Reporting from Directions 2006

This Blog Article was brought forward from my old blog

Starting

First thing to say is: My appologies for not reporting on a daily bases. Directions is way different from TechEd and much busier for me.

I have also had troubles getting online with my laptop, so I had difficulties reading my email and even listending to my voicemail. My appologies for that also.

About me

For those of you who do not know; my life turned kind of upside down the last couple of months. It was about 6 months ago I got an email saing: You have been rewarded MVP. About a week later, an email came asking for help at TechEd by Microsoft as a MVP. I figured since a MVP award only lasts for 12 months it would be wise to go, since it might be my only chance.

At TechEd I met David and Karen Studebaker from Liberty Grove Software, they have been in the Navision channel for ages. They are serving the US partners with their expertise, especialy doing Upgrades, Training, Development and Consultancy. We were talking about a lot of things and one of those was my intention of starting my own business helping partners.

I started my own business about 4 weeks ago and I joined Liberty Grove as an European Associate. It is a company serving partners and customers helping them implementing and working with Navision. David and Karen were a big help for me profiling myself, they were also the ones inviting me to come to Directions in Atlanta. Please note therefor that visiting Directions was not part of the MVP program.

About Directions

Directions is an event by Microsoft NAV Partners for Microsoft NAV Partners leaning new things about NAV [5.0/5.1] and meeting each other and learning about each others stengths.

About 5.0 and 5.1

I think there is no need in discussing the delay of the new client being now the 5.1 client instead of the 5.0 release. At directions we have had a lot of discussion about this, but I personaly I do not think this is any suprise. I have not had access to the internet for a couple of days but I think there has been lots of discussion about this going on online.

The delay; This is not a suprise to me, unfortunately. Personaly I ‘d rather have a good release than a forced one. Some of you might now that I was able to play around with the new client for half a day at TechEd Boston. I did not have the same pleasure today but what I did see were the huge improvements they have made since June this year.

I have very much confidence in the 5.1 team in to delivering a great release, looking at the improvements they have made since june; imagine them having a full year to finish the product. I have met some of the people working on the product directly and they are so entousiastict about it.

Details about where the discussion went is just not a thing I want to mention since this was not a open event like TechEd.

Progress

Just as an example: At TechEd I missed the Lookupforms, because they have these nice dropdown lists, but you cannot filter on those. I was happy to see here that using a Lookupform had become an option.

Wrapping up

When writing this I am waiting for my airplane to leave for Germany, my in-between stop for Amsterdam.

Nice to know

What I also would like to mention is that my reports from TechEd were read by the Senior Product Manager of Navision in Denmark which I think is very good to know for our newsgroups/forums. I won’t mention is name to avoid him being swamped with emails.

Next

Next up for me will be Convergence Munich and TechEd Barcelona. Both a lot closer for me and without the jetlag wich will probably kill me the next couple of days.

Personal Note

I would like to thank David and Karen Studebaker for inviting be. As mentioned I will be their european associate.

One of the best things about Directions was to meet al the great partners implemening the NAV product in the US.

SQL

For my SQL performance tuning in The Netherlands and Belgium I found a  partner in SQL Perform by Hynek Muhlbacher.

Best regards,

Marije Brummel