Mibuso Conference 2009: Overview

Yesterday, I attended the first Mibuso conference. I say "first", because I hope there will be many to follow. I was quite surprised how one man could organize such an event by his own… . Which man: this one. Luc Van Dyck:

Sorry, Luc, for the bad picture. Blame my iPhone ;°). Now, I must say, I had the impression that Kriki had something to do with it as well ;°). Hm. Let's see if I can find an iPhone-picture of Alain as well:

(did I already mention I got an iPhone? … the word you're looking for is … anywaayyyyy)

I don't know how many attendees exactly were there, but I know there were 131 registrants from 15 different countries. Now, how cool is that for an online community.

And Luc managed to make "something different" of it. He kicked off with a Keynote, which consisted of some history and statistics of "Mibuso" (presented by Luc and Kriki themselves :)) and … a drum session by "Drum Cafe". All attendees got a "Djembé" and were instructed by the drummers on stage which created one big drum session where everyone in the room was participating. Cool, really something else :).

Also, the sessions were "something else". The first session was about "Unified Communications". I don't know if you ever heard of it, but it's quite "hot" in the Microsoft-world. It all comes down to more efficient communication (telephone, chat, conference call, video conferencing, meetings, …) through one technology.. . You can read more about it here. We got demo's, explanation, possibilities, … all you could wish for. I doubt that it's going to be useful for Dynamics NAV customers (may be for the somewhat "bigger" customers), but it's definitely "sexy" :).

Second session: A technical session about NAV2009. And not by "janneke en mieke" (a flemish expression for saying that quite interesting people were presenting this session ;°) ): Michael Nielsen, Kim Ibfelt and Claus Lundstrom. Michael Nielsen is "Development Director" (if I remember correctly). He was with NAV from the very beginning (22 years ago ?). He was sitting behind the kitchen table doing the first peaces of code for an applications that was sold to Microsoft later on, and has (now) about 72000 implementations (I'm bad in numbers, so I hope I got them right). Kim Ibfelt has been working for Navision and later NAV for a long time as well, but I don't know how long. He presented the roadmap and the plans they have for NAV2009 … actually quite the same as you can read in the Statement of Directions (or my previous blog :)). Last one, Claus, who is responsible for the reporting side of NAV 2009, showed us what is possible with NAV 2009 reporting now, and what will be possible in the future release: SP1. There are some changes, which I will (try to) talk about in future blogposts. I will try to stick to the title, being a "Mibuso Conference Overview" ;°). Michael concluded the session with an overview of the history of Navision .. technically and architectural. And from the reactions I got afterwards, he really succeeded to impress the people by showing "what the future might bring to the product - again - technically". The "new" development environment, the versioning and the C# prototype really kicked in. Although, I doubt a little bit whether is going to be a good idea or not to go for C# … but also that is for another post ;°).

Last session was one of a very good speaker: Chad Hower. Known from "Kudzu". He talked about "Localization" … and some (many, actually) difficulties of translation you could face during localization. Quite amazing and impressive how cultural and language differences can influence the localization of your software.

After that: networking opportunities during a nice dinner: Mexican and Italian food, and wok. Very nice, very well prepared, … . And since we were in Belgium, and Belgium is known for the beer, Luc organized a "beer buffet". It's not difficult to believe that also this was quite a success amongst the foreigners .

Luc and Alain, you guys did a very nice job putting this together. I really enjoyed the mibusoconference and again … I hope that many will follow :-).

A few pictures I took with my iPhone (did I already mention I got an Iphone?):

From left to right: David Singleton, Alain Krikilion (kriki), Luc Van Dyck and Kamil Sacek (Kine) enjoying the waking dinner...

For some reasons, you always see the same men (not naming names, but I mean Roel and Arjan from Xolyd) around the women. Hey Mandy, how did you get to your hotel :-).

And always the same people enjoying the beer :-). Mark Brummel ;-)

For the top ten posters, Luc got caps with our names on … cool (but also a little bit geeky :)).

Me (no comments..)