8700+ people came together for the 11th Annual Convergence 2007 in San Diego, CA. The largest gathering of the Microsoft Dynamics Community in history! Congratulations are definitely in order to the entire event team as they did an amazing job on this year’s event; it honestly was the best Convergence I can remember. Personally this was my 9th Convergence and it was a great opportunity learn and reconnect with partners and customers I have met in the past, as well as meet new ones. This year was no exception. I really cannot remember a year in which there were so many first time attendees. What a great opportunity we have to continue to grow our community.
The launch of the Finance Community has received good coverage from online news sources and bloggers, most of which have been very positive. We are excited to have nearly 300 users signed up and registered already. I know we have the savviest and most passionate customers and partners, and I personally hope you all prove those skeptics wrong that think business solutions customers won’t want to network. The partners, customers, and MVPs that I have talked to certainly think we are on the right track and think it is much overdue. The biggest complaint we have received so far is that there is only a Finance community. Don’t worry there are certainly more RoleTailored communities coming.
We are really excited to get the Networking Tools out as we feel it will be a great opportunity to continue the learning and sharing that occurs at Convergence. We will also be working on making it easy to interact with the site via Action Panes similar to the experience you have (or will have) within our shipping solutions. We are also excited to have partners signed up to provide content, the first of which is The Partner Channel. The Partner Channel magazine has wonderful articles, many of which come from former Microsoft and Great Plains employees. If you haven’t had a chance to see one of their magazines you will soon see the content here.
If you have any other ideas feel free to drop us a line via the feedback links available throughout the Finance community web site. Additionally, if you have any features or elements you think we have missed give us those as well, or just leave your comments here.