Aug. 27, 2024
Episode 336: In the Dynamics Corner Chair: The Science and Art of Conference Selection
In this episode, Brad and Kris talk with John Siefert as he reveals a behind-the-scenes look at the various conferences organized by Dynamic Communities, including Community Summit North America, BizApps Partner Summit, and AI Copilot Summit. He emphasizes the importance of aligning the content of an event with the attendees' context and journey. John also explains the process of selecting event locations and the importance of conferences to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central talent.
Connect with John on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-siefert-9158884/)
#MSDyn365BC #BusinessCentral #BC #DynamicsCorner
Follow Kris and Brad for more content:
https://matalino.io/bio
https://bprendergast.bio.link/
00:00 - Building a Community With Dynamics Corner
08:58 - Navigating Dynamics and AI Conferences
15:22 - Evaluating Conferences
22:43 - Planning Successful Conference Locations
36:25 - Community Summit Tracks Expansion
40:05 - Community Summit Food Costs Strategy
51:23 - Conference Planning and Session Recording
57:16 - Digital Show Guide for Summit
WEBVTT
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Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner, the podcast where we dive deep into all things Microsoft Dynamics.
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Whether you're a seasoned expert or just starting your journey into the world of Dynamics 365, this is your place to gain insights, learn new tricks and hear from industry experts and, of course, what it takes to build a community.
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I'm your co-host.
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Chris, and this is Brad.
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This episode was recorded on August 22nd 2024.
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Chris, Chris, Chris, what it takes to build a community.
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Today we had the opportunity to have a behind-the-scenes conversation with John Seifert about DCI and all of their community initiatives and conferences.
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How you doing, fellas.
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Doing well, doing well.
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Doing well.
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Yeah, how's my long lost brother doing?
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You know, I am hanging in, I'm hanging in, I'm hanging in.
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I just.
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We spent the day in San Diego yesterday and checking out the location for the AI Co-Pilot Summit that we're doing in March.
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And golly, fellas, this place is pretty sweet, right, it's uh, uh, it's uh.
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Have you ever heard of the Torrey Pines golf course?
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I'm a I'm a shit golfer.
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Right, the Torrey Pines golf course.
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So, uh, so it's on that spot and you've got like the.
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The venue is here, it's called the Hilton Torrey Pines or whatever.
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Then you got the golf course here, then the ocean's right in front of that.
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So I go up to the room that's, that's like going to be the I don't know the suite that we'll do a bunch of meetings, it's like the hotshot ding dong suite, you know.
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And so you go up there and you just got this like sick view man, it's just, it's bananas.
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And so I told everybody, you know, and we were like recording stuff for our digital summit while we were there and all that.
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But I told everybody, why don't you guys just roll downstairs, leave me a six-pack up here and come up and get me in a couple hours.
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Sounds like fun.
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So has that been announced, yet that that's going to be where it is.
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Yeah, it's actually on the digital summit that's taking place today.
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So you know it's going on right now, but it's about a four, about three hour digital summit.
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It's just called AI Copilot Digital Summit.
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It's pretty awesome.
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It's like a thousand folks have read or, you know, tuned into it and that kind of thing today, which is pretty sweet.
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But we actually announced it about a week ago just on the website, with no fanfare, and and then today kind of announcing it officially on the summit that we're hosting by the same name, right?
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So yeah, it's pretty cool.
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Excellent, perfect.
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We won't have to bleep it then, no.
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We don't bleep much, thankfully.
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Thankfully, we have a lot of things that I'd like to talk with you about.
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I know I'll probably be able to talk to you for hours, so we'll have to keep an eye on everyone's schedule.
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But before we jump into the conversation, would you mind telling everyone a little bit about yourself?
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Absolutely so.
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My name is John.
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Let's see, I'm kind of a tech geek right.
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I've been in the tech category for about 30 years.
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Started my career in research, then went over and worked for a company called CMP, which then became a company called UBM, and working on something called Information Week, which was a magazine website and events and those sorts of things for the enterprise technology category.
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Did that for 15 years.
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Started as a sales guy.
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It was kind of funny, reluctantly, because I never thought I was a sales guy, and kind of got moved into this sales guy job and somebody told me you know, just get over yourself and be a sales guy.
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And I'm like, okay, you know, and I'll give it a shot.
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And ended up realizing, boy, you could be in sales and still be able to kind of really do neat stuff right, be able to come up with neat ideas, work with people.
