The community passion is contagious. Can you feel it? D365 Saturday USA Dallas has sold out! None of this happens without the passionate community that we have in the USA and in Texas. I was touched to learn that some people postponed Spring Break vacations to attend this training. People who couldn’t make it mentioned it to others who could. It was a total community effort and I’ve never been as proud to be in this profession.

What’s this mean and why does it matter?

It matters because it opens the door for more of this. Our passionate speakers spent hours preparing deep learning topics for no money at all. At their core, these are people who are energized by community feedback. Microsoft senior management put aside their busy schedules and helped to make this a priority. The UG offered an extremely important helping hand. Multiple partners brought experts, provided sponsorship, and spread the word. Nigel Frank and Avanade, for example, were like a knight in shining armor. And we had help from others. Extremely busy SME’s really got after it and made the trip down to Dallas.

Brandon, I didn’t get registered in time or couldn’t make it. What can I do?

Community movements are all about feedback and energy. The positive response here will lead to volunteers taking out time to do other events. In the meantime, I’m still exploring ways to share this.

What I really like about D365 Saturday USA Dallas?

It’s been a total team effort. So many groups have come together from Dynamics Communities (aka the UG) to Microsoft to several partners to many experts. No one was paid a dime for this. It really is just about the learning. And we promise that lots of learning is coming.

What was hard?

What can be good can also be bad. As the interest came up so did my the demands on my time. I was working on multiple different go lives which already had me in a 70 hour work week at the moment. As a general rule, freelancers like me accept that Go-Lives typically mean late hours. Now imagine adding about 30 hours a week to that for conference event planning. My family didn’t see me for two months and neither did my friends because I was so busy working. I also had to temporarily freeze taking on any new clients as I was at full capacity. But with it all being done very soon, I’m really proud of what everyone accomplished.

What’s next after this?

I’ve got to get back to the business of working multiple different implementations. It is what I do and love. I’ve still got a number of speaking engagements, blog series, and things like that planned. However, D365 Saturday isn’t finished. Lots of great chapter leaders from all across the country are mobilizing, so get ready for some cool future updates!