ISV Talks Community Summit NA 2024 Recap with Bob McAdam and Carol Livingston

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Well, welcome to this episode of ISV Talks, and on this episode Bob McAdam have from Tasklet.
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Welcome, Bob.
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Thank you, Carol.
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It's great to be back here on the prestigious ISV Talks.
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Thank you so much for joining me today, and I know we just got back from Summit last week in San Antonio, texas, and so we thought it would be good just to do a recap of what we saw, what we heard, what we learned and also where it's going to be next year too.
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Yeah, it was a great time.
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San Antonio, if you've not been, is a really wonderful city.
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My Danish colleagues at Tasklin stayed at the Hyatt Regency, which is around the corner from the convention center, so I was over there a lot and the Riverwalk is right underneath that hotel, so lots of opportunities to advance my networking opportunities and have nice dinners with my Danish mates on the Riverwalk that week.
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It was really a fun time.
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And they all loved it.
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Oh, they hadn't been there before.
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So did you say that you all came in early because in Tampa, where your office is there.
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it was threat hurricanes I have two Danish colleagues that were supposed to fly to Tampa and we diverted them directly to San Antonio because of Hurricane Milton.
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We had the golf tournament with World Max and NetStock on that Saturday and I'm like, if I don't get out of here, if I don't leave early, I'm never going to get there Right, because when they close the Tampa airport the planes leave, and just because it reopens a few days later, it doesn't mean there's an airplane to take you somewhere.
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So I got a couple of standbys to Atlanta and then San Antonio and spent a few extra days in San Antonio with my mates that we sent over early from Denmark.
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So yeah, I was there like 10 days and I could be stuck in worse places than San Antonio, I can tell you that.
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But it was a little hectic getting out of town before the hurricane, in fact.
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I think they did say that did impact some of the like academy classes and things like that, where people couldn't get there.
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Yeah, In fact how many people did they announce?
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I think how many?
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It was at least 5,000, or did you hear?
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Yeah, I would say at least 5,000, maybe 5,500.
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It felt similar to Charlotte, which was the 2023 site.
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If you ask me, there was a few more people in San Antonio than Charlotte, so you're seeing some moderate growth.
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The venue, the Henry Gonzalez Conference Center that's right there, on more people in san antonio than charlotte, so you're seeing some moderate growth.
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The venue the henry gonzalez conference center.
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That's right there on the walk.
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It's pretty amazing facility, but it's a lot of walking.
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That's all I can say good shoes, because you get your steps in and you work off all those riverwalk dinners that that we had right yeah, and there's a lot to do in san antonio, like the river walk, the alamo.
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I know some.
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Some people did receptions at the alamo or had tours over there.
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There was a lot going on and a lot of advanced networking right that's right.
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Gotta have your advanced networking opportunities at summit yeah, so like what were some of the events that you attended?
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well, let's see.
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I, of course, went to the PowerGP Online party on Wednesday evening and I saw you there as well, and that was a big hit, as it always is.
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I had my Fargo Technical Conference shirt from 1999 on, celebrating the fact that it's A 25 years ago and B it still fits me.
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I also went to the Rewind party right before that, which was hosted by Ellipse Solutions and Sana Commerce, and forgive me for getting the others that was a fun time.
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People were dressed up like in 80s clothes and that was a good time.
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That was near the Riverwalk as well, right on it.
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I also went to Expert Logic Party the night before.
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I had dinner at a couple very nice restaurants there on the riverwalk with my danish colleagues and some partners that we took out.
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So, yeah, every night was just full there was something I know on tuesday night was the bc bash yeah, the bc bash right.
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I know I missed that and I feel bad because I wanted to go.
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I just had a late dinner but I heard it went well.
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It was really fun.
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They had lots of loud music, disco music or music going on.
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It was a great time to see the BC community and you know, of course, a lot of the.
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We see a lot of the GPs also now on Business Central Space, so a lot of people I recognize and some new friends there as well.
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So it was really good.
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A lot of people I recognize and knew some new friends there as well, so it was really good.
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I went to, before that, a couple of events.
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There was a Stratus Cloud Alliance or partner event which was part of the Velocio Master Bar program.
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They had a nice little you know get together happy hour.
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And then I went to Buckhorns, which is kind of interesting location.
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It has like a bar right on the river walk.
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It must have been there since.
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I don't know 1800s.
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It's been there a long time, but they have this crazy museum upstairs and downstairs.
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You can walk through If you like taxidermy, this is your place to go.
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Nice.
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Lots of different animals but also had kind of sort of a sideshow vibe.