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I kind of fell in love with the idea of co-creation at a young age, of working with people and trying to figure out what the problems were and finding ways to solve them and that kind of thing.
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So I did that for about 15 years.
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Bailed out of there in 2010.
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At that time I was running about $120 million business for those folks globally.
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So through the magazine and the events and all that, then took my first CEO job in 2010 for a company called Virgo Ran that for three and a half years.
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That company got acquired by an organization called Informa it's a pretty large event and media and that sort of thing company based out of the UK.
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So you know with them for a couple of years running a global business, and then I hung stuff up cause I thought I was just going to retire and, like you know whatever then remembered what a crappy golfer I am Right and said, well, that's not going to be a cool thing and uh, and then kind of drove my wife and my my kids a little bananas cause I was around the house too much, and so I did a couple of startups during that time and all of a sudden, covid came around there in 2020, or what have you and I learned about this company called Dynamic Communities, fell in love with the idea of it of being this kind of platform that could connect like-minded people together to decentralize intelligence and help each other out all around the Microsoft business applications category and I said that sounds like a great job, right, and a great premise and a great idea and then got here in 2020.
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We took the CEO job, which you know it's three letters, right.
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It just means maybe I get up a little bit earlier in the morning to wash the windows right it's not some fancy-dancy kind of thing in the morning to wash the windows, right it doesn't, it's not some fancy dancy kind of thing.
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And I've been here since and kind of went through a pretty big sort of what we call stabilization of the really big event that we do called Community Summit North America in the fall.
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And once we get that thing pretty well stabilized, then started to create what we call the DCI Double Down Plan, right, which is just essentially means, hey, we're going to keep Community Summit in the center of our universe and then everything we do is going to revolve around that.
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So some new face-to-face events and some digital programming and that kind of thing to help folks in the community out.
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So that's kind of-.
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Well, you came the 2020, man, you were given a tough card, you were dealt with a tough deck of cards there.
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Chris, one might call that a certain type of sandwich.
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You know that you're handed right and it's not a ham and cheese sandwich, right?
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So, yeah, thanks for bringing that up.
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I still got a bunch of I think I got some PTSD from it, quite frankly, from that first year of being here and no disrespect to people that were here before me, right, or any of that sort of thing, but it was just a very tough time because this company, while it had the local user group stuff and those sorts of things, couldn't do any local user group things because of COVID, right.
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And then the big thing that the company had done for golly, you know, 15, 16 years at that time was Community Summit, North America, and that event couldn't be floored in 2020.
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And for anybody who knows anything about, like, the way event stuff runs, you actually spend the majority of your money as the event producer before the event actually happens, right, because you're spending it on food and beverage, spending it on the location, you're spending it on the hotel blocks, you're spending it on all those sorts of things.
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So a ton of the money that sponsors and attendees and those sorts of things that invested in the 2020 event that had already been spent.
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In fact, by the time I got here it was already spent.
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And so when we couldn't floor the event, the environment was pretty tough because that meant that a whole bunch of the money that you know would have been used to run the event we couldn't get back because we had already spent it, right.
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So my first job here Chris to the point of the first bite out of that sandwich I had to take right was me actually going in and doing a pretty big round of financing for this organization so that I could pay the community back.
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And that's something I kept under wraps for a long time because I didn't want to make anybody feel guilty about that kind of stuff that worked here before me or what have you.
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But I had to go do a pretty big round of financing and about 85 percent of that financing raise that I did for the company literally paid the community back.
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So it was paying all of the attendees back who had bought their tickets and all the sponsors that had invested to be a part of the event.
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And that was that was meant by stabilization, Right, we had to kind of stabilize all of this stuff before we could start to try to do other neat things.
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So, yeah, it was doing this stuff a little while One of the toughest things I've ever actually done and I've kind of been a part of some things that were pretty tough.
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Right, that was a pretty tough one.
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Yeah, I mean what a turnaround though, because now everyone's back and we're super excited.
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So well done, it is last year.
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Last year was a great show or a great conference show conference.
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I'm horrible with names and words.
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Sometimes show or a great conference show conference.
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I I'm horrible with names and words.
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Sometimes it's uh.
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And this year, as it even looks like it's going to be uh, significantly larger uh, with more content, more tracks, more attendees, more presenters.
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So there's a lot of information there.
