Top 10 Microsoft Dynamics Stories of 2009 from MSDynamicsWorld.com- guess who is on the list??

Ummm, WE ARE!!  How cool is that?  Item four on their list is the xRM expansion and the first thing they mention is xRMVirtual to help define that movement.

Ok, yes 2009 has been xRM EVERYWHERE.  But sometimes you are so engrossed in what you are doing that your view from the inside no longer resembles the view from the outside.  To see an outside source validate what is important to you is a spectacular feeling.

2009 for xRMVirtual was huge, well, to be honest it literally all began in 2009.  xRMVirtual started as just an idea.  I have been active in the developer community for some time now, working with INETA groups all over the world.  Then we published our xRM book last year.  The response from readers, to include their questions and desire for more showed us that the need for a user group was more than apparent.   But quite honestly the geographic separation of the folks was just too much to allow a traditional group.  Virtual it is.

We all know it takes more than a good idea to get something off the ground, someone has to actual do some work.  I had no problem doing the work, with two exceptions.  Time.  Full time work, full time student, two teenagers, etc.  Skill.  I don’t write code, how would I (??) get such a big deal off the ground on my own?  I needed help.

Shan McArthur and ADXStudio to the rescue!  Easily now my favorite Canadians :) .  Shan and I chatted and decided to go for it and make a group, oh and since Convergence is coming up in a couple weeks, let’s launch it there.  Color me skeptical.

He and I worked our contacts with our friends on the Microsoft team to help us get a donated instance of CRMOnline to be able to use ADXStudio’s extensions to make our site and customize CRM to allow for member management.  Wow, it was fast and the site looks great, eh? 

Fast forward to now….

28 meetings, total of 995 attendees and recordings viewed another 934 times.  That’s better than many traditional groups I know of.  We know of at least 5 spin off groups that meet in person, covering 4 continents.  Our membership is at 983 as of this morning.  It’s been a pretty good year.

Looking ahead to 2010 is pretty exciting too.  xRM now has some street cred to work with, so that gives us more as well.  CRM5 is scheduled to come out, and with the previews that were seen at PDC09 it is looking pretty cool and even more targeted toward xRM development (still with a strong CRM foundation).  xRM conferences, I know of at least one virtual and one onsite conference planned for 2010 with xRM as the focus.

So now here is my sincere thanks.  Thanks to everyone that helped us get to this point and thanks to all that will continue to help us move ahead.

The link here has the entire list, you’ll need a (free) login to see all the details.


ADDING****  you can't see this part til you login, there are click thrus to more content, but here's the part about xRMVirtual

The expansion of the xRM story in 2009 was unmistakable.  Between the launch of the XRM Virtual User Groups, new books, demonstrations, and products coming to market in 2009, the broader CRM developer and partner ecosystem began to see what only a select group of Dynamics CRM experts understood in the past: Dynamics CRM is a bona fide platform for line-of-business applications, and Microsoft will try to make it even easier to develop and deploy xRM applications in future CRM releases.

Our Top 10 Microsoft Dynamics Stories of 2009: Team Blunders, the Cloud, Integration, Discontinuations, and Upgrades Dominate | MSDynamicsWorld.com

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