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You know you like the crazy house mirrors and things you could walk through and oh those are cool yeah yeah, it was really cool and they had instructor teaching line dancing, which was a great warm-up for the bc bash nice, okay.
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On sunday there was that partner marketing event, for partners only, and then red maple sponsored a happy hour at a rooftop bar around the corner near the Hilton, right afterwards.
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You know and that's a crazy story the Fairmount Hotel and I learned this because I went on the riverboat tour that building was where the Marriott sits now and they moved it over to its current location.
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And, yeah, isn't that crazy that hotel was actually moved.
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So anyway, yeah and I, we went to that too.
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That was fun because it was on the rooftop there and yeah, it's a nice evening, nice evening I know at the gp online party, of course they had the you know karaoke scene, which is always fun and it gets crazier as the evening goes on.
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One of the highlights for me was Mark Rockwell saying an original song that he, I think it was called.
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Was it Ode to Microsoft or something?
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Right, yeah, I don't remember what he called it, but he sang a portion of it during the conference and then an unabridged version, shall we say, at the PowerGP online party.
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Right, yeah, yeah.
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So that was a highlight for sure, so kind of pivoting from all the parties and advanced networking.
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Of which you could go on and on, because you were doing so many in San Antonio.
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We were like hitting all the different venues.
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Of course, there's always good information and a lot of interesting information at all the general sessions, and there was, you know, the BC general session.
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That was Tuesday, right.
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There's the GP general session and the Fano session, and I went to all three of them.
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So it was kind of interesting.
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I don't know you got to either or both of those the GP and BC ones but it was interesting to kind of see what they had to say.
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Tell us a little bit about your thoughts of those two sessions.
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Okay, well, kind of similar, right With FNO and BC.
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You have a lot of new stuff coming out with Wave 2.
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So a lot of time is spent going over all the new functionality, and you and I were talking earlier before we started recording that the reactions from the attendees aren't always as enthusiastic at least with the BC side as you might think.
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Right, you would think that when new functionality gets rolled out, everybody gets excited.
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At the F&O one they did, at the GP one, they did, but BC not so much.
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Yeah, I leaned over my head and said they're so quiet.
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I think the only thing that I noticed that got an applause was the feature where they took an overlay of a theme, like a Halloween theme, to merge it with a document, like an invoice document, and that got applause.
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So I was like yay.
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Yeah, exciting yeah.
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And Terry Haley did a great job of presenting all new features on 18.7, which is the latest release of Dynamics GP, and of course there's always more enthusiasm in that group, I think, in general, than the VC group about the new features.
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But what were your?
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thoughts.
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So the GP general session was obviously different because it started out basically after they did the all-stars which, by the way john arnold and john kirsch and dave fiendstra were the three gpug all-star award winners.
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And all three of those guys I can tell you, having run gpug for years, are way overdue for having won that award.
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They're all really talented and they could have won it five, ten years ago.
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They really could have.
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So I was very happy to see those three winners.
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So after they did the G-Pug All-Stars which, by the way, used to be a really fun thing to ramp up for People used to really work hard to get voted for that John Seifert brought Mike Morton out and they talked about the announcements that Microsoft made around Dynamics GP end of life, and you know it was.
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I don't think Mike Morton said anything during that segment of the general session that was different or it was newsworthy to me, because of course we nerds in this space have been following this stuff for a long time.
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But let's give john seaford some credit.
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He puts himself up up on stage with mike, he makes sure that the proper information is rolled out.
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We're not having any kerfuffles on stage like two years ago in orlando and it was john seaford that had the dynamic communities podcast interview with mike the morning.
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They made the announcement so that the news would come out and it wouldn't be a huge curveball for end users once they got to San Antonio.
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So I give John a lot of credit.
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He's out in front, he's trying to do his job as CEO at DCI so that the GP users are not getting clobbered like a couple years ago.
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Oh, definitely, and I appreciate that he asked some tough questions and clarity and transparency.
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So I appreciated that and I feel like it was kind of a calming effect, like if you kind of came to that feeling a little bit anxious, like maybe you heard from your partner or maybe you heard the news from Microsoft or somewhere else, it was good to hear like, hey, you've got time.
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There's definitely, you know, five years to end of support.
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You've still got a year and a half past that.
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And it was also kind of like, hey, you know, it depends on how things go, kind of sounded like there might be a little bit of opening for in the future, maybe some things like maybe we'll get a year-end update in 2029 versus the ending in 2028 so that was good news and also listening to partners and they asked for feedback, so I I appreciated hearing that as well so, yeah, I agree.
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If you're a proactive partner in the gp space and you heard, you knew that news was coming out September 25th.
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You had a couple of weeks before they all got to San Antonio, they being end users to communicate with them or make arrangements to have dinner or drinks with them in San Antonio, to discuss all this and start formulating a plan, maybe not complete one in its entirety, but get the discussion started.
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What do you want to do?
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What are you thinking?
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What do you?
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Here's our opinion.
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Here's what are you thinking, mr or Ms End user, you've got five years.
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That is a decent amount of time, but let's start the conversation and figure out what makes sense for you as an end user.
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How complex is your environment?
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Do you want to stay on GP?
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There's a million questions, and you just alluded to something else there a moment ago, that is, there's a lot of questions that were brought up by partners in some of those town hall meetings that Mike Morton hosted about licensing right.
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The questions were like, framed around the fact that maybe customers have already told their partners we want to stay on GP, can I keep buying a license?
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And what about subscription, all that sort of stuff?
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So the point you just made a minute ago I'm not sure like getting a year-end tax update at the end of calendar year 2029 that fits the 2030 calendar year.
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You know, I think Microsoft hasn't necessarily thought about that just yet, because they're just assuming September 29 will get here and that'll be it.
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But in reality there's probably more people that will stick around than what they expect, shall we say.
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Yeah, yes, a key phrase, which is what Policies?
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are subject to change Right Right.
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At the end of the day, Microsoft is the publisher and they own the code and they can do whatever they want.
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They can shorten it, yeah, and they can do what they want, and hopefully they won't throw any curveballs at end users or the partner community.
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But all that is, like you said, subject to change it is subject to change.
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So yeah, so that is one thing that was happening kind of by invite only was there were partner town halls that the microsoft team basically held and did kind of q a and answer a question, and so a lot of partners attended one or the other meetings or have one-on-one meetings with Microsoft during the week there was still a lot of questions going on with partners, so it's going to take a little while for people to kind of wrap their mind around it.
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But, like you said, I think there were a lot of questions about licensing, which tells me, hey, I've got customers that are going to be on it for a while, can they still buy it?
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tells me.
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Hey, I've got customers that are going to be on it for a while?
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Can they still buy at Velocions?
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Yep, and those are really good questions.
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A lot of people ask if it's October 1, 2029, can I buy a seat for?
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Can my customer buy a seat?
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And I asked a question a friend of mine at Velocio not six months ago can I buy a seat for Dynamics SL?
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And she told me, yes, you can.
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So I mean, I tend to think that if you're current on your enhancements and that's, of course, super important and you want to buy a license on October 1, 2029, chances are pretty good that you'll be able to do that.
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Yeah, I think Microsoft's just surprised.
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Everybody's just jumping up and moving to Business Central or up and out.
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They don't really quite understand why there's this group of partners and customers that are hesitant.
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But you know what it?
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works.
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It works well.
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Why do I need to change?
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And how many partners have been in the space, like you and me, for a long time.
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Judy Thomas at TM Group just celebrated 40 years.
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Right when Mama Kim retired, she'd been around for like 37 or 38 years.
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There are a lot of people that have been in this GP ecosystem a long time and and and pivoting from that when it's been your career and you have happy customers, is hard to do, really is.
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It's hard to do, all right.
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Well, kind of transitioning from that.
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Then we have our session that you and myself and Fawaz Hussain from Notice and Tiffany Allen from Corpe we did our session right after that, after lunch, and we even had to meet right before that to make sure we didn't miss any information, in case there was any subject to change the kind of announcements, and so tell us about how that went.
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So we've done you and me and Tiffany and Faw a wonderful foursome.
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I will say we all had a fun time doing this and we've done it several times at other events, not just this one talking about the future of GP and making sure that end users have all the facts in front of them so they can make the best decision for their business right.
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And then, when this news came out on wednesday, september 25th, the four of us met on friday the 27th, threw our entire powerpoint out the window and said, okay, we got to totally start over and we need to get this in right away, because the show's coming up in a couple of weeks and we've got to present right.
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No more myth busting.
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The myths have been busted.
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So we we tweaked our powerpoint and and tried to make it more interactive because we figured there would be some questions and or comments coming from the audience, and overall it went pretty good, I would say.
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I mean we had a good, pretty full room, not standing room only like a couple years ago in Orlando, but a pretty good sized room and just trying to make sure that people who have questions about licensing and other things and year-end updates and all that sort of stuff could get as good answers as what we've heard, because, like you, I attended both of those partner town hall meetings and I'm listening to the questions that partners are asking and we try to convey as much of that news to the GP end users as we could.
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Because, yeah, five years is a long time.
