ISV Talks
ISV Talks
AI Everywhere: Dynamics Communities Summit NA 2025 Recap with Carol Livingston & Bob McAdam
In this special Summit Recap episode of ISV Talks, Carol Livingston is joined by Bob McAdam from Tasklet Factory to unpack the energy, insights, and unforgettable moments from Summit NA 2025 in Orlando, FL. With over 5,200 attendees, this year’s event was a true celebration of the Dynamics and Power Platform communities.
In theis episode you will hear about:
- Microsoft’s continued emphasis on AI through all keynotes and sessions
- Practical AI agents embedded in Business Central and other MS products
- The launch of the Learners platform that centralizes meetups, roadshows, national events, and session recordings. It’s a smarter way to track skills across the Microsoft stack—ERP, CRM, Power Platform, Azure, and now Copilot—without getting lost in a maze of links and invites.
- The ten-hour partner enablement workshop, live Copilot Studio builds that actually shipped working apps, and a GP-to-BC workshop that encouraged BC adoption and compared familiar processes side-by-side.
- The heart of the episode is decision-making under pressure. You’ll hear three GP paths in motion—staying put with strong partner backing, running a broad market scan, or mapping a two-year migration to Business Central—each with timelines, budgets, and risk controls.
- A Grateful Dead-inspired community T-shirt featuring a “tour” of past Summits dating back to 2005
- Academy classes, Legend and Allstar Awards, and the Women in Tech Luncheon
- A bustling Exhibition Hall with nearly 300 ISVs and VARs, plus sponsor-led activities like Puppy Snuggles, Pickleball, Axe Throwing, 80s Arcade, and Professional Headshots
- Advanced networking opportunities including the BC Bash, PowerGP Online party, and partner-hosted client events around Orlando and at the Gaylord Palms Resort
- Reflection on Bob & Carol's panel session with Tiffany Allen and Fauwaz Hussain, where they tackled the Top 5 questions to ask your ISV—and how to spot red, yellow, and green flags in partner relationships.
📍 Mark your calendars: Summit NA 2026 heads to Nashville at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, October 11–15, 2026.
If this breakdown helps you plan your next step—subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review. What’s the one AI or migration question you want answered before Summit NA in Nashville?
Welcome to this episode of ISV Talks. I'm Carol Livingston, your host of ISV Talks and the owner of Dynamics Connections. And on this episode, I have Bob McAdam from Tosset. Welcome, Bob.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks, Carol. It's always great to join you on ISV Talks. So thanks for the invite.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, thank you. So we're doing our now it's becoming a thing after every event. We're doing a recap of Dynamics Community Summit. And I'm excited to go through and talk about what happened at the event last week. We're now a week after Summit in October 2025 here. So fun. There is a lot to talk about. My goodness. So, well, first let's introduce yourself and tell the audience who you are, how long you've been in the dynamics community, a little bit about Toslit.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So I'm Bob McAdam. I head up Strategic Partnerships at Tasklit, which is a Danish company that is best in class mobile warehouse management for business central finance and supply chain management and their on-premises predecessors. Say that 10 times fast. I have I spent almost I spent over 25 years in the GP channel. This was my 18th summit event going back to September 2007, the very first G Pug summit. I remember them all. I really do. And and I've been in this, I've been in this business for now 28 years. So it's been really wonderful. And the people in our business are great, Carol, which makes going to events like Community Summit North America more than worth it.
SPEAKER_02:That's awesome. I met somebody at Summit who has been to every single summit. That would be Mark Rockwell from Software. He said he has been to every single summit since the beginning.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. And I bet you Frank Vukovitz has been to everyone. And it wouldn't surprise me if Mark Rhodes from Continua.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Frank at Delinia and Mark Rhodes at Continua. It would not surprise me if they have been to every single one.
SPEAKER_02:I think they need to give you guys a pen.
SPEAKER_00:I know. I have a community summit deal, but I don't have a gold. I'm waiting for my gold watch, John Seaford. Where is it?
