CRMUG Expects High Summit Attendance, Continued Interest in Upcoming Releases, Online Upgrades

Beyond the typical range of sessions, roundtables, and keynotes, CRMUG Summit 2012 attendees can expect a few interesting developments in Seattle this October. 

Microsoft's still relatively new Dynamics CRM general manager Dennis Michalis is expected to be on hand to speak to users, along with other representatives of the CRM team.

CRMUG is also experiencing significant growth this year, nearly doubling in size, according to new group director Tony Stein.  A Fargo native, Stein has been at the role for about four month, but has a long Dynamics history going back to earlier days with GP and a decade at Microsoft, including work with Dynamics CRM starting with version 1. 

Attendees at the October event will be looking to learn about topics including Dynamics CRM R8 and R9 - the Q2 2012 and Q4 2012 service updates for Dynamics CRM 2011. The user group and its Summit event have both historically consisted of more members with on-premise CRM deployments, but upgrades and migrations to CRM Online are a growing area of interest, Stein says.  On-premise deployments are more common in the mid-market segment, where many of the CRMUG members, and especially those with the means to send employees to an in-person conference, tend to come from.

"I have a feeling [upgrades to CRM Online] will become more and more of a focal point on Dynamics CRM as we grow," says Stein.

New session topics this year include updates on the new releases, as well as new looks at analytics, social CRM, and dashboards.  

Another new initiative will be CRM Partner Connections (CRMPC), a group of CRMUG partner members who will come to Seattle a day early for networking, access to local Microsoft resources, ...