ISV Talks
ISV Talks
Everything You Need to Know About Community Summit NA 2025
Carol Livingston sits down with Giuseppe Ianni, VP and Community Director at Dynamic Communities, for a preview of Community Summit NA 2025, taking place October 19–23 in Orlando, FL. In this ISV Talks episode, they unpack what’s new at this year’s event, from curated educational tracks for users, partners, and ISVs to a brand-new focus on AI-driven topics. They also spotlight expanded opportunities to network, learn, and grow within the Dynamics community.
Agents and Copilot are defining the future of Dynamics, CRM, Power Platform, Azure, Fabric, and more. Explore and discover what this means to you at Community Summit the largest Microsoft Business Solutions User Conference on the planet with over 600 sessions, 300 sponsors, and innovative networking opportunities.
Dynamic Communities has enhanced this year's event with unique elements like axe throwing, pickleball, and arcade games on the expo floor to create natural networking environments alongside educational content.
Community Summit Website: www.summitna.com
Well, welcome to this episode of ISV Talks. I'm Carol Livingston of Dynamics Connections and your host of ISV Talks, and on this episode I have Giuseppe from Dynamic Communities here with me today to talk about upcoming Community Summit. Welcome, Giuseppe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me, Carol. I'm really excited to be here, and I'm more excited we're ah, geez, less than 45 days out from Community Summits here, and I'm more excited we're ah, geez, less than 45 days out from community summits.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am excited. I think about it probably a couple times a day right now. I am very excited, so tell us a little bit about yourself. Introduce yourself, what's your role at Dynamic Communities and how long you've been there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've been at Dynamic Communities probably nine months going on nine months Funny, I was talking to the organization about a year ago come Summit. But my role as the VP Community Director of Activations is to work hand-in-hand with partners to see how we can create events or engagements that are getting users more involved in the community holistically, so on a regular basis, I'm working with partners. We built a handful of programs that we're launching at Community Summit this year or even next year that we're working on, that we're aiming to bring more engagement to the community, find better ways to get people to connect, discuss, learn as a community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great, I'm glad you're there. I know I saw you just recently at the BizApp Partner Summit in Bellevue, washington this summer, so you did a great job. So what is the event and how long has it been running?
Speaker 2:Jeez, oh man, summit. I think Summit goes back close to 15 years at this point. It's running this year, october 19th to 23rd, down in Orlando, florida. It'll be at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center and, as we look at, the 19th to 23rd, that's the core days of Summit, though a lot surrounds Community Summit, as you're aware I know you're oftentimes a speaker at the event. We have academy classes on the front end that are more immersive Classes that are going on as opposed to maybe the one hour half hour sessions that are going on throughout the week at community summit, and there is well over 600 of those that are going to be produced and put on this year by a lot of different people in the community that are giving back and sharing their expertise, whether it's Microsoft MVPs, microsoft themselves, partners or ISVs or even users in the community.
Speaker 1:Great, I know you talk about it being the largest world event for Dynamics user. Is that your claim?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's. I mean, if you look at the numbers, right, that's the claim, right. We are the largest Microsoft Biz Apps user conference on the planet. What's great about it is it is a true community event.
Speaker 2:This isn't something that somebody else comes in and produces. This is something that we lean on with an advisory board. They go through over close to 2,000 submissions of classes that people are looking to come in and speak about, right? They make those suggestions, we help guide those suggestions, we build in a theme overall, and then we also come out here and make decisions around what the event's going to look like. So part of that is sessions, right, but a large part of that is also just networking, right. So we have the show floor with close to 300 sponsors on it, and on that show floor this year we've introduced some new things that I'm sure you've heard about. We have a handful of activations like axe throwing, pickleball and arcade coming to the floor. So there's some really unique things that we've seen in the community that users are looking for as a way to kind of spice up but also to create a new level of engagement across our events.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was one question I was going to get to.
Speaker 2:It's kind of what's new, new what's different that you can expect, and so pickleball, that's different, that's different yeah, you know, if you look at the audience that's coming to these things, right, there's a demographic that we're trying to make sure we satisfy, but also, I would say, a less intrusive way to have conversations with people. Right, it's one thing to come up to a booth and see something you're not sure if it's what you want to really engage with as a user, as you're walking through the show floor, coming up and seeing an arcade and being like, hey, I wouldn't mind grabbing a game, a Donkey Kong or Pac-Man, having that and then following up with. Hey, you know, you did really. Great.
