Yesterday was day one at Convergence 2010 and it turned out to be a good one. The event, so far, has been well managed and attendance is strong. During the keynote in the morning it was announced that there are over of 8900 users, partners, ISVs, and Microsoft employees in attendance.

The keynote, as expected, featured some of the latest and greatest the Dynamics team has to offer. Dynamics GP 2010 was announced with some much needed improvements to BI and tighter integration with CRM and CRM Online.

The demo included some interesting integration between CRM and social media. Native functionality exists to define socially driven searches and IE accelerators that can push information to generate knowledge base articles. While the demo was limited it shows that the power of social media is being seen and embraced by Microsoft.

The concurrent and interactive sessions covered relevant topics and some were offered more than one time during the course of the conference. This is great when two topics of interest are presented at the same time slot.

Overall

So far Convergence 2010 has been a great experience. If you are a user or a partner of any of the Dynamics line of products I would suggest not missing the next one.

The Good

Staff/Attendants are knowledgeable and helpful. I have never been to a conference that had so may attendants. They seemed to be everywhere to help attendees find their way around the conference center.

The event was spread out over lots of real estate. While I also mentioned this in the ‘bad’ section I think it is a good thing. I sit behind a desk for too much of my life so some walking is good for me.

The Bad

The food. Breakfast and lunch were terrible. With as much as we paid for this conference this should have been much better. That being said I can only imagine that feeding 8900 people at one time is very difficult.

To handle the numbers of people and small sessions it would be expected that the location would have to be huge. The layout just requires a lot of walking back and forth up and down escalators. The dining area, expo center and large presentation room are located far away from the breakout rooms.

The #EpicFail

Wireless at the convention center is $75 per week. Are you kidding me! That would pay for 2 months of my 12M connection at home. Arrangements should have been made for free wireless access throughout the convention center.

According to TechCrunch the Chrome for Mac Beta is only 7 bugs away from being a reality.  While the beta may be released soon it will be released without some features.  The most notable features missing include bookmark manager, gears, and full extension support.  The developers of Chrome for Mac have set a self-imposed deadline of “end of the year” to release the beta.

I use Evernote to religiously store information and act as a central repository for all of my notes.  I was excited to hear that Evernote raised $10 million in ‘B’ round funding.  The lead investor in this round of funding was Morgenthaler Ventures.  To get the full details check out the Evernote blog to read more…