i visited amsterdam the first time in my life, it was also the first summit i joined. the event is quite well organized, but there are to less nibbles for coffee break. but this is not the point.

so what is the point? a bit surprisingly many sessions were a kind of a marketing show from and for ISVs and/or partners. this can be interesting, if someone has a special interest in the products of the ISV, for sales people, but it’s not really interesting for the public, for techies, for people who are interested in news about BC in general.

or … power bi is a quite interesting tool and it’s nice, that someone can make basic analysis reporting for BC data, but it’s not specific BC. what i saw, there was no session for “BC in the deep”, what are the features in detail, what can be done with BC and what not. there was only the starting session about BC, a very quick, facile overview, no news. the speaker spoke very quiet, a sleeping pill, so the first impession was not so good.

questions like “is a web based client a solution for everyone or not?” were not discussed, should have been. what about the current/future direction of BC, is it stable now or will we have extensions 3.0 in one year and every ISV has to update their addons? will customizations be stable with BC upgrades or not? these are important questions. there was no session about these topics and no tech session, especially a session about standard reporting in BC would have been interesting. the session about bio diesel was quite ok, it showed a successful BC project with quite complicated processes, which were handled as it should be. it was not really great, normal project work, but it showed, that BC projects can be done like NAV projects.

one exception: the last session i visited was the session of eva dupont, microsft team lead for help/documentation. one word: chapeau!
only 4 people visited the session, what a shame.
mrs. dupont told the history of nav/bc documentation from the beginning, what were the changes, what is now, how can partners/customers use and modify it for their own purposes. all presented with a humour, intelligence and competence of that kind, which are very, very rare. i was fascinated and excited. as always these kind of flowers are not cherished that way it should be.

at last, during one coffee break, i sat in the rest room with my coffee, thinking about whats going on here, suddenly a strange person came to me, sat down, and asked me why i sit here alone and do not talk to others and some more pushy questions. and this person was much too narrow too me. what the hell?! is that the american way to contact a strange person? this was very rude! i can’t stand that at all! we are here in europe, not in the states. this is not the manner how we contact strange persons here! for sure, that is one of the reasons, why the dynamics communities do not work in europe. first of all: keep distance!

so, that was it, this was also my last summit or that kind of event. that’s not that kind of events i like, it costs money, it’s time and power consuming. and in the end, not sure, what it brings. i will also reduce, maybe stop my community activities. spent over the last 5 years huge amount of my spare time, will do other things, which make more sense for me.