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But I don't know about you, but I kind of feel like most of them have been procrastinating and now that there's a date certain, they're certainly thinking about it more so.
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Or we'll stop the procrastinating and begin discussing future plans if they decide to change, or if they decide that they'll stay the same with their partner and go from there.
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So here's the poll that we did, the live poll we did during our session.
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We're asking the end users what's your plan?
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And 81% have been evaluating and will continue to do so, or they're going to stay put.
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That's their evaluation.
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They're staying put.
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So that kind of made sense to me.
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I feel as if a third of, let's say, 30% of existing GP users today will probably be on October 1, 2029, right in five years and the rest will probably redeploy to a Dynamics 365 ERP or potentially something else.
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But it was interesting to see 12% are now going to stop procrastinating because they've been putting it off and another 12%, for some odd reason, never had the idea of making a change, even on their radar.
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I think that 24% I don't know the bottom one was really an eye-opener.
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I didn't think anybody would say change wasn't on my radar.
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That's different than staying put, you know.
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Yeah, well, now that we have a date I guess announced, it does put kind of a timeline right, and so I guess it is one of those.
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You know we're procrastinators right In human nature.
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I totally agree.
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And when you're talking about redeploying, it's a lot of work, right, it was a lot of work to deploy it the first time and then, over time, build processes and hopefully document those and add ISVs to fill gaps.
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So it's always a work in progress and you're always training new people or what have you, and there's a lot of time and effort put into making your business run in an optimal fashion.
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And now Microsoft's coming in and saying, okay, you need to, you've got five years to do something else and that's a lot.
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And I do feel, like you know during our session, that you know we did have some questions from people that either they weren't aligned with their partner, so obviously it's something like you know during our session that you know we did have some questions from people that either they weren't aligned with their partner, so obviously it's something like do you need to get a new partner?
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Or maybe they want to actually even expand their users, or executive management want to stay on GP and they want to expand it.
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So what do we think about that?
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And kind of a range of answers.
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I liked what Carrie Hadley said is hey, you know what?
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This is a good opportunity to reevaluate your processes and improve processes and clean up your data.
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Maybe this is a good opportunity to kind of re-examine how we do things.
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Right.
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Because maybe you can optimize it right now.
00:19:57.925 --> 00:20:03.065
And let's face it, if you can do that sort of cleanup, that would make a redeployment easier.
00:20:03.065 --> 00:20:12.318
Right, Because you know all the tools that are in your business box and how they need to be in place someplace else if you choose to redeploy.
00:20:12.318 --> 00:20:15.030
So it carries advice solid as usual.
00:20:15.030 --> 00:20:21.655
And if it's going to make a redeployment easier, then yeah, I would certainly take that time and do your homework in your existing system.
00:20:22.525 --> 00:20:24.693
I also liked what David Musgrave says.
00:20:24.693 --> 00:20:28.836
If you decide to stay on GP, you know that's a risk too right.
00:20:28.836 --> 00:20:43.317
There's a risk in that you know something might break, it might not be supported, if something in Outlook or Office changes or in SQL, and then you have maybe kind of a big risk that you might have an issue that Microsoft won't support.
00:20:43.397 --> 00:20:48.135
So right, just like and you're right, mr Musgrave did have an excellent point.
00:20:48.135 --> 00:20:51.231
That's what I'm calling death by a thousand cuts.
00:20:51.231 --> 00:21:10.719
You know stuff that happens around GP that isn't necessarily happening within the application itself isn't supported or has a fix or some sort of edit that causes an issue in GP, like Word templates right, we just had this whole Outlook thing that needed a remedy.
00:21:10.719 --> 00:21:17.198
Maybe the next thing that comes down the pike affects Word templates in GP, and it's nothing that changed in the application.
00:21:17.198 --> 00:21:22.768
It was something the Office team did with Word, but they're not thinking about is this going to break something in GP?
00:21:22.768 --> 00:21:25.394
They're just trying to make changes in their application.
00:21:25.693 --> 00:21:39.885
I mean, if you think about Microsoft in a lot of ways hasn't really been providing a lot of support, you know, let's say, or some people are operating with just their Microsoft partner, not Microsoft, because so they haven't been leaning on Microsoft.
00:21:39.905 --> 00:21:40.948
But it is a risk.
00:21:41.087 --> 00:21:43.692
It is definitely a risk, but still implementing something new.
00:21:43.692 --> 00:21:46.675
I mean I think a whole new implementation.
00:21:46.715 --> 00:21:58.150
There's plenty of people that go out there and start implementation and have a lot more challenges than they realize with resources or technology or something else.
00:21:58.150 --> 00:21:59.673
So there's risk, no matter what.
00:21:59.673 --> 00:22:08.199
It definitely is a point in time you probably need to take a look, and we did have our friends from the Nagevity team, powergp Online.
00:22:08.199 --> 00:22:13.855
That's a great option too, and they had their whole team dressed in these leather jackets.
00:22:13.855 --> 00:22:15.452
Like, wasn't that a great vibe?
00:22:15.452 --> 00:22:16.650
I just loved it.
00:22:16.650 --> 00:22:25.897
They had the ride or die theme and T-shirts, and down in the kind of GP techmatic area they had the lounge or the hub.
00:22:26.605 --> 00:22:36.760
All decked out with these big artwork that had, like you know, kind of this whole vibe about kind of you know it felt like a little bit of rebellion, right.
00:22:37.765 --> 00:22:52.221
Better believe it did, and you can tell that Chris and his crew were ready for this announcement because it felt like blogs were coming out every day every other day between the time the announcement was made, September 25th, and the time we should.
00:22:53.048 --> 00:23:22.693
They were ready, they know it's coming and they're ready to support their customers and support prospective customers who like GP and want to stay put, who like GP and want to stay put, and Chris is the one place at PowerGP Online and Ingevity where people know he's been waving the flag and it's a safe space, if you will for lack of a better term for people In fact, I ran into a customer that has attended our panel sessions each of the summits and he asked me hey, have you heard about this PowerGP Online?
00:23:22.744 --> 00:23:23.606
Maybe I should check it out because I want to stay on GP.
00:23:23.606 --> 00:23:24.169
And he asked me hey, have you heard about this PowerGP Online?
00:23:24.169 --> 00:23:26.510
Maybe I should check it out because I want to stay on GP and he's the CFO.
00:23:26.510 --> 00:23:31.791
And he's like I don't want to move and I was like, yes, you should definitely go talk to the.
00:23:31.791 --> 00:23:34.959
Powergp Online team because it is definitely a great option.
00:23:34.959 --> 00:23:37.273
They will support GP customers.
00:23:37.273 --> 00:23:45.335
They have a great secure environment and lots of new features too, so I was like definitely check that out.
00:23:45.825 --> 00:23:50.240
They've added some cool stuff to GP and Chris is totally committed, right?
00:23:50.240 --> 00:23:56.213
He's probably been told a hundred times by some or various number of people at Microsoft don't do this.
00:23:56.213 --> 00:24:00.470
And he continues to go the direction he wants to go.
00:24:00.470 --> 00:24:03.396
He's a true believer and I give him a lot of credit for that.
00:24:03.664 --> 00:24:04.607
Yeah, definitely.
00:24:04.607 --> 00:24:10.693
So we didn't touch about the expo hall, but just briefly I know you were there your company had a booth.
00:24:10.693 --> 00:24:11.316
How'd that go?
00:24:12.286 --> 00:24:12.926
It went great.
00:24:12.926 --> 00:24:22.451
So for the first time, pascale has been attending Summit for a couple three years, but it's a Danish company, so the investment in Summit this year was finally bigger.
00:24:22.451 --> 00:24:29.851
We got a 20 by 20 booth, which is 6.1 by 6.1 meters for those of you from out of town, and it was tons of fun.
00:24:29.851 --> 00:24:31.792
We got to design it the way we wanted it.
00:24:31.792 --> 00:24:33.431
It was a great place to gather.
00:24:33.431 --> 00:24:39.852
We had a session Tuesday morning and then had really good traffic Tuesday afternoon to follow up on it.
00:24:39.852 --> 00:24:46.018
So the whole expo experience for my Danish mates and I was really, really good.
00:24:46.018 --> 00:24:52.038
I complained mildly, of course, to my friend John Seaford that we needed a longer expo.
00:24:52.038 --> 00:24:53.186
Two days wasn't enough.
00:24:53.909 --> 00:24:55.753
And he said next year we'll go back to normal.
00:24:56.095 --> 00:24:58.867
So we get two and a half or almost three days expo.
00:24:58.867 --> 00:25:08.211
There's a lot of time setting up and planning to make your booth the coolest place in the whole and you can really feel the pulse of the show at the expo.
00:25:08.211 --> 00:25:16.567
So while the expo is open, I was in there a great deal because I just that's where you're going to find people, that's where you're going to run into friends, that's you know.
00:25:16.567 --> 00:25:21.688
You can have an advanced networking opportunity, accompaniment in the evenings and it's just.
00:25:21.688 --> 00:25:23.613
The expo is a great place.
00:25:23.613 --> 00:25:37.026
And you can tell that it's a great place because when I talked to John Seifert later on about 2025, trying to get a booth in the next year's expo hall is really, really difficult because they were going like hotcakes.
