Well, actually they kind of mess with the day numbering around here :-) Day one for me was the Partner Pre-Briefing on Friday which doesn't really count in Convergence days. Saturday was officially Day 1 but was really a day for folks to arrive and get registered. Wasn;t much really goining on until the great Welcome Reception Saturday night. Yesterday, Sunday, was the first 'real' day of convergence and opened with Keynote Speaker Jeff Raikes, President of Microsoft Business Division. Jeff emphasized the new theme of Microsoft Dynamics, People Ready Business (I saw the first People Ready Business commercial on TV last night!). CRM was a thread that appreared to run though it all. They demoed CRM with Office products like Outlook, Excel, etc.
The Keynote was in FAR West Dallas (I think it was still in Dallas, but much further than anything before) and after we had to hike all the way over to East Dallas for the CRM presentation by CRM GM Brad Wilson. Helping Brad was David Thatcher who runs the R&D for CRM. He told us that CRM is scheduled to be released on a 12 to 18 month cycle. CRM 4.0, code named Titan, is expected in about a year. He also commented on the Sandbox where they are developing new tools for CRM. In fact I got an e-mail today about the release of a new RSS tool for CRM. The Sandbox is part of the Community at www.microsoft.com/Dynamics/Community.
This morning, Day 2(??), the Keynote was Bill Gates himself. The production opened with a fantastic musical number by Mass Ensemble using some innovative instruments. Innovation was a theme of the presentation. What struck me was Bill's presentation/demo of the 'Next World of Work' where he showed some things he invisions for the not so distant (?) future. What I liked the most was a lounge area table at an airport where he set down his cell phone and the table recognized it and allowed him to access various resources. He then laid a business card he had collected from an event and the table recognized the card. He was then able to instruct the table to send the contact info from the card to his cell phone and thereby into his contact database (CRM of course). The cell phone will be a key piece of the information delivery system in the future.
At noon I participated in a focus group. I'm not at liberty to discuss what went on but they were looking for ideas and feedback on future features of CRM. It was interesting to see the process. The folks involved were truly interested in our opinions.
Well, tomorrow's the last day and the Expo ends today. I'll try to get by a few more booths. Haven't made much progress there yet.