Microsoft reIMAGINE 2016 - Day 3

Microsoft reIMAGINE 2016 hosted by Dynamic Communities is now over, but I did not want to let this week go by without giving you an account of my experiences at the conference, which sure brought a lot of surprises to all the partners in attendance.

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Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Day 2 had us doing a bunch of bar hopping throughout Downtown Fargo, but I cannot minimize the amount of learning opportunities going on throughout Microsoft Campus and the Hilton Garden hotel. Today would mark the last day David and I would be presenting and it couldn't be on a better topic: Leveraging GP Power Tools. As is customary, our session was standing room only.

Leveraging GP Power Tools

Because of the nature of the audience and the type of event we were presenting at, this session was fairly technical in nature, highlighting some of the GP Power Tools capabilities geared towards system administrators and software developers alike. The key to keep in mind here is that GP Power Tools is now distributed by Mekorma, Inc. worldwide. If you currently own the Support Debugging Tool, please note that it is no longer supported by Microsoft or Winthrop Development Consultants and that you must upgrade to GP Power Tools.

Finalizing our session, David and I would quickly pack our bags, grab some box lunch, and prepare for the Microsoft Collaborative Development meeting, or Collab Dev for short. This meeting is held annually and is a private meeting where ISVs can listen in on product direction and the nuances behind efforts to improve product time to market. In return, Microsoft receives feedback on the pains being experienced by developers at large and strategies to mitigate those pains, in the form of suggestions to improve the tools used by the Dynamics GP development community.

Microsoft Collaborative Development meeting: Brian Roney listens to ISVs concerns

As the content of this meeting is under Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA), I cannot really describe the topics covered or the strategies addressed. Following the meeting, David and I decided to corner Brian Roney and Chad Sogge to ask for some improvements to the Dexterity development system. Hopefully, some of our suggestions made it to the list of new Dexterity features.

After the Collab Dev meeting, David and I returned to the Hilton Garden, where Mekorma would be hosting a partner learning session and presenting our new product, Muti-Batch Management (MMM). MMM is a really cool piece of software that allows companies to create profiles to select and build check batches, and print and post checks and EFT transactions across multiple companies. The user only needs to setup a few rules and with the click of one button, MMM will automatically execute these processes, login into every company where they need to be completed, all without user intervention.

Mekorma's Partner Session

You can find out more about MMM here.

The Mekorma partner session also presented some of the capabilities of GP Power Tools and discuss pricing and implementation approach of all our products with partners.

Angel Blum presenting Mekorma Products

As usual, all good things must come to an end. The conference was officially over and some folks would begin to leave Fargo this same afternoon, weather permitting. I had a chance to catch up and say goodbye to some of my friends in the dining area of the Hilton Garden.

Rachael Brancich

David Musgrave and John Lowther

Linda Stone

Chris Dobkins

Mekorma would host a partner dinner at HuHot Mongolian Grill. The idea at this place is that you are in control of your own meal, which is stir fried by some young cooks right in front of your eyes, on a big round flat iron cast surface which rotates slowly. As the food rotates, you move along with it, and somehow, the cook figures out which one is yours and delivers your meal right at a pick up station. You then seat yourself and have at it.

Mekorma Partner Dinner

For this partner dinner, we had 33 people in attendance and were occupying around 5 big tables. Craig Clapman, Mekorma's president had the idea to borrow David's camera to take a group picture. On the way down from the wall dividing two sections of the restaurant, he managed to fall and damage David's camera.

For those of you not familiar with David's camera, this is the second replacement he's made while in Fargo. The first replacement was precisely at the 2015 reIMAGINE where he somehow managed to wipe out all the pictures on the camera, in addition to messing up the camera itself.

David was lucky enough to be able to find an exact camera the following day at a store in Fargo. It was the LAST ONE available of its kind.

Angel Blum

Before leaving, I managed to grab a picture with Angel from Mekorma. Ain't she a sweetheart?

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP