Greetings from Convergence 2008

 

I'm back on the road again, with the AIIM conference in Boston last week, some vendor site visits Thursday and Friday, and I'm writing this from Orlando where I've been attending Microsoft partner briefings and Convergence.
It struck me this weekend how far we have come with technology since I graduated from college. I had just signed up for the new Sprint unlimited phone/data plan ($100/mo, all you can talk and surf), and I was thinking about my business travel when I had just graduated from college. I remember that whenever you got off of the plane, you made a mad dash for the pay phone banks to check your messages with a human at the office (and by messages, I mean paper messages). Last week, I downloaded a 3mb pdf file on my Treo 755P while the plane was loading, and reviewed the listings of sessions at Convergence next week from my phone. Crazy changes in a very short period of time- and it's still evolving. I wonder what things will be like in another 15 years...
Convergence is quite the experience- imagine a massive convention center with thousands of MS Partners, as many as 2000 employees, and a trade show the size of a football field focused on all of the MS Dynamics products. A few things to not miss if you're here:
1. Avalara has a booth (just inside the expo area against the left hand wall). They do outsourced sales tax as an add-in app for GP, and have some really amazing geospatial technology which helps you make the byzantine world of sales tax easy. Visit their booth, or go to Avalara.com. They have a super-primo tiki party on Thursday night- if you're a GP partner, see Marshall and get the passes. I'm told that it's THE party of the show.
2. HP is here in force- you can't miss them- right inside the front door. They have enough computing power here for a small data center, and I recall some nice giveaways as well.
3. The MS Dynamics and other Microsoft groups have a strong presence here, including FRx. You should go speak to some of the product managers here while you are in Orlando- they are really nice, and have been very helpful.
4. CCH is here with their sales tax solutions for companies. Since the IRS uses their solutions, they're one of the 800 lb gorillas in this space.
5. Captaris looks interesting- will be going back to learn more about their products this afternoon.
6. Lots of good-looking report writers here, including the Solver Excel reporter. I'm going to kick the tires on a few while I'm here.