Speaker 1:Thanks for visiting our booth, you know what do you do as a business, right? It's a much nicer way to kind of break the ice and engage at a personal level, as opposed to just pure business all the time. Yeah, that's true. So you could, you know, play pac-man or something. Take a little break. It's a nice conversation starter too. Like you know, how well do people know the pac-man, donkey, donkey Kong, 80s arcade themes, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got it, but I think for your community in particular, right in working with partners and ISVs, this is something that I think partners also can kind of break out of their shells and maybe from doing the same old thing and bring a theme into their booth right, and it brings a little bit of fun into it. I'm talking with one of the partners this past week as I was doing a podcast that I know we haven't launched yet, but he was talking about hey, we're going to come in and we're bringing in caddy uniforms, right, and it's because they're doing a golf simulator. So it's like a very fun way to kind of introduce themselves, the community, and kind of guide, you know, the user to to what they need or want as a caddy. Would, you know, make a recommendation for what's on the?
Speaker 1:table. Of course that's a great idea. Yeah, and it's memorable. That's the other thing too. So, yeah, great. What do you expect the attendance to be this year? And you know kind of, how's that compared to last year's attendance?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're targeting somewhere between 5,000 to 6,000 users, which is right on par with where we were last year maybe a little bit of growth in it.
Speaker 2:And what's really unique as we look at our year-over-year growth at Dynamic Communities in this event right is we focus on kind of four key users that are always participants at this event, being the creators, the partners, the buyers and the users. And the creators, really for Microsoft. This year we're bringing in even more typically is about 10% of the audience at Community Summit, but we're bringing in more engineers, but also people who are going to speak to the roadmap, and I think people who attend Community Summit not only want to learn about the products they have, but also see where things are going. So it's important for us to bring those creators to the table at the event and make sure that they're speaking to the community about where things are headed, what to prepare for and how they can better get your business there. And that's something that partners are there to learn as well, because a lot of new waves are released, typically in the October timeframe, but they're also then able to bring their customers there, to network with them, to socialize with them.
Speaker 2:We had that great, strong touch point that Community Summit offers and then also bring people who are just interested in making an investment in the BizApps ecosystem right, the buyers, which again is typically 10% of the audience, 15% of the audience. They're coming here to make informed buying decisions, to network with users who are running this stuff, but also to hear from the creators again at Microsoft and the partners to kind of vet out do I have the right partners who could take me to the next level?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's a good point. It can be strategic in that you're learning about, kind of, where Microsoft's taking the product and also kind of engage with the partners that can help you build that ecosystem that you need. Yeah, that's great. Tell us a little bit about the sessions I know you mentioned kind of at a high level. There's extra things happening before and after, but for the sessions can people go out and do their planning now? Is there details that they can look at?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think one of the most interesting or exciting things we've invested in is building out a really rich ability for people to filter right 600 sessions. A lot of people look at that and like, wow, that's overwhelming. But if you say you know what I'm running Business Central, I'm probably not the rookie user, right? Maybe I'm a 200, 300 level user and I'm looking for sessions maybe that are targeting more manufacturing, because that's the segment I'm in as an industry. Or you know what I'm looking for sessions maybe that are targeting more manufacturing, because that's the segment I'm in as an industry. Or you know what I'm looking for sessions that will help me optimize the investment that I've made, as opposed to you know something that will help me get me started. Right, those filters that are on the website. When you come out here and evaluate if this event's right for you or you've already registered, you can come out here and build your sessions. Now All the sessions are already online. You can see those and then you can kind of personalize them based on your persona too right?
Speaker 2:Maybe I'm a financial controller in an organization, I can find sessions that fit me versus opposed to the operational resource. Who's coming in looking for a different set of sessions?
Speaker 1:Oh, and often customers do that. They bring several of the team members right, so someone from operations or the warehouse or you've got the accounting team, you know. So everybody kind of has their own targeted sessions that they can go and learn. But what I found too as a customer, when I was a customer going to these events, is get you know kind of divide and conquer right. Pick your sessions that you all feel like are going to benefit the organization and then get together and debrief right, like what did you learn? And then go back and share that with the team. I always felt like that was kind of that little bit of planning up ahead and then debriefing afterwards before you forget and get back to your day-to-day job.
Speaker 2:No, that's a good point and I think, for the partner audience on this call or the ISV audience on this call, I've heard from some that are prepping in advance. This year we're also providing out a list to partners of their customers who are attending the event right, who are sponsored by the community site, which is nice because then they can kind of plan to say, hey, this is who's coming. And what we've seen really successful partners doing is going out there saying, hey, company X, we know you're coming, we know you're a manufacturer, we know this is your skill set, we know you've been on Business Central for three years Building that schedule and kind of dropping it in their inbox to say, hey, join us, come. This is what you can learn. And that's where we're seeing the attendance start to creep up is we're seeing more companies and more people because they now see the relevance behind what's inside of the sessions that are being produced.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, partners can really guide their customers on what sessions to attend, what sponsors or ISVs to visit in the expo hall. So definitely as far as the session tracks. Is there any new session tracks this year?