SPEAKER_02:Right, John, put it on the list. We need the recognition here. So, well, first of all, let's let's start out with what were kind of the big themes in the announcements at Summit that we can share with the audience.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sure. So of course they talked about AI and copilot, and they also talked about copilot and AI. And of course, that's ubiquitous now in our industry. And and rightly so, because of course, the dynamics products and so many other things have co-pilot ingrained in them, and and people that are going to leverage this new technology, and it is relatively new still, are gonna scale quicker and and better. So it's cool to try and wrap your arms around it or at least figure out what AI agents are and what they can do for you. So that was all over the place. They even had a this year, they even had a copilot tech desk for people who wanted help with that, which was phenomenal.
SPEAKER_02:And it was busy.
SPEAKER_00:And it's going full full bore, no doubt.
SPEAKER_02:I definitely feel like that theme was woven in and incorporated in kind of everyone's sessions and overall at the general sessions for each of the products. It definitely was discussed in case studies, examples, again, that you know, theme of Microsoft asking the partners, especially to be kind of customer number one, right? Like use it yourself, use it internally, right? That frontier firm idea, right? Be the first, use it yourselves, and that helps inspire customers, but also you can see some practical ways that can be used in their business.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, those practical examples like in Business Central or what have you. If I can see how an AI agent helps me do a job or series of tasks in a department, right, that then I'm gonna understand it better. You have lots of people, lots of speakers from Microsoft talking about all that's involved and and how it's growing and all this other stuff. I want to see practical examples, and then I can take that back to my colleagues who were unable to attend summit and and tell them how it's gonna help help us out tremendously in the back office.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, definitely a lot of opportunities and training. Of course, DCI is got their co-pilot event in March, right? That's yeah, is that the second year or third year this year?
SPEAKER_00:This coming March and 26 will be the second year that the AI agent and co-pilot summit will be a reality. And that that had a nice kickoff last year in San Diego. And I expect attendance will probably be up like 50% from the first iteration, which is that that show's got legs.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so that's in March. So I got a little time to plan to attend that one. And of course, the AI Business Solution Partner Executive Summit is still too long. The partner event will be in July again in Bellevue.
SPEAKER_00:And that's a great show because there's the right people in our business, the decision makers and the owners of some of these firms, they're at this show. John C. really kind of nailed this one, and it's in the middle of the July. My wonderful colleagues in Denmark are on summer holiday, and and the the new fiscal year is kicking. So I love going up there to the mothership and and talking to some of the people in North America who are ready to kick off the new Microsoft year. That's a good show. And and that one will probably get five, six hundred people next summer in the middle of the summer. That's that's pretty impressive.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think this year they're at 450. So yeah, if they get to 500 next year, that makes sense. And you're right, it's in the area next to the Microsoft campus. So there's a lot of Microsoft people attending and speaking at this event, and you're getting firsthand right from the leadership of Microsoft about their priorities for the fiscal year. That's just kicked off for them in July. And so it's a good event for partners to go to. So I definitely recommend, I think it is becoming a really important event. So small, but it's growing. But there's a lot of copilot training, and DCI, of course, is really keen on trying to help the community move forward in that journey of learning about how AI and copilot can help in their businesses. What else was announced at Summit?
SPEAKER_00:At Summit this year in Orlando, they have their new learners platform, right? They John Seaford was up on stage on the keynote that first morning talking about the learners. They even had big QR codes you can sign up right away and get logged in. They handed out the t-shirt. Was it kind of a slide?
SPEAKER_02:I'll show you. There's yeah, there it is.
SPEAKER_00:There it is. That's that's that's John's creation. Yeah, 20 20 summits, 20 years of summit, and oh yeah, on the back, that's like a like a concert tour. I've got them all memorized, I'm telling you. I got them all memorized.
SPEAKER_02:Back in the early days, there were two different UG groups, and then they emerged, right? So that's right.
SPEAKER_00:So the in the initial years, AXUG was the first summit, and uh that was how the company really got started was CIOs using Xapta, which is what it's called originally, and not having any user groups to lean on when they were implementing that application. So once AXUG got percolating, and AXUG Summit had a couple of runs under its belt. G Pug was born, it had its summit, and then in 2008, you had CRMUG jump in, and uh the nav folks had their own user group already, but they agreed to join in on the fun. And 2008 was the first time all four UGs were actually together, staggered, but together out in Las Vegas at Green Valley Ranch, which was a really cool place to go. Let me tell you that sounds neat. Yeah, yeah. So definitely 20 years of summits and the t-shirt and the learner's platform, all things to celebrate over time, and and learners platform getting end users together to get smarter because 20 years ago you had four summits running at the same time, right? Now the Microsoft stack is so much more broader, right? We didn't have the power platform tools, we didn't have Copilot and AI back then, we didn't have Azure and all this cloud computing stuff way back when everybody was on-prem, but now it's like the stack is bigger and stronger and wider, right? And uh people just have more stuff to learn than just their ERP or CRM. They've got to figure out all the integrations, and the list is really long.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so it's great to go to an event like this and really get exposed to that, learn about it, and be able to take that back to your organization and help help the team understand and maybe start looking at how they can learn and incorporate it. Boy, AI, like that was the topic uh in every session. I feel like that was definitely mentioned about a million times, right? Maybe yeah, and that learners platform too. So just to kind of back up, so that kind of takes in all of the activities that would have been in kind of the previous chapter meetings, that's now part of the learner's platform. So they'll have local events, they'll have regional events, they'll have national events, and even global events, it sounds like is in their vision. So it's also gonna have digital events and recordings. So, like anything recorded during summit will be on the learner's platform, and it's free to join. So everybody should become a member, at least. You can also apply to become a leader, a speaker. They're always gonna need speakers, and they're always gonna need sponsors, of course, to help pay for that, right? And of course, think about hosts, different locations. Maybe you have a facility that would host a local learners group, that'd be great too. So I'm excited about that.
SPEAKER_00:It's nice, they're putting it all under one uh under one umbrella, right? Oh, there's so many community road shows, and there's virtual events and podcasts, and now John's got three events going during the year. John Seaford with the the co-pilot summit in March and the partner executive summit in July, and then the big summit in October. So, I mean, it it's all being rounded up into one place. You can't be everywhere, although you and I do try to be everywhere if we can, but at least we can't see Bob does.
SPEAKER_02:Bob Bob's everywhere.
SPEAKER_00:I'm trying to be. I'm gonna get all the pilots in the United States to know me on a first name basis, but at least it's all in one place where we can figure out what's going on in our community, which is across multiple ecosystems, not like the old thing you just worried about GP or AX or what have you. So it's nice that it's all been lassoed together.
SPEAKER_02:It's it's a nice additional, and they're gonna really organize my regions. If you want to be a regional leader and kind of help organize or facilitate, yeah, they're gonna need a lot of it's gonna be community driven, so we need lots of volunteers. So I'm excited about that.
SPEAKER_00:And that's really where you can do well and and maybe build your career on a specific industry or specific skill set. A lot of people who are big shots today were volunteers years ago, and over time they became known quantities because they put the time and effort in to volunteer and show up. That's what they knew.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, speaking of that, there were a lot of legends awards, uh, all-star awards.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I want to highlight some of those folks, or the Legends Awards were given out for the fourth time. So 2021 was the first year that John did that, John Seaford. He did a Legends Award just to kind of recognize people that had been involved in the community really since the get-go. And fortunately, believe it or not, yours truly got one of those inaugural legend awards, which is really nice. And get my picture on the legend stated and stuff, and and a bunch of other people that helped out. This year, they had I think nine or ten new legends. And the first one mentioned was my friend Mark Rhodes at Continua. And and Mark should have been in the class with me, and I lobbied with DCI. I'm like, gotta get Mark in there. His fingerprints are all over this company, and this year they they listed him off first, and rightly so. So, congratulations, Mark, and to all the other legends who did really well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, one worth mentioning. Well, of course, our in the GP space we had several. We had Wendy Epperson from Ninjavity, so she well deserved being recognized, and Pam Mashalik. I was I think she was kind of surprised. I don't know how they kept that a secret from her.