My 365Saturday experience, Amsterdam 2019 edition

Saturday May 18, we had a 365Saturday event in the Netherlands. The organization asked me to do a presentation on this event. As there were no obligations for the kids playing baseball, I accepted the invite and prepared for a session on security architecture in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. This post is about my 365Saturday experience…

Keynotes

The keynotes were presented by Brian Dang, Program manager for PowerApps at Microsoft. He told about his story being a teacher at an elementary school and wanted to make his life as teacher easier where he initially created Excel sheets for different purposes. Brian founded his own company called 8-bit classroom where he was creating PowerApps for teaching purposes. He got invited by Microsoft to meet Bill Gates. Now Brian is working for Microsoft. You can find out a summary of his story in the next video.

Breakout sessions

Directly after the keynotes, it was my turn with one of the breakout sessions to talk about the Security architecture in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. Sadly, the screen was not working and we had to move to another room. With a delay, I could start and finalize my session. The audience provided positive feedback on my session.

Sadly enough, there was not that much topics related to Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. My former colleague Dick Wenning prepared for a session, but had a flu and his session was cancelled. To be honest, there were much more interesting sessions. Why not take advantage to listen to other persons like Oswin Kroon and Remy van Duijkeren who were telling about their experiences related to Microsoft Flow and Microsoft PowerApps. Even for me, there were some learning objectives.

Samit Saini’s story

Samit Saini was also present at the 365Saturday event in Amsterdam. He started his career at Heathrow Airport as security officer. He discovered PowerApps and did create an app which got adopted by the airport. He became an IT User Adoption Specialist now and inspired his co-workers to also create apps resulting in saving a lot on paper and processing time retyping paperwork in a computer system. Samit got the honor to meet Satya Nadella. At the 365Saturday event, he told his complete story about PowerApps at Heathrow Airport.

I got the opportunity to meet both Brian and Samit. Both do have a unique story about discovering PowerApps which changed their careers. I did had a short talk with both of them. A picture is included in my Photo Gallery. (Unfortunately, the picture is not sharp enough)

365Saturdays

In my opinion, this event was well organized. A great applause for the organizers and speakers who sacrificed their spare time and part of the weekend to evangelize about Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power platform. Hopefully, it will be an even better event next year in the Netherlands. Personally, I would love to see more people joining the event. If you are interested in this event, there are many other 365Saturdays around the world; almost every weekend. Check out the website: https://www.365portal.org/. Hopefully, you will also get an amazing 365Saturday experience yourself…

I do hope you liked this post and will add value for you in your daily work as a professional. If you have related questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to use the Comment feature below.


That’s all for now. Till next time!