As part of the Summit EMEA Social Series, the Summit EMEA team has talked to several influencers from the industry about their experience with conferences such as Summit EMEA and why they will be attending Summit EMEA in Dublin this year. In this blog Thomas Bonde, who is a Microsoft MVP, the D365UG/AXUG chapter leader in Denmark and has been working with Dynamics AX since it came out in 1998, gives us an insight on what he is most excited about for Summit EMEA.
Is there any specific content that gets you excited about the conference?
Thomas: “Regardless of that I see myself as an experienced Dynamics AX user from a technical application perspective, I have something new to learn every day. As an MVP I look most forward to the sessions about the new journey of Dynamics 365, which is something that brings up a lot of new challenges. Also, this year the European Union has announced a new GDPR, which is a data protection law, that brings a lot of new restrictions. This is also something I look forward to hearing more about at Summit EMEA.”
How important is it to stay on the cutting edge of technology for you and your businesses and how does this conference do that through content?
Thomas: “It’s very important because as a solution architect I often engage with customers that are curious about what the future brings and how we can benefit from that. Therefore I need to be able to stay on the cutting edge of technology, but beside that, it’s also a personal interest. I enjoy being a nerd about learning how to put these new technologies into practise. Summit EMEA helps me in doing that.”
Why is community one of the top reasons to attend this conference for you?
Thomas: “For me personally, content is not the most important reason to attend a conference, it’s about what happens in between the sessions. It’s what happens in de corridors, during lunch and in the evenings. This is where you talk to people, to customers, architects, implementers and people from Microsoft. You learn the most from their challenges and experiences. So when I talk to my chapter I always push them to share their issues and challenges with the community, because the likelihood that someone else also has that challenge is big and there’s also a big chance that someone has already found the solution. I remember one example from two years ago, there was a customer that came up to me during a user group conference with a problem they had been struggling with for the past six months. They had put a lot of money into solving that problem. By chance I knew exactly what the problem was so within 10 minutes we solved this problem. In my opinion, this shows the power of the community.”
How does having access to this community support the Microsoft driving business?
Thomas: “The feedback that Microsoft gets from the D365UG/AXUG community, comes from over 30.000 users. That’s a huge amount of people, so I believe that for Microsoft it must be the most important thing to listen to what these users have to say. I think that it’s a proven case since many times the user community has proven themselves able to switch directions for Microsoft.”
How important is networking to you and your business and how does attending this conference support that?
Thomas: “If you look at the amount of content that is already out there from Microsoft but also from other parties, you will realise that it is impossible for anyone to read all that content. Meaning that if you don’t have a network to turn to or someone to ask questions, you are always one step behind.”
Thank you so much, Thomas! Secure your tickets for Summit EMEA today and join us 24-26 April 2018 in Dublin!
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