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I know, especially since she lives there, but you're right. It's nice to see some people that have been walking the hallways of Summit for all these years get some recognition because, of course, back in the old days, it was a lot of work and just trying to build up and let people know what a user group was. A lot of people didn't know what that was in the early days, and that took several iterations of Summit before it finally began to take off and gain prominence.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. I the only comment I have about the Legends Award is that we were all like at the it was in the middle of the expo hall and the welcome reception kind of crowded.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, you need a bigger legend, yeah, need a bigger one and and a louder microphone. Giuseppe has a good voice, but there's a lot of noise in the expo because it's such a busy place, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and then get everybody together at the end after everybody's gotten their awards individually. They have the legends, all the alumni legends, everybody get on the stage too for picture. So it's like that that's a big stage. Yeah, well, well done to the legend award winners and all-star awards. So all-star awards are given by each of the eug groups, right? For their that's right, particular product and area.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I was not able to attend all the general sessions for each of the areas, but I do I did attend the one for BC, and you had and you had an all-female list of winners this time for BC. Kristen Haussman, Cecile Din, and Shannon Mullins were the BC All-Stars for 2025. And they and and all those ladies are all friends of mine, and they all started their careers volunteering with G Pug, and then moved up and and and now they're recognized all-stars in a different ecosystem, yeah, which is great. Meanwhile, on the GP side, you had Dave Laster, who's honestly one of the best minds in our ecosystem, period, and and he knows it, and he'll never tell you that, but I will. And uh Paige Horn from Ingevity, who used to work works with Wendy Epperson, the aforementioned Wendy, and then Chris Giesbrecht, who is out of Winnipeg at Agra Hub, and yours truly yours truly nominated him because I'm like, hey, we need users winning these all-stars, we can't be partners all the time. That's what user groups are about. And Chris has done a really good job trying to help his fellow GPN users talk about their journey to whatever's next. Are they gonna stay on GP? Are they gonna go to Power GP Online? Are they gonna move to something else in the Microsoft family? Are they gonna move outside of Microsoft to a competing ecosystem? And and he's got the best ideas. He's out talking to people, he's going to all the shows, not just the Microsoft ones, and he's making an assessment because his lift is gonna be heavy, yeah, and it's gonna be complicated, and he's gotta figure it out. It's really on his desk.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, they have a lot of users. I asked him how many users you have. He said, Well, probably about 300 overall. I mean, they're not all on GP, but there's like different products that they use, like Cavallo and Yeah, and so these are all critical business solutions from yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_00:He's got a big heavy lift, so yeah, he's gonna need all five years to figure it out. So I'm glad he won. He's been out front helping his fellow end users figure out what how how best to tackle this problem.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, he actually so one of the things that happened during summit is I was asked to be a media sponsor, which I thought. Yeah, a few extra posts on LinkedIn to promote some things coming up on before summit. And during summit, then gave me time to schedule an interview, a recorded video interview at Summit. And Chris was actually one of my interviewees. So to get his thoughts about being an attendee at the conference, and also asked him one of the questions I asked him was how what would it he recommend for first-time attendees? And he has some really good advice like don't be afraid, sit at tables, talk to people. When you get past that, then maybe volunteer to speak or co-speak with somebody else. So yeah, he's really coming into his own, I think.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he's the kind of guy that grabs his lunch on a given day and finds a table with a bunch of people he's never met before.
