NAVUG Summit: Expect Answers, Solutions, Lessons Learned (and Heavy Networking)

Ask Mark Rhodes, NAVUG Program Director, what excites him about NAVUG Summit 2015 and he'll point to networking. "That's where the magic happens," he says.

At NAVUG Summit in Reno, Nevada from the October 13-16, there will be ample opportunities during and in between official sessions to speak with other users, Microsoft MVPs, and representatives from the Microsoft product team.

NAVUG Summit is one of four events run concurrently by Dynamics Communities Inc., or DCI (alongside CRMUG, AXUG and GPUG Summits). DCI user groups are member-driven and independent of Microsoft, Microsoft sponsors the events and actively participates in a variety of ways.

Rhodes is a veteran of the Summits, and became NAVUG Program Director in March 2014. Before that he was a member of DCI for six years and held a variety of positions including a stint as interim NAVUG Program Director in early 2013, and as CRMUG Program Director from 2008 to 2011.

So, he knows how to put a Summit together, and told us in an interview what went into planning NAVUG Summit 2015.

MSDW: What sets NAVUG Summit apart from Convergence for users?

Rhodes: They're very complementary.

The key differences are that as Microsoft continued to refine what Convergence is about, it aimed at "Here's the new best products, the stack, how it fits together, your business solution." It was aimed ...