My D365/AXUG Summit Phoenix Personal Perspective

Summit in Phoenix is coming up (FYI early bird registration ends June 28th, use discount code PRPEBECS) and I just wanted to share some personal perspective on this one as I’ve talked to a lot of customers who are weighing their options on attending or not. When comparing this to any other events, the first thing to remember is that this is by users for users. The content is critically thought about as to ‘what will be the biggest bang for the buck for the userbase’ instead of ‘what is the latest and shiniest thing we can sell this crowd today’. The content is huge – there are hundreds of sessions to go to and any kind of SME/key user at a business will truly get content tailored toward them. A lot of other conferences out there tend to tailor their content toward the newest functions/features only with more of a marketing slant to the sessions. Keep in mind that a majority of the content is delivered by either experts – either partners who implement this all the time and have a vast experience you can benefit from as a user; Microsoft R&D who have an entire track to highlight their new functionality and answer deep questions; and MVPs who have proven that they are masters of their domain and share this with the community. Microsoft has a large presence here as they have a track, but also a support booth in the Expo to help customers with issues as well as a town hall session that explains the roadmap. So you truly get the best of all perspectives of experts here – customers, partners and Microsoft. The sheer volume of customers that come to Summit also provides a unique opportunity to network and share that I have yet to see at any other conference out there. Long story short – if you aren’t coming to Summit, you are definitely missing out.