00:25:37.026 --> 00:25:37.887
They really were.
00:25:37.887 --> 00:25:39.893
We got out, by the way, we're good.
00:25:41.375 --> 00:25:42.017
You got your spot.
00:25:42.017 --> 00:25:42.679
That's perfect.
00:25:42.679 --> 00:25:44.652
This year you had a good spot.
00:25:44.652 --> 00:25:49.917
You were right next to Corpe, which they had a lot of activity with their T-shirt printing operation.
00:25:49.917 --> 00:25:53.731
You kind of get a custom, yeah, I really like that idea.
00:25:54.265 --> 00:25:55.351
That was a cool idea.
00:25:55.351 --> 00:25:58.615
There was a line at the Corpe booth for those T-shirts all the time.
00:25:58.615 --> 00:26:02.215
When I first saw that idea I was like oh man, that's kind of dopey.
00:26:02.215 --> 00:26:06.788
All that idea.
00:26:06.788 --> 00:26:07.692
Like oh man, that's kind of dopey.
00:26:07.692 --> 00:26:08.394
But turned out to be great.
00:26:08.394 --> 00:26:09.258
You have to wait in line for your shirt.
00:26:09.278 --> 00:26:10.703
So you can talk to someone from core pay about the solution.
00:26:10.703 --> 00:26:14.092
Yeah, great, you can talk to several different people because a long time to wait.
00:26:14.112 --> 00:26:15.876
We were between the puppies.
00:26:15.876 --> 00:26:17.346
How could we go wrong?
00:26:18.147 --> 00:26:19.931
yes, you will get now.
00:26:19.931 --> 00:26:22.536
How did you pick that booth right next to the puppies?
00:26:22.536 --> 00:26:23.817
That was amazing.
00:26:23.837 --> 00:26:27.334
Yeah, I know I figured these things out.
00:26:27.334 --> 00:26:29.010
That's a good traffic builder.
00:26:29.010 --> 00:26:30.431
The puppies get lots of traffic.
00:26:30.944 --> 00:26:32.108
Yeah, so there was a little.
00:26:32.108 --> 00:26:33.753
Yeah, so puppies.
00:26:33.753 --> 00:26:41.675
So the Summit, the Dynamics communities, had a puppy snuggles booth so you can go in there and take a break and play with a puppy or hold a puppy.
00:26:41.675 --> 00:26:44.432
Those puppies must have been exhausted.
00:26:45.346 --> 00:26:47.453
I'm sure they were overstimulated like crazy.
00:26:47.904 --> 00:26:52.136
Yeah, they had little breaks where they put them in their kennel and then let them rest.
00:26:52.136 --> 00:26:55.653
And they just all kind of looked like they fell over on each other.
00:26:55.653 --> 00:26:56.435
They were tired.
00:26:56.704 --> 00:26:59.314
They slept well each night of summer, that's for sure.
00:27:00.546 --> 00:27:01.528
I just feel like okay.
00:27:01.528 --> 00:27:05.376
So here's the thing it was too short of time, there was not enough time.
00:27:05.376 --> 00:27:13.082
I think I started to cry on the second day because I realized there's no way I can get through this entire hall and see everybody right.
00:27:14.385 --> 00:27:32.464
There's so many booths right 250 exhibitors it's impossible to get to all of them and you have a lot of customers that are involved with Dynamics Connections and you want to stop by and say hi and say thank you, and it it was really hard to see them and I wanted to meet new people too.
00:27:32.674 --> 00:27:34.502
So, anyway, my my husband's there.
00:27:34.502 --> 00:27:39.748
He was doing a great job of meeting some new people and I just there was no way.
00:27:39.934 --> 00:27:46.705
I've been told that next year we'll go back to the usual schedule and get our additional expo time and time when sessions are not in.
00:27:46.705 --> 00:27:56.942
We always, you know, when sessions aren't in, the traffic in the expo Is really good and that's where you again feel the pulse of the show is in that expo hall.
00:27:56.942 --> 00:27:58.963
It's fun, it's exciting.
00:27:59.144 --> 00:28:08.517
Yeah, and I feel like even some people had double booths, like I saw RSM, they had a community booth with a special AI and it was actually really cool.
00:28:08.517 --> 00:28:13.368
It took a picture of your face and then drew an outline of your face and put it in this big board.
00:28:13.368 --> 00:28:21.923
It was part of an overall I don't know what you call a picture anyway this sub community.
00:28:21.923 --> 00:28:22.325
It was really cool.
