This has been already my third Convergence and this year it was held in Orlando, Florida. Rather then trying to blog every day, I decided to just write one post that should give you a good overview of what happened and what was announced during Convergence 2008.

I believe we've had over 10,000 attendees and that resulted in jam-packed sessions throughout Convergence. One of the initiatives I really liked was Go-Green. The conference center in Orlando is HUGE, but still a lot of sessions needed an overflow! I hope that the conference center in New Orleans is the same size or even bigger but has bigger rooms. I must say walking around in these conference centers is tiresome! So what did we see and what was available for the attendees this year?

• Keynotes from Steve Ballmer, Kirill Tatarinov, Klaus Holse Andersen, Michael Park and  Kevin Schofield
• A general session presented by Yvonne Genovese of Gartner
• Over 250 concurrent sessions and interactive discussions
• The Community & Learning Center provided networking and learning opportunities through Product Communities, Technical Support, Convergence Connect and more
• No more barcode badges..RFID baby!

All the sessions including the CRM ones will be available online or via the Convergence 2008 Conference DVD following the event. Note: to receive the Convergence DVD set you must fill out an online evaluation form and specifically opt-in to receive the DVD set (DVDs will be sent at no charge 6-8 weeks following the event close). You have a week left to complete those evals!

Besides all of this, Microsoft announced that we will release a full BizTalk Adapter for CRM 4.0 (for now use this workaround), one that takes full advantage of all the new capabilities such as Multi-Tenancy etc. Microsoft will release an updated version of Microsoft CRM Mobile Express that will be compatible with the 4.0 version of CRM. Even though its in an Alpha phase they expect to release it soon.

Our next release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM is planned for the second half of calendar 2009. Some of you have already seen a little a sneak peak here at Convergence. The Product Team has committed to release a new version of CRM approximately once per two years. Ballmer made a statement that the ribbon will be part of every product, I am curious how the CRM Product team will embed this into the new version!

Something that was really cool is the fact that all Convergence attendees will get a free 30 day trial of CRM Live. Microsoft partners will get a free 12 month subscription to CRM Live for internal use, demos. Microsoft CRM Live will release updates approximately every six months:

• R1 - Open access (Spring)
• R2 - Online marketing / Adcenter integration
• R3 - Support for multiple language
• R4 - Timed with the next major release of Microsoft CRM

Something that was announced during a keynote was interesting to hear and finally see moving forward. Adcenter integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, something we started talking about a few years ago.

What did you like at Convergence or what were you hoping for to hear but didn't see? Let me know via the comments!

Tags: events
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