Tag: Antwerpen

NAV Techdays 2018 Recap

I started to write this post while flying across the Atlantic Ocean on the second of a three leg journey home, a BA flight from London to Phoenix. It has been a very long trip that started when I traveled to Holland for Directions EMEA in Den Haag at the end of October. Since Directions and NAV Techdays were relatively close together, I decided to just stay with my family in Holland for those 4 weeks rather than fly back and forth twice in less than a month. This has been the longest that I’ve ever been away from home, and I was SO ready to be back in my own house.

NAV Techdays ended last Friday, and it’s been another fantastic week, as we’ve come to expect. As far as I can tell, the attendees in my pre-conference workshop were happy with the content, I can’t wait to get the feedback and see what I can improve for next time.

As per usual, Luc has posted the videos in record time, less than a week after the event. The whole playlist can be found here, and I wanted to highlight some of my favorite sessions. One of the most important developments in current technology is machine learning and AI. Dmitry Katson and Steven Renders put together an awesome session to introduce machine learning to us. The award for most entertaining session goes to Waldo and Vjeko, who put on a concert and wowed the audience with some really cool content. I also want to point out the session about CI/CD, which is going to be one of the most important things for everyone that is serious about implementing a professional development practice. Of course, I have to also mention the Docker session, which is the technology that makes it all possible.

Furtunately, next year’s event is not scheduled on Thanksgiving, which is a national holiday here in the US, one that typically involves lots of friends and family, and lots of food. I’ve had to miss it the past couple of years, and each time I’ve been bummed to hear the stories of all the great meals and gatherings that my family got to have without me. Next year I’ll be home for Turkey Day!

Thanks for another super event, it’s one of my favorite weeks of the year.

NAV Techdays 2018 – I’m Speaking!

Registration for NAV Techdays 2018 is open, and this year is going to be SUPER exciting for me, because I am going to teach an all-day pre-conference workshop! Go to the sessions overview page of the NAV Techdays website to see the details of all of the sessions and the pre-conference workshops. Of course I would LOVE it if you sign up for my workshop, but really you can’t go wrong with any of them.

My workshop is called “A Day in the Life of a Business Central Developer”. I still need to put the material together, but the plan is to cover all aspects of what it means to be a developer for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Think about the development environment, how to create an app, how to create multiple apps with dependencies (an extension of another extension), how to connect to web services, how to use source control, and even design patterns and Docker.

I realize that it is a very ambitious agenda, but I am sure that we can fill a whole day with great content. I’m not sure if there will be much time to do any extensive lab work, so I might end up just teaching all day and giving you some things to take home and work on after the workshop is done.

Most importantly – go register for NAV Techdays, it is really THE premium event for our industry. Spend an extra couple of days in Antwerpen for the pre-conference workshops, they are all fantastic and worth every penny.

See you in Antwerpen in November!

NAV Techdays 2017 Recap

My favorite week of the year has just ended. I’m in the high speed train from Antwerpen back to Amsterdam, which is over just like that so I don’t have much time to make this anything elaborate.

As per usual, the organization was superb. The venue is fantastic, with a great expo area, lots of good food and drink choices, and the seats in the great rooms are just about the most comfortable seats you can imagine. The Kinepolis is a movie theater that you can also rent for events. I think I speak for everyone when I say this is one of the most important features, and I hope we will never have to move to a different location.

My week started with a full day pre-conference workshop about automated testing in NAV. This workshop was hosted by none other than Luc van Vugt, who, as per usual, delivered a solid day of learning. I had misread the workshop description and the correspondence that we had prior to the workshop, so I did not get everything out of it that I could have, but Luc was so kind to offer assistance to me so that I could do the exercises at home. Any time you have an opportunity to train under Luc, you should take it.

My company was a sponsor, so we had a booth to staff. It was a pleasure to be there and talk to anyone who had any questions about what we can offer.

As per usual, the two conference days were stuffed with 90 minute deep-dive sessions on any topic you can think of. My favorite ones were Waldo’s “Rock ‘n Roll with VS Code”,  Anders and Nikola’s “Creating great APIs”, and the Docker session by Freddy, Tobias and Jakub. Fortunately for you, you can watch all of the sessions on YouTube, Luc had all of them uploaded within a week of the conference.

I can’t say enough about this conference. For any technical resource in the NAV channel (and I include Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations in that category), NAV Techdays is a must to attend, every single year. This is the second time that I’ve gone, and I am still kicking myself for not going the first few years. If I can help it, I will not make that mistake again.

See you next year in Antwerpen!

Registered for NAV Techdays 2017

It’s that time of the year. The official announcement came in on Twitter that registration is open for NAV Techdays 2017, which is again held in Antwerp of course. The official two day conference is 16 and 17 November, but I consider the pre-conference workshops to be part of the event, so a full 4 days of deep technical knowledge sharing.

The session schedule has not been published, but we do know the pre-conference content, go take a look at the Sessions page to check out what is available to you. The familiar sessions will cover PowerShell by Waldo, JavaScript by Vjeko, automated testing by Luc van Vugt, SQL Server performance by Jörg, and of course the 2 day design patterns class by Mark. The new topics include how to SaaSify your software architecture, how to use Visual Studio Code (it is very important to learn about this one) and how to develop extensions with it by Arend-Jan. Another exciting one is the SCM workshop by Sören, he will show you how to make it work directly in VSCode.

Only a few regular sessions have been announced (some fantastic content by our friends at Microsoft), but I have a feeling that we will see a super deep dive into all things related to Dynamics 365. I cannot wait to go to Antwerp, and I hope to see you there.

Registered for Directions US and NAV Techdays 2016

After careful deliberations and weighing of all options, we decided that I will attend two more events this year: Directions US and NAV Techdays. Lucky for me, they are two of my favorite events.

Directions US is organized by and for the partner channel. Partners go here to work on their knowledge, to learn about the latest development in our industry, to see what new products are available, and not in the least to network with our peers in the partner channel. Personally I like this event because there is a minimum of marketing fluff that is directed at the end user, and people are hungry for knowledge.

There were some other people that wanted to go to Directions as well. Because it will be held in Phoenix this year, which is just a 2 hour drive for me, it didn’t take long to pick me to go to this one. It is looking like I might even be able to present a session or two.

 

NAV Techdays is THE premier technical event for NAV professionals. This will only be my second time at this event (why I never went before that is still a mystery to me) but I could not look at a year as a successful one without going to Antwerpen in Belgium.

The content at NAV Techdays is second to none: two days of 90 minute sessions, all deep dives into the most geeky technical topics that you can think of. It would be an absolute honor to present at this event, but I’d have to brush up on my skills a LOT before I’d feel comfortable standing up in front of that crowd.

Before the event itself there are two days of workshops. These workshops are not included in the event price, but they are all well worth the cost of admission. I will be attending “PowerShell – Black Belt” by Eric ‘Waldo’ Wauters and “Deep Dive Eventing & Extensions” by Arend-Jan Kauffmann. I cannot wait to get those started.

See you in Phoenix and Antwerpen!!