It’s the second “me too” today. Waldo has started the day with announcing the new season of the Belgian Dynamics Community, which was me-too-ed by Marq announcing the Dutch Dynamics Community. It’s my turn now to me-too the announcement of the Adriatics Dynamics Community. Three community announcements in a day—now that’s something!
I call this community Adriatics, because it won’t be limited only to Croatia—the idea is to spread it to other neighboring countries: Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia. We kick it off in Zagreb on October 4th, with the theme of upcoming localization of NAV 2009 SP1 and Sure Step 2010.
The idea of starting a Dynamics community in this region is not new, and it took a while, in fact a couple of years, to take it from a nice-to-have concept to a deployed solution (excuse my implementation lingo). Then, two months ago, I sent couple of mails around Microsoft Croatia to solicit their support in organizing the community, and the things were then truly rolling. We exchanged series of mails, held preparation meetings, and earlier today, the invitation mails for the kick-off event were sent out.
And it took only six minutes for the first participant to register.
The idea for the community is to organize occasional (once per two months) meetings where Dynamics professionals, consultants, developers, project managers, but also non-Dynamics-related community supporters join together, share experiences, knowledge, ideas… And eat some pizza.
The first meeting is scheduled for October 4th, at Microsoft’s office in Zagreb, with the following agenda:
- Community Announcement, by Zoran Šegić
- What’s New in Microsoft Dynamics NAV SP1 by Vjekoslav Babić (we are just going to get the first localized version of NAV 2009 – measly two years after the W1 release, so it’s about time we started discussing the “what’s new”)
- Pizza break
- Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step readiness, by Vjekoslav Babić
- MBS Partner Readiness Plan, by Stjepan Vuković
I’m not exactly sure how exciting this agenda is, but the fact that we are having any agenda is exciting enough for me, after years of the only community activity being just eating pizza. Not at Microsoft.
I’m also not too excited that I get so much to talk, but since this is the first meeting, somebody had to break the ice, and I believe I get a break and don’t actually get to speak anything at the next community meeting. We are currently preparing agenda for that one, so if you have a suggestion, and want to join – you are most welcome.
Also – we are inviting participants from other countries in the region to join, if possible in person (that’s the only way you get to eat pizza, anyway). If not possible, the techies at Microsoft’s office in Zagreb will do their best to organize the live meeting for people to join remotely.
You can register your participation here.
I’m really looking forward to seeing you all there. Let’s rock’n’roll!
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Big congrats to you and the initiative!!
If you ever need a speaker about NAV and Source Control ;°)
@waldo: Thanks! And I’d definitely like to see you (and other MVPs) as speakers, the only problem might be sponsorship. At current budget, we can sponsor your pizza 🙂 But if there is enough interest with partners, I am sure we can arrange something 😉
Congrats from The Netherlands as well! Cool initiative and very orriginal. 😉
Maybe I can do a session and combine this with a family vacation. 🙂
Cheers,
Mark
@marq: Yes, thanks! It pays to be original these days 🙂 And aren’t you glad that there’s at least one thing in common between all Dynamics communities? We all eat pizza! 😀 And please, consider yourself invited. I might even promote you a bit before–we are going to have prize draws, and your book will be one of the prizes.
Congrats and thank you so much!
This is really great especially for us – Bosnian Dynamics partners and enthusiasts who are left alone by local and any regional Microsoft Office.
I am looking forward to join via live meeting! :))
@Merana: no worries, we really plan to include Bosnia, especially because of the reasons you mention. I’m looking forward to having you join us through live meeting, and we are also going to try to organize at least one community event in Sarajevo. I’m sure the attendance would be surprisingly high. Please, go ahead and spread the news! And thanks a lot for the support–this is the ingredient which drives a community.
Congrats, Vjeko. What a coincidence.
@Luc: thanks! And that’s exactly what I thought when I saw two community announcements in my RSS reader yesterday morning… But you don’t have to be the first to be the best 😉
This is excellent initiative. I wait next steps.
@Aleksandar: Thanks for support. Can we get in touch, and try organizing something in Belgrade, to closely follow the event in Zagreb. Basically, Croatia focuses on NAV, Slovenians will follow up the next day with CRM, and Serbia can focus on AX (you have an AX MVP). From there we can take the community to next steps, and possibly start organizing common events. I’m really looking forward to see where this is going to take us.