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Uh, you had mentioned dci and so you talked about dci works on.
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Uh, you know you have the summit north america conference.
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You're working on the ai uh conference and uh, what you know, you have the Summit North America Conference.
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You're working on the AI conference.
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And what other conferences do you have your hands?
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in.
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Thanks, brad, and thanks for the kind words there about Community Summit this year.
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I mean, we're in a team effort, right with the gang at Dynamo Communities, the community, the programming committees, the just.
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As they say, it takes a village right.
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In our case, it takes a community right to build a community event.
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So that's the kind of magic of where we are right now on that side.
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But so we came up with this premise a little while ago of saying, boy, once we get Community Summit, north America, it was never gonna be exactly what it was before COVID and most businesses aren't exactly what they were before COVID.
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So we said, hey, how do we adapt Community Summit to really make it super relevant for today, for today's users, for today's partners, for where Microsoft is and their evolution, all of those sorts of things?
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How do we make it as relevant as we can make it in today's partners for where Microsoft is, in their revolution right, all of those sorts of things?
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How do we make it as relevant as we can make it in today's world and to the point of 2023 going pretty well, there in Charlotte we said, okay, now I think we've finally got this thing to a nice, stable environment, to where we can start to build around it.
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So what I didn't want to do was build on top of Community Summit North America, necessarily, because what the community had told me was hey, we really want to keep a dynamics and power platform first event.
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Right, we really we don't want this to become, you know, an AI event or a fabric event or you know some other sort of popular thing that's going on out there Really wanted to make sure we kept it a dynamics first event and a power platform first event.
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And then you know, of course AI is going to be woven through it in content programming and sessions and all that sort of thing or academy classes.
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But what we want to do is say, okay, we're going to keep that fall event, our dynamics and power platform first event for the entire community.
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Then what we want to do is say what are the parts that are maybe, you know, adjunct or missing on top of that?
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So last year, for the first time, we started to do pre-conferences.
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They could have been done before I got here, but since I've been here, that was the first time we had done them.
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And we did an AI pre-conference and a partner pre-conference at Summit North America last year and that was kind of a way to say, hey, folks were sort of saying they wanted some of that type of thing.
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So we said, hey, let's give it a shot within the context of a pre-conference.
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That way it's not too risky for the attendees, not too risky for anybody who wanted to sponsor it, not too risky for us to try to build it.
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And both of them did pretty darn good.
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So what we decided to do was say, boy, let's take that partner pre-conference strategy, let's collaborate with the gang at Microsoft, some strategic advisors in the market and that sort of thing like at partners.
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Say, boy, could we take that and make it a standalone event.
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So this year over the summer we launched the Biz Apps Partner Summit in Bellevue, washington, collaborated with Microsoft to build it out and some great partners and the like to build the SAHN.
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It has a pretty good hit right.
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That did pretty well.
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I think it filled a nice void for folks.
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That maybe was something that was missing a little bit right.
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So that's another one of our events that we're doing.
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Golly, chris Woods, there are about 320 or so partners there, or something like that.
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I think yeah good turnout, yeah Great turnout.
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And so thank you.
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And so that went pretty darn good.
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And we did it as what we call the 24-hour immersion at the beginning of fiscal year 25 for Microsoft.
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So instead of saying, hey, you've got to come, invest you know what three days or four days and go to gajillion, bajillion sessions or anything like that, we said we're going to make this a 24-hour immersion and we're going to make it like complete opposite of what you'd have at like a summit North America right, where you've got, you know, a bunch of sessions and all kinds of different programming.
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We're going to have one track that's going to run the entire time, with a bunch of people that play with sharp tools inside Microsoft coming in and telling their stories from product, from field, from programs and that type of thing, and so that went pretty darn good.
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So we're going to do that one again next year.
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But that's our sort of partner first event right that we create, and then here in the spring of 2025, brad, as you mentioned, we're going to do the AI Copilot Summit North America, which will be at the Torrey Pines Hilton in San Diego.
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It's a pretty nice place, right.
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Sounds good.
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That's a pretty nice place right Sounds good.
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That's a great location.
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Anywhere in San Diego.
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I mean, I don't know why we all don't live in San Diego.
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Man Right, I'm over there.
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The weather's ridiculous.
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The views are beautiful.
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It might have to do with it being in California.
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Yeah, beautiful.
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Yeah, it might have to do with it being in California.
