You, Me and Dynamics GP
Convergence 2012 is over and its now been immortalized in tweets as #CONV12.
I had a great Convergence and I heard similar comments from others. The one large room for the Expo, support, Hands on Labs, store, etc. was a big hit. I heard some complaints about the food but frankly I had a day with no breakfast and mints for lunch so I really can't judge.
The level of social media activity was crazy with lots of tweets flying everywhere. Kudos to the GP team for pushing Twitter during the event. The level was so high that competitors were tagging tweets with #CONV12 and trying to sneak into the party. Jon Rivers tweeted so much that he exceeded his Twitter quota and got shut down temporarily.
Microsoft let me play around in the GP General session and the reviews were generally very good. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to show off some upcoming GP features and I heard lots of good comments from users. I think the web client can be a game changer but the improvements in areas like Fixed Assets and pre-payments shows users that it's not always about new and shiny. Oh, and I got to hold a Windows 8 Tablet. Are you jealous yet? Thank you Pam and Errol for letting me participate.
Backstage at #Conv12
Right now it's an evaluation duel between my sessions and Mariano/David's sessions for presentation supremacy. Ultimately, Convergence attendees came out the winners. It looks like half of the top 10 rated sessions will be one of ours. I had people say that seeing SmartList Export Solutions and Revenue/Expense deferrals were worth the cost of the conference. It's funny that both of these are very mature tools and easy to use/implement. I have a big thank you to the person who noted in their evaluation that I wasn't showing the tip numbers long enough in the first 50 tips session. I adjusted in the repeat.
In my Excel session, we built a dashboard in about 20 minutes and I had people telling me later that they couldn't wait to go back to work and build a dashboard. Yeah, it sounded odd in real life too. This was an update of a successful session from last year that I reworked based on attendee comments. I think it worked better this time and I'm hoping we will see more people deploying refreshable Excel Reports because of it.
On the fun side, the T-Shirt sling shot was popular and Skillet found a few new fans (Panheads) after I played Awake and Alive prior to a session.
Speaking of rock stars, the level of "Rock Star" stuff was off the charts with tons of great comments, a really successful book signing and an "Everyone 'hearts' Mark Polino" shirt created by the folks behind The Closer. Don't worry, I didn't get a bowl of M & M's with all the brown ones removed, there aren't any credits on my slides with titles like "assistant to Mr. Polino" and yes, my wife still makes me clean up after the dogs. I have to say, It was fun to get stopped in the Orlando airport and have people tell me that they enjoyed the sessions.
The Must-Have shirt of #Conv12
If you missed any sessions, you can review many (most?) of them on Virtual Convergence. It's really slick this year. Links to my sessions are available on the right side of DynamicAccounting.net or Virtual Convergence.
Finally to everyone who attended one of my session, I’m grateful that you came. Thank you for giving me an hour of your time and thank you for being a great audience.