00:28:22.325 --> 00:28:26.116
I sat and watched that for a while and that was really neat and and then they also had the regular booth too, right?
00:28:26.136 --> 00:28:34.364
so right, I think avalera had their fancy booth, a two-story booth, and they had the texas lounge and they had the Wellness Massage Lounge.
00:28:34.724 --> 00:28:34.965
Right.
00:28:35.026 --> 00:28:35.346
Man.
00:28:35.575 --> 00:28:42.961
But that one, the one with the cowboy boots, had, like you know, a little margarita, and then they had you know a picture booth.
00:28:42.961 --> 00:28:47.484
You know where you can get a picture they had an artist there, they had karaoke.
00:28:47.484 --> 00:28:50.919
There was always something kind of activities going on.
00:28:50.919 --> 00:28:51.298
That's.
00:28:51.298 --> 00:28:55.125
The other thing is I was easily distracted by all of these things.
00:28:55.125 --> 00:28:58.069
I'd stop and go wow, that's pretty neat.
00:28:58.069 --> 00:29:03.137
And it wasn't just.
00:29:03.137 --> 00:29:06.335
I'd say it was probably a level above in that there were these other activities to do right.
00:29:06.715 --> 00:29:08.103
Community Summit Legends yeah.
00:29:08.123 --> 00:29:08.304
Yeah.
00:29:09.734 --> 00:29:11.442
So the Community Summit Legends were announced.
00:29:11.442 --> 00:29:14.384
Each year they do about a dozen legends.
00:29:14.384 --> 00:29:18.672
I was lucky enough to be named in the first class, which was lots of fun.
00:29:18.672 --> 00:29:19.494
That was 2021.
00:29:19.494 --> 00:29:22.824
And each year they add about a dozen or so.
00:29:22.824 --> 00:29:45.845
So I get together with some legendary friends of mine, like Frank Vukovic at Delinia and also Mark Polino, who's at Delinia, and we kind of get a front row seat, you know, with Carrie Hadley and the rest of them, and we watch the legends come up and Giuseppe's the host and he does a good job and they go through the names and they get one from GP and they get one from CE and they get one from F&O.
00:29:45.845 --> 00:29:53.488
You know, they get ones from all the different UGs and it's fun to watch people who have been showing up at this show for a long time.
00:29:54.469 --> 00:29:54.710
Yeah.
00:29:55.195 --> 00:29:56.378
In GPUG Summit's case.
00:29:56.378 --> 00:30:02.183
This was my 17th GPUG Summit, so I mean, this thing's been going a long time now.
00:30:02.183 --> 00:30:08.509
So, yeah, it's fun to watch some of the people that have helped make this event what it is be recognized.
00:30:08.509 --> 00:30:09.250
It's fun.
00:30:09.571 --> 00:30:20.667
Yeah, and there were some really well-deserving people like Terry Healy oh my gosh, Like she is a legend, Like there's no doubt she should be awarded that from Microsoft.
00:30:20.667 --> 00:30:34.599
Carrie Hadley, you know, has been heading up the GP content committee and helping with so much on the GPG and for us, hussein, our friend from Notice, was also recognized, so that was pretty fun.
00:30:35.101 --> 00:30:36.003
Yeah, that's been good.
00:30:36.003 --> 00:30:45.040
You know he's a young man compared to you and me, but he's been to Summit a bunch of times over the years and certainly helped make it.
00:30:46.115 --> 00:30:47.421
I think he was the most surprised.
00:30:48.375 --> 00:30:49.977
Yeah, I think he probably was too.
00:30:49.977 --> 00:31:01.053
But you know, you think about all the sessions he's done over the years, whether it's panel discussions with you and me and Tiffany, or partner solution showcases on behalf of Notice, where he's been for several years.
00:31:01.053 --> 00:31:08.743
Yeah, yeah, he's a summit regular and he knows how to advance his networking opportunities as well as anybody.
00:31:09.445 --> 00:31:10.347
That's amazing.
00:31:10.762 --> 00:31:11.394
I promise you.
00:31:11.434 --> 00:31:12.678
Yeah, he does.
00:31:12.678 --> 00:31:17.307
Well, let's talk about, just to wrap up, where is next year going to be held?
00:31:17.307 --> 00:31:22.107
What are the dates for the Dynamics Community Summit 2025?
00:31:22.835 --> 00:31:34.730
So Community Summit 2025 will be held at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, right here in Central Florida, october 19th through the 23rd.
00:31:34.730 --> 00:31:37.585
So October 19th is a Sunday.
00:31:37.585 --> 00:31:49.445
They'll probably have, you know, the usual kind of things Academy and all that on, maybe some partner events, and then it will likely kick off on Monday, the 20th.
