We had a great Convergence again this year!

At I.B.I.S.we had a great Convergence again this year!  Due to all the activity, we have additional positions available immediately.  Go to http://lnkd.in/W9gdKg for more information.

Convergence 2012 Recap - Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP

Pam Misialek has a Convergence 2012 Recap with info on some of the highly rated #Conv12 sessions including those from the Mariano/David combination, my sessions, 50 Tips around Payroll and HR and more.

If you attended Convergence please checkout Virtual Convergence to review sessions you liked and catch sessions you missed.

Convergence 2012 Update

Tim Cruickshank show off some things he learned at #Conv12 in his Convergence 2012 Update.

Some of these look familiar. Like they were covered in my 50 Tips or Closing the month faster sessions. You can check those out on the right sidebar of DynamicAccounting.net

The Dynamics GP Blogster: Microsoft Dynamics Convergence Houston 2012 - Presentation Materials

David and Mariano’s Microsoft Dynamics Convergence Houston 2012 - Presentation Materials presentation materials are up. Mine have been up since before Convergence started at DynamicAccounting.net on the right side bar.

Microsoft Convergence 2012 Houston - GPPC PreGame & Web Client

David Musgrave can now take the wraps off the information shared at Microsoft Convergence 2012 Houston - GPPC PreGame & Web Client

The Dynamics GP Blogster: Microsoft Dynamics Convergence Houston 2012 - Day 3

Mariano wraps up Microsoft Dynamics Convergence Houston 2012 - Day 3 with lots of pictures.

Announcing Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013

Convergence blog wrap up

From Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP: Announcing Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 - Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP

Steve Chapman has Thoughts on Convergence 2012

Vaidy found some stuff about the web client that he likes

Mariano looks at Day 1 and Day 2.

David Musgrave was still there after everyone left.

Christina Phillips is looking ahead to New Orleans

I got to guest post on DynamicsBlogger.com about #Conv12

My Convergence wrap up happened on Friday

Weekly Dynamic: Behind the Scenes at Convergence 2012

Everyone likes a peek behind the curtain now. Since many of you are now drowning in tips from Convergence 2012, I thought that I would do a behind the scenes post for this weeks Weekly Dynamic.

I got to participate in the GP General Session this year. It was a ton of prep and practice work for several weeks leading up to Convergence. We practiced via Lync with video chat and we practiced in person. Everyone at Microsoft was very supportive, even as we made changes right up until the end trying to deliver the best session possible.

Backstage was a like a high tech Broadway production. Is there a backup tablet? Is there a backup phone?  Do you know what to do if "X" breaks? Lots of tech people in black. A few nervous people rehearsing before they go on stage and trying to stay out of the way of the tech folks.  Oh, and no diva's, just professionals. Pam gives a great pep talk.

After that it was bright lights, a blur, an adrenaline rush that it's over, then relief that you didn't fall off the stage. This is quickly followed by a visit to Twitter  to see how you did. That's when I realized that I said "Sexy" on stage  in the context of accounting software. Fortunately a nice chunk of the audience loved the fact that ERP can by sexy.

Backstage at the #Conv12 general session

For the concurrent sessions it's a culmination of weeks of presentation building and practicing. We have to have draft presentations in three weeks early for review, so you can't wing it. I do a lot of practicing standing up presenting to a wall to make sure that all the examples work and that I can get from one topic to the next smoothly. I saw someone at another conference once take an hour and a half with a  break for lunch in between to present 50 tips in 50 minutes. That won't be me.

I tend to push the envelope every year with things like high energy intro music for my sessions. This year Pam was willing to look the other way as I brought in a T-Shirt sling shot and launched items into the crowd. I was pretty careful and everyone seemed to have fun. I wasn't sure how to get a T-Shirt cannon past airport screening but the slingshot didn't get a second look. It works at basketball games, why not Convergence?

Finally, as speakers, we have a few kinds of feedback as to how we did. There is the purely anecdotal feedback where someone stops you in the Expo, the hallway, the airport or even your home airport and tells you that they enjoyed your sessions. Then there is online feedback from places like Twitter which is a little more quantitative because you can count the Tweets from a session and they can be both positive and negative. No one ever stops me and tells me that they hate my session.

Lastly there are the evaluations that users fill out. For a large session of say 300 people we can see between a 100 and 150 attendees rate the session. I read every comment to try to make the next session  better. Thanks to you I've added version numbers to the tips and tuned the way that the follow up documentation is setup.

Many of you are complimentary. Some folks offer great suggestions for improvement. A small group seems determined to not say something nice and some of you make me laugh. All of the tips are anonymous so we have no idea who said what unless you stick your name in the comments.

I'm taking a risk being transparent with some examples so that you'll understand what I mean. Not all of these comments came from my sessions or from this year so here goes.

    • By now a chunk of people are used to my very fast 50 tips presentations. People still say "present slower". If I do that then I hear back "presenter went too long".
    • In my first 50 Tips session this year someone commented that I wasn't spending enough time with the tips on the screen for them to get the tip number. That was fantastic feedback. I was able to adjust in the repeat session.
    • I saw one eval where the attendee didn't mark any ratings and then commented "I did not attend this session". Clearly I have no idea what to do with that.
    • I have also had people comment "You should do fewer tips". With all do respect, that's not gonna happen. Perhaps you should pick a different session. I mean that in the nicest way. The label is very clear and the math is easy. 1 tip per minute = 50 minutes. 5 minutes to get going and 5 minutes to get out = 60 minute session.