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I won't go down that road, but I think being in California has a is a good deterrent to a lot of people that that maybe should be in a different podcast, right.
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That will definitely be a different podcast.
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But but boy, one heck of a place to host an event around AI, though I think right.
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No, it's wonderful.
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The weather's perfect, it's beautiful, it's a great place to go.
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I don't golf, but I heard the golfing over there is wonderful too, because we were over there last year for another conference, which leads me into.
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I just want to come at it.
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I've been thinking about a lot since our last conversation and even this conversation.
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You're talking about a number of conferences.
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There are a lot of conferences.
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Everyone's putting together a lot of conferences.
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You, as someone who works on planning conferences and creating conferences, what do you think, or how do you think someone can choose which conference to go to?
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Because you talked about a number of conferences that are all wonderful, right, and I'm not trying to take away from any conference, but you have several conferences.
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There's other conferences from other agencies for similar or different products.
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What do you think, or is there any thought, when you're putting the conferences together, what someone should do to evaluate which conferences they can go to, because I know I'd love to go to them all, but I can't due to time, finance and other reasons.
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So what are your thoughts on that?
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I think there's.
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So I'm going to explain three criteria that I think there are, that somebody needs to use to evaluate whether they sponsor an event, attend an event and I don't just mean this for our category, I mean for any category.
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But before I go there, I think one of the most important things that I think folks need to think about is aligning the content of an event with the context of why they're going Right, right.
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So so you know what I, what I, what we try to do with DCI is say, hey, you know, if you want a dynamics and power platform first event, if that's your context Right, then we've got all of the content for that at Community Summit, north America.
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If you want a partner first event and you want to really kind of connect them with Microsoft, connect them with other partners, those sorts of things, ok, we've got that with Biz Apps Partner Summit, right for your content and context.
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And then if you're contextually trying to figure out, you know what's going on with AI, what's going on with Copilot, and start to put it to work for your business, then that's what we have with AI Copilot Summit, north America.
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So even for our three kind of primary events, brad, I guess I would say we try to make sure that those don't trip over each other, so that if you've got a dynamics first agenda and a power platform first agenda, go to community summit, right.
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If you've got an AI first agenda and a co-pilot first agenda, go to AI co-pilot summit, north America.
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Or if you're a partner and you're trying to figure out how to scale your practice by dazzling customers, come to the Biz Apps Partner Summit, right.
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So that's kind of our first thing is to say, hey, let's make sure we don't trip over ourselves, right, with how we do this.
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And then, when it comes to somebody sort of trying to prioritize what they want to do, because people invest their time and their money to this stuff right, and those are two of the most precious things we have in this world besides love, right.
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So when you're kind of stacking up on those three things, backing up on those three things, boy, you better make sure you're making the right decisions, right.
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And so what we say is okay, it's about speakers, it's about sessions and it's about networking, right.
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Those are the three big things that anybody should use to evaluate any event they go to.
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So you know, from my perspective, I like to make sure that everything that we do is truly created as a community event, not just using the word community to make it sound sweet and charming, right.
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So our community events are literally driven by programming committees and there's a call for speakers for the community to contribute to the content that we're building.
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So all of the speakers are actually chosen for community by community.
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And I'm a very big, I'm a big kind of a hard ass on that one.
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Right, like nobody's allowed to come in and say no, they get to be here because they're the most popular, they're the neatest person in the world or they've got a gajillion bajillion followers on YouTube.
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Right, that has to be chosen by the community for the community.
00:18:19.148 --> 00:18:24.487
So that's a big part of it is who are those speakers and what does that sort of stuff mean?
00:18:25.429 --> 00:18:27.232
The second part of it are the sessions.
00:18:27.232 --> 00:18:57.660
No-transcript.
00:18:57.660 --> 00:19:06.632
Wherever I am in my journey, I have to sort of make sure that I'm aligning my journey to the paths that are available through all of the sessions that are at the event.
00:19:06.632 --> 00:19:11.982
And if you don't find that connection for yourself, don't go Right and do me a favor.
00:19:11.982 --> 00:19:15.432
If you're looking at our stuff and you don't see it, say, john, that sucks, right.
00:19:15.432 --> 00:19:20.046
You need this sort of thing to help align with where my journey is, because that that is us using our two ears and our one mouth Right.
