Salesforce’s founder and co-CEO Marc Benioff boasted during the company’s second quarter earnings that there will be an “incredible new reveal” at its Dreamforce user conference.

Salesforce, for the first time, will host a climate summit at Dreamforce, which will feature a keynote speech from former vice president and climate activist Al Gore. The timing isn’t a coincidence. Dreamforce’s focus on climate change is coming off the heels of another high-profile environmental conference in San Francisco. The Global Climate Action Summit, which the city hosted last week, featured both Benioff and Gore as speakers.

“(This is) an opportunity to take the thought leadership from the Global Climate Action Summit to the Dreamforce stage,” said Bridgette Donner, Dreamforce conference chair, adding, “We’re really thinking about how businesses can be a platform for change.”

New technology is also going to be center stage. Blockchain is also going to have an increasing presence at Dreamforce, which expects to have 171,000 attendees. This is the first year an executive in the blockchain industry — Sandra Ro of the Global Blockchain Business Council — will be a major speaker. In total, the conference will have 10 sessions about blockchain.

Benioff might even announce Salesforce’s first foray into blockchain. In April, Benioff first teased a Salesforce blockchain product in an interview with Business Insider, although he didn’t elaborate on what exactly that product would look like. He said he hoped the company would have a blockchain product ready by Dreamforce this year.

M&A announcement? Likely not

Analysts say not to expect a big merger announcement at Dreamforce, given Salesforce’s past track record in hosting the event.

“Some of their biggest announcements, such as the mega-announcement of buying MuleSoft, don’t happen at the flagship event,” said Liz Herbert, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. Earlier this year, Salesforce paid $6.5 billion for data-connection service company MuleSoft, marking its largest buyout deal to date.

A big Benioff announcement, however, could involve integration plans for its recently acquired MuleSoft, said Alex Zukin, managing director and senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray.

Previous Dreamforce conferences have delved into the company’s strategies for its acquisitions, Zukin said. He noted that Salesforce may take a look at the content management space for future acquisitions, which allow it to compete against Adobe.

Salesforce — inspiration and innovation

Forrester Research's Herbert said she expects that users’ stories and inspiration will overshadow the product announcements and various keynotes.

“I expect this year will be…more about stories and inspiration. This is consistent with what they did last year,” Herbert said. “The event web site indicates this will be a big focus again this year.”

Indeed. Salesforce’s Donner said innovation will be a common theme in the product announcements and Salesforce’s desire to be seen as the “platform for change.”

Penny Gillespie, vice president of research at Gartner, said Dreamforce is used to highlight innovation and this year will likely be no different. Companies that use Salesforce need to innovate to build trust with clients, Gillespie said.

“Trust is part of Salesforce’s mantra,” Gillespie said.

For small businesses that depend on Salesforce, Dreamforce is the single biggest event of the year. For quote-to-cash company Simplus, Dreamforce is its main opportunity to make sales to other companies on the Salesforce platform.

“Everyone is here, our acquisition targets, our investors, our partners, potential recruits,” he said. “This is our Super Bowl.”

San Francisco’s Super Bowl

Dreamforce has remained steady with roughly 171,000 attendees over the past few years and is among the huge conferences held in the city, which hosts Oracle OpenWorld, Game Developers Conference, and previously Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

According to estimates from the San Francisco Travel Association, last year’s Dreamforce yielded $157 million in direct total sales to businesses in the Bay Area. That is approximately 10 percent of the $1.7 billion in meeting and convention business, as well as attendee spending, that came into the city last year, said Laurie Armstrong Gossy, senior director of media relations for San FranciscoTravel.

“When meeting planners see images of large meetings held in San Francisco, it definitely gives them inspiration – no matter what the size of their own meeting,” Gossy said.