GPUG Summit Wrap Up

We had a great GPUG Summit in Seattle last week. I thought that I would do a quick recap. Warning, this post is rated PG.

We had a great opening session on Wednesday, I thought the pacing and speakers were perfect for  an hour and a half session. Three new GPUG All Stars were revealed, Richard Whaley, Howard Swerdloff, and me. I am humbled and honored to be a GPUG All Star.

After that it was right into sessions. In the middle of my first 50 tips session, someone yelled out "that tip was worth the price of the conference" so apparently it went well.

The GPUG team went low tech with paper, bubble in the answer, type forms for evaluations and CPE certificates. While some people hated the idea of paper, the response rate from attendees was fantastic. We will have some great feedback for future conferences.

The expo was nice and full with lots of third party options and I had a nice dinner with some of the folks from MSDynamicsWorld.com.

On Thursday I debuted my new Excel and GP session. After I showed off the "Aggregate" function which lets you exclude hidden or filtered items from calculations someone said "My whole finance team is going to be happy to about that".  I caught Jared Hall's Excel 2013 session and learned a few things. I also made it to a GP 2013 Q&A that answered some questions I had. At the end of the day I headed to Microsoft for a trip to the company store. It's always fun to visit the Borg.

Friday was a very full day with four back to back sessions for me. The Ask the Experts session featured 6 GP MVP's and two great GPUG All Stars. That's a ton of billable hours on stage tackling questions for free. We had a lot of fun.

My PowerPivot session was full to capacity.  We ran out of preprinted evals. We ran out of spare evals. The crowd was great and post session feedback seemed good. After that I rushed to a session that Andy Snook and I delivered jointly on Audit Compliance. Andy was his usual expert self and I told stories. Folks seemed to like it.

A 50 Tips repeat finished out my presentations with nice full room and a great crowd. I wrapped up the conference with Jared Hall's GP 2013 Fixed Asset session and learned about more upcoming FA features. Jared is going to think I'm stalking him. I am. His sessions have become "don't miss" sessions when I'm not presenting.

Finally, a bunch of us who couldn't get home Friday night had dinner. While we were laughing and recapping sessions, one of the attendees remembered something from my PowerPivot session and yelled out, "Dammit, I learned something", while pounding the table. I'm not sure that quote will make it to the "Why you should attend the GPUG Summit" list, but it should.

With more than 500 attendees, this was the biggest GPUG Summit ever. I sold out the 25 books that I had brought to the event so the Cookbook still has some juice. Next year we're in Tampa. That's pretty close to home for me and Florida in October will be fun. I'm looking forward to seeing you there.