Speaker 2:I mean the largest one that continues to grow, I would say, is our AI tracks right. There's a lot more content coming in around AI holistically that I know the community has asked for and it's part of the advisory or the planning committee that's behind this is definitely more aware. I would say. Women in tech is also something that continues to grow and we'll have a segment there that's available, I think, outside of even sessions, to your point, we have the tech medic desks that are often a big hit right. People bring their complex problems and you have these MVPs that are behind these desks who know things inside and out and can really answer a lot of questions. So, outside of sessions, holistically, those are a couple areas that we know people see a lot of value being gained as they attend the event and look forward to All right.
Speaker 1:And then you mentioned Microsoft's participating. Are they doing the keynotes this year? What can you expect from the keynotes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have some high-level keynotes. A lot of those will be released in the coming weeks here, which will be great. That's something that we typically reserve to try to amp up the show as we get closer and closer to it, but we're going to be full of keynotes that are definitely in there that will come up. We're going to be doing our Legends Awards this year as well for the community people. We're doing All-Star awards this year as well. We have our MVP reception on Monday night. That we'll be doing that's a more intimate affair that we're hosting and putting on and then our large closing party as well that we're going to be announcing here shortly too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and is there? That's a lot of networking events, but are there other events? Like I know, there's the welcome receptions and kind of for the different groups or communities. Like for the Nav Business Central community, there's like a get together on Sunday.
Speaker 2:There's a whole lot going on. I would say for those interested in that, we have on the Summit NA website under the agenda, there is an agenda at a glance and you can actually go all the way from the 17th, all the way to the 23rd. So it's Friday to Thursday, right, you get literally a full week of stuff going on and what you can potentially participate in. We have some stuff going on on Sunday like pre-conferences that are going on I'm happy to share and talk a little bit about as well. But, yeah, a wide variety of stuff going on and some of the stuff we know of and some we don't, right, because a lot of partners are putting on their own events, especially Tuesday night, which is typically partner dinner, partner party night, where you'll see a lot of different things going on in the community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, definitely. There are some parties and partners will then a lot of times have customer dinners or events that they host too. So, yeah, so it's a good time to do networking or advanced networking right that people can follow. I know that you guys are posting a lot. I see other people posting about the summit and things happening. What's a good hashtag to follow on social media?
Speaker 2:There's quite a few. Mysummitna is probably the most common one that I think you'll see out here. That is being used quite regularly by people off in the community or SummitNA. You know SummitNA is the website, but my Summit MA or Summit NA are the two big ones.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gotcha, I'm circling back to some of those pre-events. So I know you mentioned academy classes kind of pre and post summit. Those are training, accreditation classes Kind of people can get hands-on training. But you mentioned those pre-conference events, so let's talk about there's two of them this year. Do you want to go ahead and tell us about those?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we saw a need in the community, in particular, for the GP community right. The GP community has always been a big one that we've seen attendance for over the years at Community Summit and with Microsoft's announcements, we wanted to ensure that there was a day built to guide users on their path and journey forward right To really take out any misconceptions that are out there in the community. So the GP to BC Precon really is a program that's built to deliver insights directly from Microsoft executives, product experts. We're bringing in some leading partners who have experience with both GP and Business Central to really help show the differences, understand the impact, have relevant ISVs that are also there to help guide and ensure there's no white space gaps and to give context around change management, setting business requirements and the role of AI and other things as organizations look to make this change. And that'll be happening all day, sunday, 8.30 to 4.30 inside of the Gaylord as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, so separate ticketed event they need to register for.
Speaker 2:Separate ticketed events as well. Again, we have several sponsors coming in to speak to that that are focused just on this GP migration path. We also have Mike Wharton, the VP of Dynamics 365 Business Central from Microsoft, coming to speak and give the keynote for the day, which will be great as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it sounds like a great event to have partners encourage our TP customers to attend and kind of understand the why and the how of how to move to Business Central. That's great. I know that last year the events around that migration was really popular, so I'm glad to see that we have a focused event that people could participate in. What about the other pre-con?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the other pre-con again. I think this was kind of last year we did a marketing pre-con, right. This year I think we're trying to change things. We had a lot of feedback coming out of our partner executive summit this year in July that I know we spoke at, but the feedback was we're looking to support more training, right, we want to scale up a little bit. There was interest from both the sales segment, the marketing and the alliance segment in the community.
