A Recap of Horizons, the First Salesforce.org Higher Ed Event in Europe!

By Salesforce.org November 21, 2018

Higher Ed Summit Horizons, Barcelona 2018 banner image from Salesforce.org

By Jorge Negrete, Sales Director, S4G Consulting

The original Spanish version of this post is here on the S4G blog.

There’s nothing quite like the Salesforce.org Education Cloud community. Last month, the community celebrated its first Higher Ed Summit Horizons event in Europe, Middle East, and Africa region (EMEA), dedicated exclusively to success in higher education institutions at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona!

On October 23rd we celebrated the first-ever Salesforce.org event exclusively for Higher Education innovators in Europe. The conference, known as Higher Ed Summit Horizons, is a satellite of the global Higher Ed Summit that has taken place in the US for several years, bringing together thousands of education leaders.

Salesforce.org co-hosted the event with Pompeu Fabra University, who welcomed attendees to their campus for the day.

Attendees from Universities Across Spain and Beyond

It was a privilege for all of us here at S4G to be the Platinum Sponsor for the event, which was attended by over 250 professionals from the higher ed sector: public and private institutions, business schools, and universities of all sizes.

Many Spanish universities sent representatives, including IESE and ESADE, Rovira i Virgili University, La Salle, ESIC, Camilo José Cela University, the University of Navarra, and the International University of La Rioja. There were also universities from across Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions (EMEA), such as Imperial Business School, Oxford Saïd Business School, African Leadership University, and Kozminski University in Poland.

“Let’s Reimagine Education Together!”

The theme of Horizons was “Let’s reimagine education together!” and the purpose of the day was to come together as a community and share stories and best practices to further our shared mission: helping every student succeed.

The agenda was filled with opportunities to learn from institutions like the London School of Economics, the Open University of Catalonia, and the École des Pont Business School.

How? By using Salesforce technology, schools like these are reimagining the way they attract, retain, and empower students to become the leaders of the future.

In customer-led breakout sessions, technical demos, and other activities, attendees saw the Salesforce.org Education Cloud in action, including HEDA, the Higher Education Data Architecture, a data model designed to help universities track relationships with students, professors, alums, and other constituents.

Salesforce Advisor Link

Salesforce.org highlighted a number of other innovations to help students make the most of their educational journey. This included the exciting announcement that Salesforce Advisor Link (SAL), which has already been adopted by a number of schools in the US, will be available* in Spain and the rest of Europe in 2019. And of course, S4G will be able to help institutions implement SAL.

S4G, the exclusive Platinum Sponsor for Horizons

S4G was thrilled to be the Platinum Sponsor of the inaugural event! We participated in the opening and closing presentations and we also had a dedicated space where we had the opportunity to speak with attendees.

Javier Heitz, our CEO, spoke alongside representatives from UPF and the African Leadership University and shared our experiences at S4G as consultants and systems integrators using Salesforce to help universities drive transformational change.

Photo of speakers at Higher Ed Summit: Horizons 2018

We also had the honor of being interviewed by Jim Levi, EMEA Regional Vice President of Education for Salesforce.org, just before the closing keynote featuring Noreena Hertz, economist, author, and education thought leader, who shared insights around Generation K (named after the heroine, Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games), the new generation of students that universities around the world are now adapting to.

From all of here at S4G, we would like to congratulate Salesforce.org and UPF on a successful event and we can’t wait to sponsor the next one in 2019! Take a look at our photos from the day here.

Ready to join the global conversation?

Learn more about Salesforce.org Education Cloud here, and you can also visit our new localised sites in German, French, and Dutch!

Guest Author: Jorge Negrete is a Sales Director at S4G Consulting. He has over 20 years experience in IT in marketing, sales, services, product development, business management, alliances, and M&A. Prior to his work at S4G, he was a professor at EAE Business School. Connect with him on LinkedIn.