My friends over at Linked.Net had a great session yesterday with very interactive Q&A with Scott Guthrie. He was very candid and open to responding to just about any question presented.
If you missed it, the recording is available for download, link below.
Great job guys!
Kudos go out to John (evangelist for East region) for putting this together. All you virtual groups out there have a look at his list, see what training and learning you could borrow for your own needs.
Thanks John!
John McClelland's Blog : Save T&E By Getting The Most Out Of Live Meeting
How cool for them (and for me and anyone else that will be attending) !!!.
Ok, stepping back for a sec to explain.
CRMUG (CRM user group) is primarily an online community for CRM professionals. They have regular meetings/seminars, an annual conference (this year is in Chicago, September 2009). Their reach has grown and the need (and apparently sponsors, yea Neudesic) so much that there is now an on-ground chapter starting next month in Denver. It’s June 18th, 2pm. Looks to be pretty action packed. Oh and it’s FREE. Even more cool.
Click thru below for more details and to register. Then make sure to say hi when you’re there!
Dear my developer friends,
You are some of the smartest people I know. Your detailed and (mostly) logical thought process is what helps us build such great software together. However, sometimes you need a helping hand to notice some of the things someone else built before you, you see a problem and rush to try to solve it yourself, not knowing if the solution already exists. In XRM/CRM more so than other application building.
In moderating the XRMVirtual meetings, I have noticed most of the questions we see are from developers that just need to know more about the user-side of CRM and that many of their common requests might very well be built already.
So with this in mind we have teamed up with CRMUG for a joint presentation on CRM for Developers. This session will be highly interactive with several of us on hand for answering questions and we will be led by my friend, a self-confessed CRM freak Menno te Koppele a Microsoft Partner Technology Specialist. This is a class FOR DEVELOPERS, not for end-users, but you will learn more about the user-experience YOUR users will have.
The event is FREE, but registration is REQUIRED. June 17, 2009, 9am pst, it is scheduled for 90 minutes, but we can go long or short depending on the group and what they need/want.
See you there??
1 nifty 8GB Zen that I won (I am actually keeping this one for myself!)
2 friends celebrating their birthdays
15 hours total sleep for the week
23 new t-shirts
100+ cool attendees at WomenBuild
1,000’s of visitors to the INETA booth
I missed the last two Tech Ed’s, I was traveling to some pretty cool places at the time instead. But I was able to make it this year, thanks to some friends. Thanks to the Women in IT movement, Kathy Malone, and my INETA posse for making it so easy for me to go. Thanks to my mother-in-law for the taxi service to In-n-Out burger for myself and some friends that had never been (and I know 1 of them had it for lunch again the very next day she liked it so much!).
The few days that I had were so jammed packed, but in a good way, albeit an exhausting way.
The INETA booth was again THE place to hang out in the community area. Not to toot my own horn, but we do seem to be a pretty fun group of people to hang with and to get things done.
WomenBuild was such a cool experience. I had never been to one before and was looking forward to it, but didn’t quite know what to expect. We each walked away knowing that women can accomplish what they want, we just need to make sure they have the tools, and know they are available. Kudos to two of the guys at my table that found a way to make out Lego figures into skirt-wearing girls instead of the out of the box men we were given.
The Jam on IT was fun, although a bit weird with some of the cover songs changed to be nerd-focused. Thanks to my new friend Mr. Palermo, and to the cowbell you added to the band.
Here’s hoping I get to go to next year’s Tech Ed in New Orleans!
A week of technology learning, some great networking, an expo hall full of partners and organizations. All good on their own, especially when combined with some thousands of your closest friends.
Now comes Thursday evening. We have Birds of a Feather sessions (events run by the community, for the community). We have WomenBuild. This is one of the things I am looking forward to the most of the whole week. The WomenBuild event looks to be VERY popular and there is no registration required, just show up, and be in line a little early to make sure you get in.
I have long been an advocate of women in technology, we bring a different skill set to the equation. Not better or worse, just different. Combine that with the intelligence of those men around us, and wow, what cool things can we accomplish. All too often women are meek, and almost afraid to stand up for themselves at work, and when you are outnumbered some 10 or so to 1, it becomes harder. Me personally…I like the odds, it makes people remember ME more, if I am the only woman in the room/meeting, then add my big fat mouth and you can’t forget me if you wanted to. :)
Ok, back from that distraction to talk about Jam on IT. The traditional Tech Ed attendee party has been cancelled (who knows why, not that it matters, it’s just cancelled). Some folks weren’t ready to let that go. As a group us nerds are not typically a very social group, so we need all the opportunities we can get! Check out the link below, and I’ll see you there!
(oh, and next year’s TechEd will be in New Orleans and is back in June again!)
Year one- No one in the world could be as tired as I am right now. For mother’s day I just want a day off, without feeling guilty for having the occasional day that even the thought of being a mom makes me tired and sometimes even cry. Yes, I love my children, but I really (really) need some time just for me.
Year two- Ok, a little less tired, but man oh man are toddlers tough. Why do they have to walk, talk and think on their own! For mother’s day I got a drawing made last night at the last minute, but look, there’s a big red heart in the middle of it, awwww.
Year three- wow, there’s another one of you and I am now out-numbered and tired again. So very tired.
Year four- awww, the pre-school teacher helped you make me a present AND taught you a poem (you recited it in Dutch, “mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all, my mother”).
Ok, you’re in school now and I am working again, back to the no one in the world is as tired as I am. You bring home drawings, cards, flowers from school. Most of mother’s day is still spent being mom, not taking time for me.