This year, these comments from my sessions made me laugh:

    • "Picked up a ton of helpful tips. The only thing wrong was it was incredibly cold in the theater and the guy running the sound board kept falling asleep. He almost fell out of his chair 3 times."
    • "always a favorite. Where did get the slingshot?" [Amazon.com. Price $13. Laughter when I brought it out...Priceless]
    • "This session alone makes the fee worthwhile. And no I didn't just say that because those are the exact words Mark opened with. ;-)"
   
Mariano Gomez and I talked about this at Convergence this year. None of us tune our presentations to get good ratings. Frankly, when 100 people are giving either of us a 3.9/4.0 (97.5%) rating I'm not sure how make it better. There is a point at which you can't get 100 people to agree on anything and  I'm thrilled with being in the high 90's. We simply want to deliver a presentation that is interesting and valuable. Between the Mariano/David combination and my efforts we own 5 out of the top 10 sessions this year so clearly something is working.

I want to end with a huge a thank you to everyone who attended one of my sessions. By simply being there you make me forget the long nights of building presentations and the stupid feeling I get when practicing to the wall. Your comments, tweets and evaluations are just the icing on the cake. If you didn’t make this year, please join us in 2013 in New Orleans.

I'm not sure how to top the slingshot next year. I'm not sure that I'm going to try. Maybe I'll do something like this:

Convergence 2012 Wrap Up

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.

Monday At Convergence 2012

We had a great Monday at Convergence 2012. I had the privilege to be a part of the GP General Session and we got lots of positive feedback on the demos via Twitter. If you missed it we showed off Business Analyzer on a Windows Phone and Windows 8 Tables PC along with the GP 2013 web client and some great CRM/Business Analyzer analytics that are available today.

I’ll post a link to the video if it goes up.

Microsoft announced that the next version of GP will be Dynamics GP 2013 due in calendar Q4 of 2012.

This is not just a web client release, there are more than 150 new features including mass depreciation undo.

I.B.I.S. gave away a pile of Microsoft Dynamics GP Cookbooks and I happily signed them all. At one point the line for the books was longer than the line for the bar. We’re calling that a Convergence record.

I also got lots of great feedback on 50 Ways to Close the Month Faster and the Worst Mistakes presentations from DayOne

While I had nothing to do with this interesting trend, I’m fully in favor of it going viral:

You can throw a rock around here without hitting an MVP so it’s been a lot of fun. Today is full of sessions. If you’re attending come up and say hi!

Are you David Musgrave?

Funny already from Convergence. Are you David Musgrave?

Interactive Convergence 2012 Map

This interactive map for Convergence is pretty sweet. For example, click on I.B.I.S. on the left and the right side map will zoom in to our booth location right across from the big Dynamics GP Support area. Make sure to come by and say hi.

#Conv12

Microsoft Convergence 2012 Houston - Getting There - Developing for Dynamics GP

David Musgrave has safely arrived in Houston. Checkout Microsoft Convergence 2012 Houston - Getting There to find out more about the trip to Australia. #Conv12

Come Visit Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Support at Convergence 2012 - Microsoft Dynamics GP Support Blog

Terry Heley invites you to Come Visit Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Support at Convergence 2012

I agree. Go visit the support team.

Last Minute Convergence 2012 Advice for Microsoft Dynamics GP Attendees | MSDynamicsWorld.com

Over at MSDynamicsWorld.com I’ve got some Last Minute Convergence 2012 Advice for Microsoft Dynamics GP Attendees.

Check it out before you go. Also make sure that you grab your connection to the very cool Convergence Mobile app. Hit up http://m.microsoft.com/convergence to manage your Convergence schedule on the go.

Free Dynamics GP Books?! | DynamicsCare

Remember, at Convergence 2012 you can get Free Dynamics GP Books?! including the Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Cookbook and the Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Reporting book.

Checkout the DynamicsCare link Free Dynamics GP Books?! for details.

How to Best Prepare for Attending Convergence - Microsoft Dynamics Convergence

I.B.I.S. CEO Andy Vabulas shows How to Best Prepare for Attending Convergence - Microsoft Dynamics Convergence

Convergence 2012 and Beyond: Where is Microsoft Taking Its Dynamics Business? | MSDynamicsWorld.com

MSDynamicsWorld.com has a nice look at Convergence 2012 and Beyond: Where is Microsoft Taking Its Dynamics Business? ahead of the conference.

Book Signing at Convergence 2012!

Monday night brings an Expo reception at Convergence 2012 and opportunity for you to get free, signed Dynamics GP books.

I.B.I.S. is doing a book signing and giving away a pile of FREE copies of the Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Cookbook. I’ll be there signing books for those who would like a signed copy.

We’re also giving away signed copies of Chris Liley and David Duncan’s Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Reporting book.

Based on past demand, you’ll want to get there early. These may go very fast.

A Behind the Scenes Look at Convergence Content - Microsoft Dynamics Convergence

From the Microsoft Convergence team comes A Behind the Scenes Look at Convergence Content