Speaker 2:So what we did was we pulled together and built an agenda that was focused around helping SIs, vars, isvs or SDCs in the community be AI-first frontier firms, as Microsoft's calling them now, and it's really to help with practical insights, guidance from both Microsoft as well as some industry experts that we can help guide these partners in the community forward but also foster inclusion and communication. Right. They're all going to be at Summit, typically over the next handful of days For business purposes. This is their time to come together, connect and network, but also hear from some industry leaders, like I know Cecilia Flambam's coming in to talk about the Frontier First in the AI area, which is really big and people are excited to hear about, but we have a handful of other community leaders that are coming in to share their guidance as well on the day.
Speaker 1:Great, and that's also on Sunday, correct, okay, so kind of a partner event that day, or a customer event that day. So, okay, awesome, and don't forget. Those are now on the website. You can register for them. There is a separate fee, so don't forget that.
Speaker 1:And I think the price goes up here kind of middle of September. So if you haven't already registered, get that early bird, get registered sooner than later, right, yep, all right, and let's just quickly talk about the Expo and the Marketplace. So the Expo Hall how many sponsors are there? Because I know that that's a great opportunity to meet ISVs and partners.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think we're over 275 right now, so we're approaching 300. We have about 25, give, give or take slots. Maybe that are left at this point in time. But again this time of year is very busy. I mean we're averaging one to 200 users registered for Summit every day between now and October. So it's a busy time of year and again we're getting a lot of partners who are making last minute decisions to get on board, to come in, or who are coming into the community and want to make a splash, that are registering.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's definitely. You should carve out time on your schedule to go. It's on what days? It's on Monday or Tuesday and Wednesday. Which days? Yes?
Speaker 2:correct All of the above.
Speaker 1:All of the above. Okay, I know the welcome reception on Monday night is going to be in the expo hall, so good way to kind of get a quick little chance to see who's there and mark your mark, your calendar and who you want to meet with or go visit yeah, monday night six to eight is the opening reception on the show floor and then at.
Speaker 2:while that reception is going on, we're doing the Legends Awards on the Legends days inside the Expo as well, so that'll be a great networking opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's always good to plan if you're going to do Expo time while sessions are going on Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday afternoon, make some time to go back to the hall because it's a little quieter. After lunch People go back to the breakout sessions. You have a little bit extra time to visit with the sponsors of that and people that have booze there. So I find it gets a little overwhelming. You know like when during the reception everybody's there, it's hard to talk to everyone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we try to break it up too. Like I know, Monday is the GP or the BC general session, whereas we come into Tuesday it's the F&O and the AI general session. So we're kind of breaking those up over a couple of days. The CECRM is on Wednesday, so each of the days have a little bit in there for people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what are the general sessions again?
Speaker 2:There's a CECRM general session. There's going to be a GP general session, a roadmap session as well. Those are both on Wednesday. On Tuesday we have the FNO or FSCM general session, along with the AI co-pilot and power platform general session. That's going on, and Monday we round it out with the BC roadmap general session.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you're interested in those topics, definitely should attend those general sessions. Okay, so one last question In your opinion, what's kind of the main reason that people should attend, or why do you think people will attend this year's summit?
Speaker 2:I think the main reason people should attend right is I think everybody's journey is a little bit different.
Speaker 2:With Microsoft Biz Apps, right, people have either given their opinion If we look at again the demographic that comes to Community Summit every year everybody's in a little bit different stage.
Speaker 2:But I think in the end, people need innovation in their organizations now more than ever with AI. They need education to get better at what they're doing and remove legacy debt. To get better at what they're doing and remove legacy debt. And maybe training right To get better at what they're doing, to become more efficient and stand out, you know, in the community so they can help their organization move forward and evolve. So I think all those three are great reasons to come on top of the overall networking. I think a lot of people sometimes underestimate the networking where you can come out here, not even just meeting with partners, but also just users meeting users or partners meeting partners right, learning from the peers in your community are a really critical part of why you should attend and show up and hear what's going on in the space that you know so many people in the community or across the world are a part of.
Speaker 1:Great. Well, thank you, giuseppe, for joining me today on ISU Talks to talk about Community Summit and all the things we can expect, and I'm super excited about it. Here's some information. If you're wondering where to go, go to summitnacom Again the hashtag if you want to follow on social media and during the summit, I'm sure people will be using that to share their pictures. Also, if you haven't registered yet, you've got my promotion code. That's 10% off Dynamic Connections 10. And so you can get a discount on at least the registration. So, if you haven't registered, use that promo code, and then how can they reach out if they have questions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, questions. There's a great link on the website with any questions that promo code and then how can they reach out if they have questions? Yeah, questions, there's a great link on the website with any questions that they have. Otherwise, feel free to reach back out to myself. I'm happy to put them in touch with the right resources from the Dynamic Community site with any questions around Community Summit.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, thank you again, giuseppe, I really appreciate it and friends, we'll see you again here soon at summit. I look forward to seeing you. Bye-bye, bye.