I’m ashamed. I call myself a Microsoft Dynamics NAV blogger .. and I barely have time for it. :(. Anyway .. I finally put all the work aside .. and made time for it.
NAV TechDays 2014 is already over for quite some time .. already two weeks! After each NAV TechDays conference, I tell myself “this can’t be beaten” .. “better then this is not possible”. And each year, Luc Van Dyck (Mr. MiBuSo himself) seems to be able to do just that! Just after the conference, I twittered it was the perfect conference. Now, two weeks later .. I still stand behind that. Great sessions, great speakers, perfect infrastructure, .. all you need to have a perfect conference.
If you have read my previous blog on NAV TechDays 2013, and then try to realize that this one was even better .. then you should kind of realize that everything was beyond perfect, and everyone that was not there, was very wrong :-).
Pre Conference Day
Apparently, Luc listens. Last year, for the first time, there was a day before the conference, where people could subscribe and follow some kind of course. Last year, it was 50 people in one course .. and that was a bit too much. This year, there were 10 courses of 15 people. That made much more sense .. the “teachers” could give more personal attention to the attendees. And in stead of 3 topics, there were 10:
- Data Visualization Techniques in RDLC, by Steven Renders
- Document Reports Training, by Claus Lundstrom
- Starting With .NET Interoperability, by Arend-Jan Kauffman
- .NET Interoperability Advanced, by Vjekoslav Babic
- Development Best Practices for creating Partner Ready Software, by Mark Brummel, Gary Winter and Soren Klemmensen
- NAV ALM using Team Foundation Server, by Luc van Vugt
- Workingwith Powershell and Microsoft Dynamics NAV, by Eric Wauters – me 🙂
- Installing and Configuring SQL Server for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, by Alain Krikilion
- Troubleshooting essentials for SQL Server and Dynamics NAV, by Jörg Stryk
- Using the Mergetool for upgrades and software release, by Per Mogensen
Ten courses, all fully booked with 15 people per course. I didn’t see any results of the reviews (yet) .. I do hope the attendies from my PowerShell-course (and of course also the others ;-)) did enjoy the day and learned something new. As a teacher, I can only say I enjoyed doing it!
The sessions
If you see a group like this:
You can only conclude .. these session are going to rock! This year, I didn’t have a booth for iFacto ReVision or anything .. so I finally had the time to enjoy as many sessions as possible. And I did: both I attended .. and above most .. I enjoyed. And what struck me (and made me very nervouse) .. the quality of the speakers was more then OK. Let’s face it .. we’re developers. And developers are not used to stand in front of a few hunderd people. Then again, I guess it’s passion. And when you’re passioned about something, you don’t mind, you just do it! This group of speakers clearly shared the passion for Microsoft Dynamics NAV..
The PRS Session: How To Write Repeatable Software
This year, I didn’t have a part in the PRS Session. That was intentional. I had so much work before NAVTechDays (still a blog to write about that …) on top of the preparation of the Pre Conference day and my own PowerShell session .. It would just have been too much.
But I was not missed at all. They did however need 2 people to replace me 🙂 (joke…). No, really. There was lots of attention during, and also after the session, like you can see here:
Lots of people gathered around the presentation desk to ask questions and such .. . This was really nice to see that it gets the attention it deserves. Knowing, following, .. design patterns is the way forward to create repeatable software. It’s just the way it is…
My Session: Looking at NAV the PowerShell way…
The first time you’re standing in before of a screen like this…
.. you’re baffled .. with a little bit of silence. You immediately know .. ok .. possibly .. this is going to be for a LOT of people. And there were! Lots of people. As far I could see, the room was full .. which meant about 400 people. This means only one thing: people start to be interested in PowerShell. And I can only agree to that. Whether we like it or not, we – as technical NAV people – are going to be more and more involved with PowerShell from now on. And people seem to be aware of it. My Pre Conference course was full pretty quick .. and this session as well. This is a good thing .. but of course .. it plays a bit with your nerves. I haven’t received any reviews from my session either, but I did have some personal feedback, and people seemed to have enjoyed the session, and even liked it :-). One person even said it was the most “mindblowing” he had seen in the entire conference. Well .. feedback like that just makes your day, right? 🙂
I have only one task to do: that is to blog my examples and scrips that I used. Now, I don’t want to just put it up here. I do want to explain the bits and bytes a little .. uhm .. bit. So have some patience, let me work on it .. and soon you’ll have the scripts, the objects, .. and all that I promised.
Downloads
You can download all the sessions already from mibuso. Just go to this location, and you’re good to go. Also my session is there to download :-). Don’t hold yourself back! 🙂
Some impressions
Like last year, let’s share some impressions. I’m so proud to have been part of this conference. As always, it was an honor to present at the best NAV conference there is!
First of all, like last year, there is a cool video about the conference, by Kai Kowalewski. There is even quite a big piece of my session in it :-). Weird to see yourself like that :-):
And, of course, you can see some pictures of the conference on the conference website. But let me just share a few here on my blog:
An insane amount of countries present at the conference:
Vjeko doing strange stuff:
Soren was not big enough:
Part of the Design Patterns Team
The complete PRS team
A selfie … during bogdana’s session 😉
A tweet from my session (if you want some explanation, I encourage you to download the recording :-)) – yes, it’s me in the bottom left corner
OK, that was it .. There are only bad reasons not to come to NAV TechDays. So, see you next year!
Now .. back to business!
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