Microsoft MVP Global Summit 2013 November: Getting Here


Sunday, November 17

This week finds me in the beautiful city of Seattle, Washington, partaking in my first Microsoft MVP Global Summit The MVP Global Summit is a multi-day event that is hosted in Bellevue and at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. With a large catalog of technical sessions and a variety of networking opportunities, the MVP Global Summit enables MVPs to connect with other MVPs, build relationships with Microsoft product managers, and provide feedback on Microsoft products and technologies.

My day started with a fairly quiet travel between the cities of Atlanta, GA and Seattle, WA. Arriving into Seattle-Tacoma International Airport was its usual self around this time of the year: cloudy, cold, and misty.

View of the Port of Seattle
After landing, I grabbed a cab that would take me straight to the Hilton Bellevue hotel, where registration was a breeze. Up I went to my room to change into some jeans and headed over to the Bellevue Hyatt Regency Hotel to register for the Summit. It was almost 5:00 PM (local time) when I arrived at the Hyatt where I met up with Microsoft Dynamics GP MVPs Belinda Allen and Jivtesh Singh.

Following registration, Jivtesh, Belinda, and I directed our attention to the MVP Showcase, an expo-style event on Sunday afternoon that showcases the work of a select group of MVPs and their impact on technical communities around the world, and being held in the Grand Ballroom.

MVP Showcase 
It was time to socialize and enjoy the show (and the appetizers and free drinks!). While visiting the booths, we came across Dynamics AX MVP André Arnaud de Calavon, who was also taking in some of the information around the always interesting Microsoft Technical Communities and its initiatives to build a solid network for community leaders and speakers.


Dynamics GP MVPs Jivtesh Singh (Australia) and Belinda Allen (USA),
Dynamics AX MVP André Arnaud de Calavon (Netherlands)
Wondering around the Showcase, we were joined by Microsoft Dynamics GP MVP John Lowther. John and I had been exchanging emails and text messages prior to our arrival into town, trying to round up the Dynamics GP MVP troops.

MVP Belinda Allen and I
After walking around for a bit, John and I stopped at the Microsoft Office product team booth to participate in a couple of games. The first game was to assemble a clear plastic briefcase with the Microsoft Office Project logo on the front. The winner of this challenge would take home a very cool Office bag. Suffice to say, neither John or I won and ended up with some extra cuts on our hands and fingers as a result.

We then moved on to a Jeopardy style game where we would spin a roulette with various Office product lines and answer a question based on the outcome on the roulette. Funny to see so many non-Office MVPs striking out on these "trivia" questions.

Who wants to play?

Who's next?
It was time for dinner. With Belinda having plans to dine with her husband and Jivtesh, John and I decided to head over to the west side of town, into Seattle's Belltown for some sushi at Umi Sake House. Umi is a sophisticated twist on the Japanese Izakaya style of informal eating and drinking. The design of the restaurant mirrors a Japanese country house, including a “front” and “back” porch. This restaurant ranks consistently in the Top 10 list of best sushi restaurants in the Seattle area.

Back at the hotel, it was time to check on the goodies collected so far. It is always good to plan some extra space in the suitcase to take home all the stuff you collect at these events.

Summit jacket, geek shirt, and Duet for Microsoft Office and SAP hat

MVP water bottle, Microsoft Surface Touch Cover, and Microsoft Office Project clear briefcase
Well, tomorrow is a jam-pack day fill of sessions. While my non-disclosure agreement (NDA) prevents me from talking about the content of the sessions, I will try to bring some insight into the experience as a whole.
Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DBMS: 12 Microsoft Dynamics GP: 0 error when updating to Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 R2

Image
Hello all! It's been quite a while since I've actually written anything of remote interest to anyone who follows my blog, but at the same time, you will be pleased to know that I've been quite busy in the consulting front, with upgrades, server migrations, complex multi-instance postings involving 10's of thousands of transactions, wrapping up some Field Service Automation projects, and the list goes on and on. This time around I want to bring to the forefront, an issue I encountered updating  from Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 SP2 to Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 R2 plus the latest service pack. Background My client requested a server migration to a new environment where they wanted to deploy Dynamics GP 2013 R2 web client (plus the latest service pack) and upgrade their relational database management system to Microsoft SQL Server 2014. This is something I'm absolutely comfortable with (for the most part) given also that my client was sitting at Microsoft Dynamics...
Read more

Do I have to use those "Z-" currency IDs in GP?

Image
I know this seems like a trivia question, but recently I have come across a number of clients who have been using Microsoft Dynamics GP for a number of years and have been told by their former partners that they *must* use the predefined currency IDs created after adding the sample company, with no real explanation to support these claims. Case in point, my new client in Saudi Arabia, has been struggling for years to understand why they were told to prefix all currency IDs with the "Z-". So they went ahead and setup "Z-SR" for the Saudi Real. If you are familiar with Microsoft Dynamics GP and the sample company, Fabrikam, you may have noticed by now that after adding the sample company (which is not a requirement by any means), you will get a number of predefined currencies such as Z-US$ (US Dollars), Z-UK (British Pounds), Z-C$ (Canadian Dollars), Z-AUD (Australian Dollars), and so forth, accompanied by a number of exchange rate tables. If you are not familiar wi...
Read more

Microsoft Dynamics GP Scrolling Windows and Line Sequence Numbers

Image
I thought I would write about something meaningless that no one really thinks about. However, I realized that this is a compelling topic since it makes for some interesting discussion around the ability to insert line items withinin most transaction scrolling windows. Let’s take some time to understand where Line Sequence Numbers come from. A Line Sequence Number is auto generated by Dynamics GP and uses a seed value of 16,384 as a basis for the first line. Each subsequent line in the scrolling window is incremented by this number, so line number 2 would have a Line Sequence Number value of 32,768, line number 3 would have Line Sequence Number Value of 49,152, and so on. Since most GP transaction entry scrolling windows allow inserting rows in between line items, the newly inserted Line Sequence Number value is calculated as an average between the previous and the next line item sequences, i.e., if you were to insert an item in between row 1 and row 2 in the scrolling window -- keep in...
Read more