Wow, both of you are in school now and you try so hard to make me feel special on my day. And you do. You bring home the same cards and flowers from school and have now graduated to bringing me breakfast in bed. We go from cold cereal (cause you’re not allowed to use the stove) to cold food (it WAS hot, but you were so excited that you got up EARLY and cooked it 2 hours ahead of time to make sure that you got it done and ready for me) to hot food with a comical twist (you made me pancakes, but put the mix back in the pantry cause that’s where it came from, we found it a few weeks later, based on the smell).
Now, teenagers. Last year we went to the zoo and fed the giraffes. You bought the giraffe crackers and posed for all the goofy pictures I wanted. Then we wound up in the ER and came home with a leg in a cast.
This year….you are good cooks and thoughtful. You regularly just roll your eyes when I want an afternoon cat nap (well, cat and dog nap).
I get breakfast in bed still, but now it’s warm chocolate chip muffins that YOU made, hot coffee, fresh squeezed OJ. I wake up later, no rush to get me up before the food gets cold. I get cards the you picked out, from each of you, from the cat, from each dog. Presents that mean something (flowers cause you know I love fresh cut flowers, goofy character cookies and a new trivia game for the Wii). you’re doing the laundry without complaining. You cleaned up after breakfast without being told. And it’s just a relax, no worry kind of day.
So, perfect. They are all perfect. You can’t appreciate the now without having had the others, they all make me smile.
Just don’t start bickering until tomorrow, k?
And the winner is……
Jerry Weinstock from CRM Innovation.
Jerry will be getting a complimentary Premium Membership for one year to CRMUG (that’s worth over a grand- sweet!). Thanks to my friends over at CRMUG for hooking us up.
Also Jerry was offered a signed copy of (x)CRM as a Rapid Development Platform but declined, since he has a copy already (yea). Instead he will be getting a copy of Building Silverlight RIAs that we’re not even done writing yet.
My buddies at Microsoft will be sending Jerry some cool CRM/XRM swag as well.
All that just for signing up for our fun little group.
Below is the announcement on the CRMUG site. Go give them a look, see if they’d be a good fit for you.
I’m a guest blogger on the CRM team blog today, here’s the gist, but they have pictures, their link below.
I had recently installed SP2 for Office 2007 on my Vista Enterprise laptop, which includes IE8 with the install. Once I installed it I began experiencing a rather annoying behavior in CRM. I would open through a series of windows (in my particular case I was working with Workflows in the Settings section) and each time a new window needed to open, I would get the error message that a pop-up was blocked and that I needed to make sure that my CRM server was in my safe sites list. Also, when this message displayed the pop-up had in fact “popped up” but was minimized. This only happened when using the Outlook client, not the browser and only on my laptop, not my desktop.
So I of course assume that the new IE8 install did not actually take all my settings as it offered and I accepted. But when I looked at pop-up blocker settings, my CRM server was most certainly there. So I remove it from the list, close and restart IE8. No difference.
It was annoying, but not a show-stopper for me so I sat on it a day. During that time we had reason to re-start the CRM server (independent of any of my current annoyance). Still no difference.
Frustrated, I emailed a group of very smart people, my fellow CRM MVPs, to see if anyone had heard of this and had solved it. Got back a couple of questions and comments, but mostly just the sound of crickets.
Then my friend Menno te Koppele (my favorite “CRM freak”) sent me a series of instant messages and saved the day. Here are the steps:
In IE8 go to Tools->Internet Options->Security tab. Once there, click to “Reset all zones to default level”. Additionally, click “Enable Protected Mode”. I had already had protected mode selected, so I unchecked it, applied it, closed and restarted both IE and Outlook. Then went back to re-check it and apply it. Again, close and restart both IE and Outlook. This took care of my problem!
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog : Microsoft Dynamics CRM and IE8 Tweak
Yesterday’s XRMVirtual meeting was great. David Yack presented to some 70+ attendees on using Silverlight in your XRM. It was fast paced but so informative. We’ve gotten loads of great feedback on the group- have you checked us out yet? Thanks to all who attended. Here’s the recording for those that missed it.
David Yack presenting Silverlight in your XRM Solution
Here’s more recordings from Dave on Silverlight in CRM. It requires a login, but it’s free.
My apologies for this meetings recording being a little bit late and in a different location. As you know, we are free and run by volunteers so we had a glitch in the recording hosting we had been using. However, here it is.
Our next meeting May 28 at 9am pst. We will have Ben Riga and Girish Raja back to share with us a session on Self Service Sites.
An upcoming special event….. CRM for Developers June 17.
(I know developers NEED (yes you do!) to learn about the front end of CRM from your users’ perspective, that is why we do what we do, yes? But I also know you would not go looking for a CRM how-to class, so we’re bringing it to you)
Are you charged with extending your company's CRM system or developing an XRM tool, but not sure what is already in the product? Whether you're new to supporting CRM or you want to use the CRM foundation to build an XRM application, there's plenty of functionality to leverage.
Join CRMUG and XRMVirtual as they join forces for this session on the nuts and bolts of CRM. In this session we'll cover what CRM already does to save you time and spark your ideas for true deep xRM development. This session is targeted to developers of any skill level that want to learn the user perspective of CRM.
Microsoft's Menno te Koppele, a self confessed "CRM Freak", shares with us his expertise with CRM. We will have other experts on the call to help field Q&A in this very interactive session.