SPEAKER_02:And then he just starts asking them questions. So great advice. Well, let's kind of review what happened. So kind of backing up to before summit started and kind of the pre-events. Maybe we'll start with Saturday. That was October 17th, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, Saturday, the was it the 17th? Yeah, the days are all just Tasclit and Netstock and Mary Myers at World Max sponsored a golf scramble at the nearby Falcons Fire golf course right around the corner from The Gay Lord. And we had about 44, 45 golfers out there, including Mike Morton, who Mary always pairs herself up with because this was her idea, and she does a lot of hard work to make it happen. And uh, we had a we had a really nice time, we had great weather, and everybody had a good time, no rain, lots of advanced networking, if you know what I mean, and just a nice day all the way around to kick off some of the people that came in one day early. And you got some serious golfers there, so they're not fooling around. I was seriously driving a cart around and having a nice cold beverage to make sure my body temperature was maintained during the warm Central Florida days.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, good way to get acclimated right away, right? On the golf cart, get warm, and then also other things are happening too. I had academy classes going over the weekend, some pre-training, you know. So if you wanted to get there early, maybe go through a class, it was a separate ticketed event, but there were a lot of classes happening in all different areas. Um that was happening over the weekend, and then also there were the pre-conference events, so no lack of things to do, right? There were two of them. So do you want to talk about those?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. So I went to bed early on Saturday night after golfing all day or enjoying the the afternoon because Sunday morning was the partner enablement workshop, which was about was about 10 hours of time. Joe Craigliano, my friend, who worked at Microsoft previously for a long time and is now working at Dynamic Communities, got that up to snuff. And Joe had good content, a little bit of copilot, a little bit of AI, a little bit of marketing, right? A little bit of partner panels, all kinds of things. It was a variety of things. It was a long day. We started around eight or so and then wrapped up a little bit after six with a lunch in between lunch hour in between and a couple of coffee breaks, but it was a lot to absorb and good networking time. I mean, those partner-only events, like the one in July that they have, part of the reason to go is the content. But for me, the driver is the people that are there, right? It's there's no customers, it's all partners. We want to talk and network and strategize, and I want to tell them about what we're doing at Tasklet and whatnot. And that's just the company that that they're keeping at these partner-only events is really, really good. And I really enjoy attending those. The networking is as good as the content. So that was Sunday. On top of Sunday as well, they also did a GP to BC event, and it was it was centered on users attending so that they could figure out start what Chris Giesbrecht has been talking about with his fellow comrades. There is trying to figure out what how am I gonna how am I gonna do this, right? Yeah, yeah. It's been a full year since Microsoft made this announcement about GP's end of life, December 31, 2029. So now 20% of that time is is out the window, and GP end users have four years to figure out what they're gonna do. And and maybe they'll stay on GP, and maybe they're part of that. But if that's not the case, or they don't want to be using unsupported software, they got to figure out a plan. And and more than likely, small to mid-sized businesses running dynamics GP will end up on Business Central if they want to stay in the Microsoft system, which I'm of the opinion they probably will do that. So a few uh partners like Velocio and SA Global and some other ISVs that are in those spaces sponsored the event. And I heard they had like 75 or 100 people there. Yeah, so that's a good start. It's time to start thinking about this if you're not doing it already.
SPEAKER_02:My husband Brian and I went to the pre-conference events. I went to the partner enablement for the AI, and he went to the TP to BC workshop or event. And yeah, there was probably 75, 80 customers in there. And yeah, he said Mike Morton did a really nice job talking about hey, we know TP has a really good loyal customer base, and we're hoping that you take a look at BC because it's got all these modern features, and we're continuing to invest. So very impressed with that, and then also our legendary Terry Healy from Microsoft, and then also Kenny. I can't say his last name, but on the BC side, they did a kind of a one-off, like this is the way you do it in TP, this is how you would do it in BC. So kind of a comparison, which I heard was really well done. And so, yeah, good event. I'd say on the the partner event, oh, and they the partner AI enablement workshop really came out of the summer partner executive summit because people were saying, Hey, look, if AI is a priority, we need more training. So, this was an attempt for partners to get more involved and more training around AI. And at the end of the day, one of my favorite things was Dwayne Robinson.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, who had the co-pilot studio dude. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Co-pilot studio dude. If you guys haven't registered or subscribed to his channel on YouTube, you should. He's got all kinds of, he kind of reminds me of Bill Night, the science guy, Matt Co-Pilot. He's a little dirty, but he is pretty entertaining. Um, they built a couple apps right there in our session for partners, actually. And so it was really good.
