#GPUGSummit 2015 – Day 1 – Part 1 of 2

Day 1 of the conference was finally here and I had three sessions to present including one with a brand new co-presenter. While this was officially the first day, it really felt like day three as I had already had two full days.

Breakfast in the meal hall was fairly quick affair. It is an amazing feat to be able cater for such a large group. There was even a table marked for GPUG members from Australia, which happened to be the first table in the meal hall. You will have to excuse Beat and Thomas who “crashed” the table to sit with me.

Breakfast in the Meal Hall

After breakfast we all headed to the Opening Session in Hall 3. As we walked into the hall we were treated to a huge photo of Frank Heslin with quote of his about the GPUG Community on the massive screen (using 4 projectors).

Opening Session

The session was packed, I was only able to capture about half of the hall in a photo, but imagine the other half being just as full.

The session has full to capacity as it included all four user groups

The session started with Andy Hafer, CEO of Dynamic Communities, welcoming us to Reno….

Andy Hafer welcomes the User Groups to Reno

Andy and Missy Heilman invite the User Group Leaders on stage

Acknowledging the conference sponsors takes an unusual turn

Andy introduces our guest keynote speaker, George Kourounis, host of Angry Planet

George talks to us about controlling fear while he is going to all kinds of dangerous locations

George (http://www.furiousearth.com/) showed us a video that explains what a day at the office was like for him.

GPUG Summit 2015 in Reno – Opening Session Keynote (direct link)

 

Epic Volcano Video (direct link)

 

World’s best selfie from the edge of the lava lake inside Marum volcano on Ambrym Island, Vanuatu

The opening session finished with a Q & A session with George and Andy

After the opening session, Mariano Gomez and I had our first breakout session in which we discussed Service Based Architecture and App technology and showed how you can call web services to retrieve data from your Microsoft Dynamics GP system. This was an overview that set a theme for a number of app related sessions.

TOT01 – Calling all Geeks! Find out how Apps work with Dynamics GP

Our second breakout session followed on from the first with demonstrations of how different companies had used App technology. It was originally planned to be a competition to decide on who had created the best app, but we did not get enough apps to show. Maybe, next year….

So, instead we used the session to highlight examples of apps created by a couple of partners. Thomas Garcia demoed a solution for handling transaction approvals from Icon Business Consulting. This solution does not use the GP 2015 Web Services, but that means that it can work with all supported versions of Dynamics GP. Chris Hanson (not Martin Olsen as shown on the slide deck) from eOne Solutions demoed an end to end solution that used a variety of technologies including their Service Builder and Smart Connect products.

TOT02 – GPUG APP-Off!

David and Mariano with the “winners” of the GP App Off: Thomas Garcia and Chris Hanson

After the sessions, I headed over the to Mekorma Hub. My plan was to spend as much time as possible between sessions at the hub so that I was available if anyone had questions on my GP Power Tools (GPPT) and Batch Posting Service Toolkit (BPST) which are distributed and supported by Mekorma. On the way, I caught up with some of the Microsoft Dynamics GP Product Management team from Fargo.

Jodi Christiansen, Chad Sogge, Jennifer Ranz and Daryl Anderson

Mekorma Hub: Mariano Gomez, Ora Goldman, Jay Manley, Angel Blum

After having lunch with Mekorma team, I rushed down to the convention center to catch the end of the GPUG Welcome and Dynamics IDOL general session. I walked in just when Bob McAdam was demonstrating Field Level Security and giving me credit for developing it… perfect timing. Congratulations to Shawn Dorward for beating out Bob McAdam and Michelle Kocher to win the Dynamics IDOL title for 2015.

I caught up with Beat Bucher and we headed back to the Atlantis and the Mekorma Hub. Beat and I then went to the presenter’s preparation room to prepare for the next session. Normally Mariano Gomez co-presents with me, but Mariano had been double booked as he also had a session of his own in the same timeslot. Beat has always been an enthusiastic supporter and user of the Support Debugging Tool and now GP Power Tools and so it made sense to ask him to present the topic with me. We just spent a little time together to make sure he was happy with the session plan and also we made a few adjustments as the session was 90 minutes rather than the usual 60 minutes. This allowed us to demonstrate some of the new features only available in GP Power Tools.

TOT03 – Why is the Support Debugging Tool/GP Power Tools so Amazing?

The session was full and was a lot of fun. We brought back the question “Can GP Power Tools help?” and the response “Yes it can!”. It was funny as even when the question was not asked correctly or sometimes forgotten entirely, the audience still yelled out “Yes it can!”. Thanks to the attendees for helping make the session awesome, hopefully you learnt a few reasons why GP Power Tools is so amazing. 🙂

Beat Bucher did a great job presenting for our first time together

That completed the work part of the day for me. Three of the seven sessions I was involved in were completed.

David

This article was originally posted on http://www.winthropdc.com/blog.