Convergence 2009 wrap up

Had a great time in New Orleans. Fun to be with our customers and other Dynamics people. Met some people that follow this blog. I guess I'm not writing totally into space. Thanks Chris for seeking me out. Fun to meet people face to face.

Here are a few blogs about convergence to reference before I get to my wrap up.

• Mark Polino - I went to Marks second session and it was fun to hear all the oh and aw's on the 50 tips. Heard a lot of good comments from all the people in the crowd I was sitting around. Great tips as a whole.
• FRx buzz- I wasn't too worked up about the FRx announcement at Convergence. I seem to remember hearing FRx was going away 2 convergences ago and was shocked then but have gotten over the whole drama it seems to spread everytime MBS decides to go a new direction for a month or two only to back track and decide something else. They have announced the plans for FRx and it's detailed pretty good in this blog. However, I still think there are a lot of things still to be worked out. In either case, FRx will still be supported for many years for existing Dynamics customers. New customers will probably be the guinea pigs as they won't have the option to use FRx but will have to purchase Management Reporter. Either way you're looking at a time line of several years before FRx completely goes away.

Checked out GP 11 a bit. Hard to get too worked up about a product that is still a year from being released. They say Q2 of next year for a release date but would guess they are padding the date in the hopes to release it next April for Convergence or shortly there after.

Convergences has been announced for 2010 in Alanta, April 25 – 28, 2010. A month later than usual. I like the move as March is always a tough month to be away. Could be also tied to give MBS another month to get the 11.0 release of GP ready for Convergence. Just my own guessing.

Dug further into the invoice, PO's, etc. to word thing for 11.0. The more I asked questions the more I realized that it's a mystery to most. Some MBS tech guys I hit up said it was the first they'd seen of it. Mark Polino suggests it's still going to be report writer as the underlying tool. If I had to make any guesses (probably biased as to what I thought was going to happen in the past) is that report writing will eventually move to SQL Server Reporting Services. Nothing to really get worked up about until more details are released. Let me know anyone has any insider information as would love to get the scoop.

Many of the session PowerPoint decks are on the Convergence website now. Looks like you have to have a login and password to get there.

Overall New Orleans was a nice venue. Don't think I'd take up residence on Bourbon Street but it was an experience to remember. The term Accountants Gone Wild came to mind a time or two but think MOST people behaved themselves. ha.