The countdown to Microsoft Convergence 2013 is only three weeks away and to say that I am a little excited is a major understatement! As for my expectations…well the saying goes ‘all good things come in threes;’ well this is my first blog, my first international show for Postcode Anywhere and my first time visiting New Orleans. The Crescent City is universally considered one of the top three culinary destinations in the world, thanks to its famous Creole cuisine, and my taste buds are especially looking forward to my first Po-Boy!
Convergence 2013 promises to be the biggest and most exciting yet, with some amazing speakers such as Kofi Annan, Former Secretary-General, United Nations and Kirill Tatarinov, President, Microsoft Business Solutions Division who will open the show. It’s predicted that retail will be a central theme to the talks and I am particularly interested to find out what role Microsoft Dynamics will play in this new world of ecommerce.
New Orleans is preparing itself to be barraged by over 11,000 industry experts, partners and customers all eager to see Microsoft’s directions, enhance product skills whilst exploring new and existing solutions all focused around the Microsoft Dynamics product lines. Convergence will be a great chance to learn at first-hand from the experts about how to improve your business and make these Microsoft products even more valuable. I’ve even heard rumours of a Skype bar – so there will be no excuse for not updating the rest of my colleagues with all this information. But perhaps more importantly, it’s the perfect opportunity to meet with customers, put names to faces, and of course build new relationships.
For us, it’s always important to meet up with our end user customers face to face. Since we go to market through a channel, Convergence provides us with great opportunity to meet our end customers directly. By meeting our customers we can understand more about what they need, and which functionality to prioritise for product development.
We’re all very excited to be exhibiting as a Microsoft Gold Partner for the very first time (come and visit us at booth #455!), and showcasing our new Capture+ technology within Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Now almost a year old, the technology expands our coverage to 240 counties and makes searching for addresses as simple as searching on Bing; just start typing an address and the results will filter down to a single address in a matter of keystrokes. No more typing blisters!
I’ll be working extremely hard during the day but equally as hard in the evening as New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz so I’ll be taking my dancing shoes for the evening events. (I’m hoping my MD Guy will be up for the dance-off challenge?!) We have already signed up to several parties including; Randy & Andy’s Convergence Bash, Convergence Carnival and The Spot to name a few, but if any attendees or existing partners of ours have any functions that they are going to, feel free to drop me a line. It is a shame we will not be visiting during the Mardi Gras parade. I’ll just have to save my coloured beads until my next visit!
I have a feeling that I will leave the wonderful city of New Orleans utterly exhausted. Most importantly, I will have a list of new contacts and friends to add to my Outlook upon returning to the office. It’s certainly going to be an event to remember in more ways than one!
