Directions EMEA 2014: Final Thoughts

Boy I’m busy :-/. Since the very minute I arrived back in Belgium from this convention, I have been working on going live with one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever done… . But that’s probably for another blogpost :-).

Directions EMEA…

It’s been a heavy convention for me. Not one minute of peace and rest. Many meetings, 3 sessions, and lots of people I wanted to talk. In between I lost my wallet, saw some police stations, got my wallet back from a beautiful Dutch girl … (had to mention that :-)).

The convention

There were a mindblowing 1100 people for the convention. I guess that’s a record!

This means: twice as much as we had in the US. It’s a clear indicator that tells you a lot on how much the NAV community has grown. The very positive thing for me about that was that most of the sessions were packed. Also the sessions with a “niche”-subject, like that very specific subject where usually not too many people are interested in but happens to be one of my special interests: PowerShell. I was pleasantly surprised that even that session was quite full. I guess I had about 100 people in that session.

Sure, like in the US, usually the Microsoft sessions were packed. But the good thing was that the rooms were not big enough for all people 🙂 so they HAD to come to my room ;-).

No, just kidding, I would never admit nor accept that that was the reason why my session had actually quite some people ;-)..

The MVP Track

I’m not going to revise my opinion there .. The MVP track is the shit (pardon my language)! Real life experience, by MVP’s, who have a nature to share as much as they can, with no bullshit (pardon again..), just say how it is .. or at least how they/we think it is. Sharing ideas, sharing experiences, .. sharing!

Having visited both Directions (US and EMEA) I was able to visit almost all MVP sessions .. and I even managed to attend a few Microsoft sessions. And you can clearly see that there has gone a lot of work into this release, and everybody is very proud of the outcome. You can feel it. And I do agree, NAV 2015 is the best release we ever got, with a strong focus on very important topics!

My Sessions

Like in the US, I had three sessions:

  • In total command with PowerShell
  • App is the new Role Center (together with Gary)
  • Mythbusters (together with all MVP’s)

I’m not the one that is going to evaluate his own session. The only thing to say is that i was more then satisfied. At least there were some people that confirmed it wasn’t a total waste of time for them ;-). By the way .. I promised to share some scripts .. I’m gonna .. in the next few posts. I have one PowerShell session to go at NAVTechDays, and I don’t want to share everything just yet :-).

Infrastructure

Well .. not bad, but I have had better :-). In a room of 200 people, there should always be a wireless microphone that you stick on your shirt. Not one you have to hold in your hands, and definitely not one that is fixed on a desk, while the desk is right in front of the screen. That was annoying, not only for the speaker, but also for the attendees.

But that was the only remark I had. The room and the sound was OK, there were two screens, so usually people could see the demo’s very well .. the chairs were very comfortable .. .

In one session, the sound and even screen completely god mixed up, having sound from another session, and the projection of yet another session. Luckily there was Dmitry that solved it in a very entertaining way :).

Poznan

May be it’s because of my wallet being lost .. but Poznan isn’t really in my top 10 most favorite cities I’ve ever visited. Then again, I was very pleasantly surprised of the people, the cheap and decent food, and the new kind of rum that I got to know there (nope, not a wodka .. not a fan of wodka whatsoever.. ).

That was it .. . Sorry to have wasted your time :-). Let’s make room for real content next time!


3.00 avg. rating (66% score) - 4 votes

Permanent link to this article: https://www.waldo.be/2014/10/21/directions-emea-2014-final-thoughts/

1 comment

1 ping

    • Dave Machanick on November 19, 2014 at 5:19 am
    • Reply

    Looks like there are double the committed NAV people in Europe vs USA. Plus you have NAV Tech days in Europe as well.
    Are the sessions better or are there more NAV people there or just better beer?

  1. […] Continue reading » […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.