SPEAKER_00:In co-pilot, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:In co-pilot, yeah. He and his colleague Christian did a really good job. So, and that was at the end of the day when usually people are struggling to stay awake. So right, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I kind of wish they'd started with that and then maybe bring them back at the end to kind of show an end result. But you're right, it was it was pretty a unique concept. You don't often see something built specifically for an event that's demoed right there in front of you, you don't really see that very often.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, right. Like he kind of felt like, okay, this is something that you could do, and so and his channel. I definitely recommend the co-pilot studio dude. You should check that out.
SPEAKER_01:Literally, so what happened on the studio? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So we we've only got to Sunday, so we need to move along. So Monday will happen Monday, Tuesday.
SPEAKER_00:Monday was it was a keynote kickoff with John Seaford and the learners program and various Microsoft speakers, and they finished on time, which is something I always measure. And then we got right into sessions, and it was a busy first day, and and the expo was open that evening. I think it was around 5:30 with cocktails and usual advanced networking opportunities. So you could visit all of the booths that you need to visit. And back in my partner days, which was a long time ago, I used to walk my customers through the expo because it's a daunting place and there's a lot in there. And if you have your partner walking you through, he or she will help you find the solutions that they're familiar with or they trust and make your job and make your life easier. So I used to do that all the time, and I and I love being on the expo pulse of the event, really is it's tons of fun, tons of fun.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it seems like with the expo hall, they have over almost 300 booths and sponsors, and they had activities on the floor. Like, what were some of the activities that were there? Remind me. So we had pickleball, right?
SPEAKER_00:Pickleball for the first time. I thought when I first saw that on A4, I'm like, Are you serious? Somebody's actually do this, but but Jennifer Harris at TMC, they sponsored it, and Jennifer, being savvy like she is, not only got her name all over the pickleball court, but was up on stage with John during the keynote on day one. And I thought, okay, right, she's smart, she's she's gonna she's genius, she's gonna hit the ball fast, and and John better be ready because here it comes. That was really good, and they also had the puppies again. I think Avalera sponsored it this time, and the general consensus on the puppies is that they're all cute, and everybody just loves going over there and sitting in the pen and and watching them play around. It's pretty cool. They had an arcade and they had axe throwing, they had they had all kinds of different activities in and around headshots. I think Vertex sponsored that, I can't remember, but they had all different kinds of attractive things that move you around the expo, so you make sure you get to all of it. And as the event grows, it's not easy to get to all of it. I can tell you that I didn't get to all of it.
SPEAKER_02:Well, speaking of activities, like even the sponsors, the exhibitors, they had yeah, activities in their booth. Like I know my husband did this little AI thing where you got your picture. Look at Brian there, he's a super I know he's like that's what I look like, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Nobody knew that Carol was married to a superhero. Who knew?
SPEAKER_02:Right. Who knew? It's uh yeah, kind of a secret, but we and we had a good time. And I know like there were arcade games and booths, or were of course champagne or uh like a wine bar, but I also saw a lot of it seemed like a lot of arcade games and booths, a lot of lights and activities. You guys had an event too, right? In your booth, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:We had the uh for the first time ever, we did we had the Tasclit bar scanning game at our booth. So we used one of our devices. I can't remember if it was a honeywell or a zebra, but it was set up like a scan gun. So it had a trigger. Yeah, yeah. And for 45 seconds, you had uh QR codes going across the screen, and people could try and shoot at them and scan as efficiently as you can when you're leveraging the task lit solution. So in 45 seconds or 40 seconds, one person I think got 26 QR codes, and some of them move really fast, or they pop out of nowhere, kind of like a high-tech whack-a-mole, if you will. So uh to get 26 in like 40 seconds was pretty good. I know my score was maybe half that.
SPEAKER_02:That's pretty funny. When one of the activities we did was we went to score nine, they had a challenge the AI, so you could either bring a document and have them scan it and see if AI can read all the fields. Uh, I made Brian, who has not the greatest handwriting, sorry, Brian, write on a note and then on a piece of paper, and then they took a picture on a phone and then had AI extract that, the words on that handwritten note, and it came out really accurate. So I was very impressed.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, and that's good to know. I mean, uh, pe some people have chicken scratch and others can write extremely well. It's good to see that AI can doesn't discriminate.
