Thaddaeus (Thad) Dahlberg has spent most of his professional life serving the Education sector from the pre-internet time where he worked in a print shop, to building University Web sites, creating Content Management Systems, coding Web-based educational software, and even a three-year stint as a High School technology teacher in Nairobi, Kenya. He currently is a Senior Software Engineer at the University of St. Thomas in MN where he works exclusively for the Salesforce CRM team within Innovation & Technology Services (ITS). Having worked in many different programming languages and software frameworks Thad finds Salesforce as a development platform a delightful place to have landed in his career.

Thad is often heard saying, “If I build it, they will tell me what they want.” That is exactly how his current, open-source, team project in the Summit Events App began. After evaluating many Salesforce App Exchange event management solutions, the constituents at the University of St. Thomas were left with questions about how these solutions fit their unique, higher ed event needs. Thad was able to accelerate the conversation by rapidly prototyping an event solution that gave the University the confidence that it could produce its own solution. Thus, the Salesforce native UST Events app was born and has been used on the St. Thomas campus since 2018. Salesforce.org took notice and championed the idea of owning this solution as a group effort. UST Events was refactored and became the Summit Events App. Now Summit Events App is an official Salesforce.org, Open-Source Commons, installable application that is open to all to contribute.