Why 2015 may have been my last Convergence conference

My first Convergence was in March of 1999. I'd been working with Great Plains Dynamics for about six weeks. The company I worked for was still implementing Dynamics CS+. These were the days of version 5.0, and Great Plains was changing the product name to eEnterprise with the 5.5 release. We were confused by the messages at Convergence. What is this eEnterprise thing? Is it different from Dynamics CS+? We wanted the best and we were afraid that we didn't have it. We finally figured it all out. eEnterprise was the next release of CS+. Everything was going to be fine. Crisis averted.

I've missed one Convergence since then, the first San Diego conference. Of course, since I live in Orlando and Convergence was held there for so many years, the early ones were easy to get to.  For the mathematically challenged, that's 16 times I've converged. I've been a speaker since 2009 where I messed with everyone's heads with the debut of 50 Tips in 50 Minutes for Dynamics GP. That presentation was itself a knockoff of a 100 Office Tips in 100 Minutes that the Office team did at a Convergence at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando. Good artists copy; great artists steal. [Steve Jobs, Pablo Picasso, et al]

But Convergence is changing. I have it on good authority that Microsoft watered down their statement at the last minute, so I'm going to tell you what I know. Microsoft is consolidating their in-person events into a few, large shows. Convergence is becoming the business oriented show, which, somewhat ironically, means less focus on hard-core business applications like all of the Dynamics ERP and CRM products. Dynamics may still have a presence there, ...