SPEAKER_02:No, yeah, so there are a lot of activities for sure. Is and my only criticism is there's never enough time. I mean, my feet give out before that, probably, but if I had another three or four hours every day, I would would have liked to have more time on the floor.
SPEAKER_00:And and if your memory is good from the early days of summit, we really restricted expo time because we we wanted people to go to sessions and get smarter, and then we would have expo hours later that were separate from session time, but now they kind of blend together. There's a lot of uh vendors in the expo hole, and they want time in front of prospects, right? And and partners. I want partners in the reseller space to come to the task lip booth and see what we're up to. So it's it's a big investment and a lot of time and a lot of planning, and we want to leverage it as best we can as often as possible.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and it's it I feel the same way about the sessions, like there's always multiple sessions at the same time. It's like maybe there's a partner showcase I wanted to go to, but then there's another one at the same time. It's it's hard, it's hard to manage your time and get everything. Things that you want to get accomplished.
SPEAKER_00:You're right. Carter solution showcases are always scheduled at the same time so they don't compete with educational sessions, and you can't get to all of them, and there's only so many spots. So time in the expo hall is really valuable because you can't be in more than one place at one time.
SPEAKER_02:I thought we try, don't we, Bob?
SPEAKER_00:That's right. We try.
SPEAKER_02:What else happened on Tuesday? I can't remember. Tuesday.
SPEAKER_00:Well, there were lots of sessions on Tuesday. And one I recall talked about the top five things you should ask your Isv and make sure you avoid all the red flags, right?
SPEAKER_02:Red flags, yeah, with ISVs. And that I was on that panel along with you and our fabulous Tiffany Allen and Fawa Hussein, who we went through those five questions. Plus a bonus question. We had time for that. Yep. Yeah, the red, green, yellow, red flags. And we asked the audience too, what are their red flags? Got a lot of interaction with the audience questions or red flags that they had too.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I was happy with our attendance and some of the follow-up questions that came from the audience. Because if you're looking at a new ERP or perhaps you're trying to figure out the ISV landscape, you're probably going to have lots of questions. And a lot of end users are doing their homework before they approach their partner for an ISV. So if they can figure out some of those red flags or some of those questions to ask or ask ahead of time, their their search is going to be easier and more efficient.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I hope people took away from that too that they should partner, get with their partner too, because they have a lot of insight as well into what makes sense and what do they recommend. So do your research, but involve your partner, right? That was kind of a theme.
SPEAKER_00:Your partners are being harassed, I mean, updated constantly by wonderful ISPs like yours truly. So to make sure they're on the cutting edge and that their prospects get the right solution.
SPEAKER_02:So exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Then Wednesday rolled around, and at least as far as sessions go, and and yours truly had a evaluations strategy panel for dynamics GPN users, which involved Chris Keysbrecht, right? And two other end users, one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the other one in New York City, Rhonda and Dory, respectively. And they're each at different stages of their journey. Like Rhonda works for Explore Pipeline, and she is in Oklahoma, and she has a pretty good idea of where they're gonna go. She's not ready to pull the trigger just yet, but she's she's getting close and she expects to be live on something else by Q4 of 27. So the next two years. Chris is in the process of looking at where he's going. He's been to every show under the sun, Microsoft and competing shows this year. So he's getting smarter on what possibilities are out there. And Dory works for a company that has decided it's a family-owned business, and they've decided to stay on GP. And they're gonna figure out they have their partner, which is Gray Voc, and their partner has told them if you want to stay on this solution, we will support you. So Dory is gonna stay put. I had three different end users and three totally different pieces of their journey, all telling their story. And I'm sure that a year from now, when we get updates from them, we'll probably get great updates and be able to determine where they're at. Is Ronda almost ready to go live? Is Chris made a decision? Is Dory still gonna stay on GP? Is it going as she planned? So it's a it's a cool end user focused session, and we had decent attendance given that it was first thing in the morning, and then we rolled right into the GP general session after that.
