GPUG Summit 2014 St. Louis - Day 1


Wednesday, October 15, 2014

After a jammed pack Academy Training day on the previous day, Summit Day 1 begins with a little stroll from my hotel down to the America's Center Convention Complex. On the way there, I cannot help but to snap a picture of the now very famous Runner Fountain at Kiener Plaza, which happened to be running a pink to red tone in support of the Cardinals.

The Runner Fountain at Kiener Plaza (in front of Jefferson National Expansion Memorial)
This is probably one of the most sought after shots for any photographer (which I'm not!), so why not.

The Runner Fountain in front of historic Old Court House and Gateway Arch
At the Convention Complex, the day opened with the keynote session where Andy Hafer and Hal Howard provided some great input into the growth of the Summit event over the years. Andy also welcomed the more than 47% of first time attendees to Summit and jumped into some of the key stats that made this the largest summit in the 10 years running.

Keynote Speech with Andy Hafer

Keynote with Andy Hafer and Hal Howard (Summit by the numbers)

It was time to turn the tides and on came funny man, motivational speaker, and self-proclaimed "attitude adjuster"Steve Rizzo, who started the day with a very cool outlook into his early childhood and key learnings from his career as a comedian. The highlight: "Feeling good is the fuel that drives motivation." Steve proposed achieving this by simply changing our early morning attitude. Focusing on the good things in life - as opposed to the non-essential and non-consequential - by getting "your shift together" makes all the difference.

Steve Rizzo
After the keynote, it was time for my first session of the Summit: Mariano's Toolbox Series: Integration Manager. This year, Kim thought it would be great to have a branded list of sessions that allowed me to showcase a few of my tips, tricks, and best practices around Microsoft Dynamics GP so, I went along!

Attendees to Mariano's Toolbox Series: Integration Manager session

My session had well over 50 attendees and showcased some of the key aspects of working with Integration Manager and how scripting can expand the out of the box capabilities - well, I believe I lost a few people here, but I think the audience was satisfied with the overall presentation.

Once my session concluded, I went over to the Ferrara Auditorium to attend the GPUG Summit General Session, MCed by Kim Peterson,

GPUG General Session
Kim welcomed premier sponsors Fastpath, Metaviewer, and Rockton Software on stage to ask them about their products and the value to the community. As is customary, Mark Rockwell certainly brought down the house with one of his now very popular product jingles.

Premier Sponsors: Fastpath, Metaviwer, and Rockton Software on stage
Then it was Microsoft's turn to showcase some of the upcoming features, roadmap, and vision surrounding the upcoming releases of Dynamics GP. Errol Schoenfish, Director of Product Management and Jeff Trossen, VP of Product Development presented some of the great features that will be released in the upcoming Microsoft Dynamics GP 2015, including but not limited to, extended workflow capabilities, the new service based architecture components, Business Analyzer for Android and iOS, and some of the employee self-serve capabilities. For more information on the upcoming GP 2015 features, take a look at the Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP blog.

Microsoft Dynamics GP Vision

After the General Session, it was time for my second session of the day: Mariano's Toolbox Series: Web Client Deployment. Again, this session was a real treat to those in attendance as only a couple of hands went up when asked if they had seen or work with the Dynamics GP web client. We got a chance to look at all the components, some technical implementation aspects, and definitely all related to infrastructure on premise and in the cloud.

Following my session, it was time to head back to the Expo and comingle with the ISV community.

2nd Day of Expo

By now, you are familiar with Rock-n-Rave at Summits and Convergence and this time it was no different. The venue: the Lucky's Dueling Piano Bar. However, still too much for me to go through so off I went to my hotel for a quiet night.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Intelligent Partnerships, LLC
http://www.intelligentpartnerships.com/

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