WinDays 2009 – Business, Technology and Virtual conferences
It is a tradition now – end of April and I find myself and my friends enjoying beautiful Opatija while attending Microsoft WinDays conference here in Croatia. This year, for the first time there are three conferences in one – Business, Technology and Virtual. What is it all about?
Without any doubt Microsoft WinDays conference is largest IT conference in Croatia. First time we had WinDays, in 2001, it had 65 lectures, last year – there were 2000 lectures with close to 2100 attendees.
Initial conference focus was on technology, but starting from 2005 and WinDays 5 focus has been put onto business as well. So today, looking at 9th WinDays conference we can easily say its full blown Business & Technology conference. Taking that into account – WinDays team has decided to split WinDays into 3 conferences – Business, Technology and Virtual. New concept, but one that seems to be really appropriate – you can attend all of them or tailor the whole conference experience to your interests.
This what WinDays team says about dates:
Microsoft WinDays 9 Business and Microsoft WinDays 9 Technology will be held in the week from April 20 to 23, 2009 in Opatija, while the WinDays 9 Virtual conference will take place virtually, that is, prior, during and after the other two conferences along with the additional virtual conference day on April 24 2009.
Personally, this is my second year attending WinDays as a presenter – I will talk about Windows 7 and UX improvements, design process – if you are there, feel free to catch me – I will be in Opatija from Monday evening and my presentation is on Thursday at 18:00.
Being out of Croatia for a while now since I am working in Microsoft Development Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark – I see WinDays as a great opportunity to hang around with all those great and cool people… Some of them I see very rarely and all I know about them is from their Facebook, Twitter and SMS notes.
While WinDays conference is going partially virtual, I am going to get all real with it.
You can track what’s going on in Opatija by visiting www.mswindays.com portal. I will also keep you posted over my Twitter account www.twitter.com/viborc. And my buddy Ilija Brajković promised to do the same so with official portal, Ilija’s and mine Twitters/blogs you should be well informed.
Be sure to check Vjeko’s blog post about WinDays – he is going to talk about new stuff in NAV 2009. I’m sure he will mention our RoleTailored user experience. His presentation “What’s new in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009” is on Thursday, April 23, at 11:00AM at Juraj Šporer conference hall.
Regarding beautiful girls, good food, drinks, parties – well that is something you will have to experience by yourself, personally. No Twitter or Facebook can bring that feeling and atmosphere really. But hey, there will be some pictures, I’m sure.
WinDays conference – so much nice memories, can’t wait to start reliving them again and build bunch of new ones from Monday evening in Opatija. And yes – I hope to get some more sun – with temperatures well above 20 C these days Croatia seems to be much warmer place compared to Denmark (though I’ve heard some rumours from my roommate that temperatures around 12 C to 15 C have been recorded in Copenhagen these days).
I’m off to pack my things and Opatija – here I come!
Thanks a lot for sharing!