00:31:49.445 --> 00:32:02.911
That's just me guessing based on past interest, or maybe they'll do some more Academy, kick it off Monday night, enable end users to travel Monday morning, get registered and then hit it hard Monday night into Tuesday, wednesday and then Thursday.
00:32:02.911 --> 00:32:13.924
But yeah, it's going to be back in Orlando at the Gaylord Palms, which, as you probably know, is right next to Disney World, so if you bring your family, it's literally next door.
00:32:13.924 --> 00:32:20.885
John Seifer told me that they've rented the whole place out, so there won't be any sage nerds walking around.
00:32:20.885 --> 00:32:25.262
This time It'll be all Dynamics people and that's a nice facility.
00:32:25.262 --> 00:32:27.347
The Gaylord Palms is a nice facility.
00:32:27.347 --> 00:32:33.674
It's right on I-4 there near Kissimmee, so get signed up and get your hotel figured out.
00:32:33.855 --> 00:32:53.439
It makes a big difference because we stayed off site, because we registered late and oh my gosh, it's so much easier if you can just be there at the Gaylord and attend the conferences and I think it does just take a couple days because it is a lot of walking and you know just inside the Gaylord like you need a mat.
00:32:54.141 --> 00:32:55.615
Yeah, it's a big, big place.
00:32:55.615 --> 00:32:59.589
All those gaylord properties are huge and this one's no exception.
00:32:59.589 --> 00:33:07.997
So bring your walking shoes to orlando and hopefully we'll we'll skip all the hurricane stuff this time around and make it fun.
00:33:07.997 --> 00:33:13.506
Yeah, hurricanes never fun, but it's part of life here in the great state of Florida.
00:33:13.767 --> 00:33:14.106
All right.
00:33:14.106 --> 00:33:15.990
Well, anything else to say Bob?
00:33:18.439 --> 00:33:23.044
I think, generally speaking, it was a good show and I always enjoy getting together for Summit.
00:33:23.044 --> 00:33:27.324
I've been doing it for so long and I'm looking forward to next year already.
00:33:27.324 --> 00:33:46.126
But the show overall was great and I thought San Antonio was an excellent choice and I know the folks at dynamic communities worked hard john and michael and danielle and the rest of them worked hard so yeah, they you planned so many weeks for this show and then, poof, in a week it's gone.
00:33:46.888 --> 00:33:52.547
But uh yeah but next year will be fun and well attended, and orlando is an easy place to get to.
00:33:52.547 --> 00:34:04.323
So put your, put it on your calendar now, the week of October 19th, and be ready for another advanced networking opportunity here in central Florida, cause it will be one to remember.
00:34:04.584 --> 00:34:09.199
Yeah, I can just say I still feel a little bit of a buzz from last week.
00:34:09.199 --> 00:34:12.804
So the excitement and everything, just it was tiring.
00:34:12.804 --> 00:34:21.025
But it's such a great event to see everybody and I just feel like I missed not seeing everybody I wanted to see you know.
00:34:21.184 --> 00:34:32.545
So I know and I think if you're, if you come home from an event like that and you're not physically and mentally exhausted, you probably didn't do it correctly.
00:34:32.545 --> 00:34:34.471
I came home exhausted.
00:34:34.471 --> 00:34:40.827
I did nothing this past weekend but watch football and lay around because I needed a couple of days, put your feet up.
00:34:40.927 --> 00:34:41.166
I had.
00:34:41.166 --> 00:34:42.219
I had blisters.
00:34:42.219 --> 00:34:44.969
Even though I had good walking shoes, I still had blisters.
00:34:45.650 --> 00:34:47.675
Yeah, I got my steps in every single day.
00:34:47.675 --> 00:34:48.197
It was great.
00:34:48.978 --> 00:34:49.378
All right, Bob.
00:34:49.378 --> 00:34:52.402
Well, thanks so much for joining this episode of ISV Talks.
00:34:52.402 --> 00:34:58.909
As always, it's a pleasure to have you again as part of our crew on the GP panel too.
00:34:58.909 --> 00:35:00.710
That we did this past year.
00:35:00.710 --> 00:35:01.637
So thanks so much.
00:35:01.637 --> 00:35:02.860
I'm looking forward to next year.
00:35:02.860 --> 00:35:05.266
We'll see what we do next year.
00:35:05.266 --> 00:35:07.657
So thanks, friends, for joining this episode.
00:35:07.657 --> 00:35:08.898
We'll see you soon.
00:35:08.898 --> 00:35:09.559
Bye-bye.