SPEAKER_02:I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I don't know if we should have eight o'clock uh sessions after I know it was like the BC bash was the night before, and then the Power GP Online party was later that night, right? Oh man, I'm running out of juice at this age.
SPEAKER_02:Right? I know exactly. Well, and there's partner events that happen, and uh of course they had the AI, what they call it, the AI bash, anyway, that was part of the summit. Wednesday night, yeah. Wednesday night was kind of interesting. On one side, they had kind of the venue was split into two locations, which we didn't figure out till much later. So we got to the other one.
SPEAKER_00:You need AI to tell you that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I needed AI to tell me that. But the the one side they had a lady was on she was on stilts and feather outfit. So they had like, I don't know if they were Cuban, but they had dancers and Cuban band, and people were up doing salsa dancing, which is fun. I like that.
SPEAKER_01:Very floor, yep.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, lots of opportunities. The BC Bash, of course, that was Tuesday evening. You mentioned Power GP online event at the House of Blues and uh Disney Springs, right? So that was that's that's something else to do.
SPEAKER_00:I I talked to Wendy Epperson at that, and she said it was their highest attendance that they've had. So gosh, yeah. Well advanced advanced networking.
SPEAKER_02:GPR is no how to party, that's what I say.
SPEAKER_00:We're good at it, we've got lots of years under our belt, right?
SPEAKER_02:We have been doing it a long time. Well, Bob, we probably should wrap up, but where are we headed next year, Bob?
SPEAKER_00:I'm so glad you asked, Carol, because next year, Community Summit is heading back to Nashville, Tennessee, Music City, USA, for the first time in nine years, right? If you look on the back of that t-shirt that you brought home from Orlando, you'll see that Nashville was in 2017. It was a great show. At the time, it set an attendance record for all the summits that we'd ever done previously. And the 2020 summit was supposed to be in Nashville at the Gaylord Opry Land Hotel and Resort, but because of COVID, of course, none of that happened. So it's been a long time since Nashville was leveraged for summit, and now John Seaford and company are headed back there, and it's great, it's a great city. I've been talking it up to all my Danish colleagues who've not been to Music City before, and it's really wonderful. John told me they're gonna do a closing party at the Grand Old Opry the last night. Let's place it so awesome, and just everything about Nashville is really wonderful. And I really hope they have big plans, obviously, for next year because it's Nashville, but I'm really hoping that attendance will just spike because it would be so much fun to get everybody there in such a great, great city.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, we don't I don't think we talked about this yet, but there were 5,200 attendees, is what I heard on Thursday at this year's summit. So hopefully next year it'll be even bigger, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm hoping they'll get 6,000 or more. That would be that would be great. That would be a great gathering to have 6k in that show. What a wonderful place. I have one really good memory from 2017 because everybody dressed up, including yours truly, for that. So bring your cowboy boots and your hats next year, everyone. But okay, there was a GP bank wreck session done by Sean Dorworth, who's now at SA Global, and Amber Bell, who owns Training Dynamo, and they did it together dressed as this is a bank wreck session now. Johnny Cash and June credit carter, who was awesome. They dressed the part, they did the session, they knew what they were talking about, and they looked great. It was amazing. I'm like, this is our community right at the highest level doing a session in Nashville like that. It was awesome.
SPEAKER_02:That's I'm I'm excited about next year. So yeah, and I think they extended the registration early, early, early third kind of summit registration. So if you're planning to go, go ahead and register. I think it's 1199 or something anyway.
SPEAKER_00:Which is pretty good for a show that lengthy. And it'll be the week of October 11th, October 11th being a Sunday. So that means golf from Tasclit, Netstock, and World Max will be 1010, one o'clock sharp. We're already planning where we're gonna have it, but the week of October 11th in Nashville, Tennessee, a place you don't want to miss out on.
SPEAKER_02:All right, we'll see everyone there next year in Nashville. But thank you, boss, for taking a few minutes, well, more than a few minutes, to get over and recap with me on Dynamics Community Summit this year and our summit edition of ISV Talks. So thanks again. And we'll see all of you soon at the next event here coming up. Copilot in March, right? Yep. Take care, everyone. Bye bye.