd
👋On-site? Let’s connect https://t.co/FGiT4DCEaJ
🗓️Need a Day 1 plan? Try CNX25 Planner https://t.co/nFslRPbBLS pic.twitter.com/7zUK8XiWwD
