Microsoft Dynamics NAV Partner Conference - Directions Recap

The past six weeks have been a whirlwind. It started with NAV TechDays in Antwerp, followed by NAVUG in Seattle, and concluded with the Dynamics NAV Partner Conference, Directions in Phoenix. As hard as it’s been recovering from a different time zone every week for the past six weeks I came away from each of these conferences completely energized about Microsoft Dynamics NAV and the community of companies, partners and ISVs that use and support the product. The Directions conference was a particular highlight since we broke the previous attendance record and had 619 registered attendees at the conference. In addition, we sold out all of the available sponsorships and almost hit our maximum capacity at the venue, the Arizona Biltmore.

We packed in as much technical content as we possibly could around Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 and ran nonstop from breakfast until bedtime. Quite a few people did not stop there and kept the conference going at the fire pit until the early hours of the morning. We also had some excellent keynotes from Paul White and Erik Tidén from Microsoft, Dennis Snow who was the former head of the Disney Leadership Institute, and Mike Robbins who played baseball for Stanford, was drafted by the Royals, and now consults with companies around the world. This year we had roving videographers, which captured some of the lighter moments of the conference, which I am glad I can share with all of you who did not make it to the conference. Here are the highlights from the Golf Day http://bit.ly/TgzhdS, Expo Night http://bit.ly/S5vdew, and the Partner Celebration http://bit.ly/VXUWaz. We also had a chance to honor the three finalists for the Directions 2012 Innovation Award. The three finalists each created brief YouTube videos to highlight their submissions as well as posted the code for each of their solutions on Mibuso and CodePlex. The three finalists are Bruce Bender from iCepts, John Collins from Western Computer, and Michael Heydasch and Suresh Kulla from ArcherPoint. Below are the links to the YouTube videos and the code.

Even though Michael and Suresh won the Innovation Award for this year’s submission, the real winners are the entire community of NAV End Users, Partners, and ISVs who can build on what Bruce, John, Michael, and Suresh have done. I cannot wait to see next year’s submissions and I hope that developer’s around the globe use the Directions Innovation award as a place to show off the great things they can do with Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

So now that Directions 2012 has concluded were starting the planning process for Directions 2013 in Nashville. It is going to be hard to top this year’s event but believe me we are going to try.

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