00:19:20.046 --> 00:19:36.036
That is us using our two ears and our one mouth right, so which, again, they're both kind of inextricably connected right Between the speakers and the sessions being driven by the programming committees, because that's what makes it for community by community in the life of it.
00:19:36.941 --> 00:19:44.740
The other thing sort of underlining that part before I get to the networking is being truthful to that term of community, right.
00:19:44.740 --> 00:20:04.025
So when you go to Community Summit North America, when you'll go to AI Co-Pilot Summit North America, or even what we did with BizApps Partner Summit, what we really try to do is make sure that that framework of content that's being created is not created by two people on a whiteboard in a boardroom that think they know all the answers.
00:20:04.025 --> 00:20:09.891
It's really being built with people that are saying, now, this is what the reality is, so let's change that, let's shift this, let's build that.
00:20:09.891 --> 00:20:20.015
With Community Summit North America, for example, you know, 85% of the 700-plus sessions that are running at that event are from community members, right.
00:20:20.015 --> 00:20:27.767
They're actually from partners and users, right that are leading those content sessions, only about 15% of the content is coming from Microsoft.
00:20:27.767 --> 00:20:30.189
That's a community event, right?
00:20:30.630 --> 00:20:38.717
Other organizations are actually calling their events community events, and I'm not throwing stones at them, I'm just saying it's whatever words you want to use, right?
00:20:38.717 --> 00:20:50.912
But I'm kind of a stickler to what the words mean and setting an expectation for the attendee to know hey, if I'm going to a community event, it's actually delivered by the community, it's not delivered just by a platform provider like Microsoft or any other one.
00:20:50.912 --> 00:20:55.250
The final bit I think somebody needs to use to judge it is networking.
00:20:55.250 --> 00:21:00.509
And when I say networking, I don't just mean what sort of kegger are you going to?
00:21:00.509 --> 00:21:12.579
That, as you know a live band, right, like.
00:21:12.579 --> 00:21:16.185
I don't mean that sort of a networking, you know, um, I mean what are the environments?
00:21:16.185 --> 00:21:18.528
That's such a late, like 80s, early 90s term I also use right.
00:21:18.528 --> 00:21:20.811
So uh, but uh, um, the, uh, the made me lose my train of thought.
00:21:20.811 --> 00:21:21.713
That's a funny one.
00:21:22.094 --> 00:21:26.128
Um, uh, but the, the the importance, I make you lose it even more.
00:21:26.128 --> 00:21:27.192
Do you ever do any keg stands?
00:21:29.161 --> 00:21:31.345
I've done beer bongs, I've done keg stands.
00:21:31.345 --> 00:21:35.109
I'm going to leave it there before I incriminate myself any further.
00:21:35.109 --> 00:21:44.548
But no, I graduated high school in 1989, you know, and, as Kid Rock said in that one song, my hair was long and my thoughts were short.
00:21:44.548 --> 00:21:53.339
Right, you know, I pretty much was that dude traveling around with the Grateful Dead actually at the time.
00:22:00.859 --> 00:22:04.787
But I think an important point on this is that that third sort of thing that anybody needs to use when they're going to any event is what does the networking mean?
00:22:04.826 --> 00:22:08.594
Is it networking that just gets the same people together every single year and then it's like a cool click kind of crowd and that kind of thing?
00:22:09.094 --> 00:22:14.623
Well, there's a spot for that, but that's probably not at a really big event, that's kind of at a small event, you know, sort of thing that that should happen.
00:22:14.623 --> 00:22:27.874
I think the networking that folks you know ought to look for right is hey, is there a real openness to connecting with other people that are maybe smarter than you about certain things that can help you understand stuff?
00:22:27.874 --> 00:22:34.885
And then are there things that you're smart about that you can share with other people to help them out on different things and then not have an agenda about it, right?
00:22:34.885 --> 00:22:37.701
Not have an agenda of what have you done for me lately, right?
00:22:37.701 --> 00:22:42.028
Instead it's hey, let's just kind of shoot the breeze and hang out and figure out if this stuff makes sense.
00:22:42.028 --> 00:22:50.848
The other element of networking is fostering an environment that doesn't feel like a seventh grade dance, right?
00:22:50.848 --> 00:22:54.921
Remember that seventh grade dance where all the boys were on one side and all the girls?
00:22:54.942 --> 00:22:59.327
were on the other side and then you sort of wondered golly, who's going to be the first one to go out on the dance floor?
00:22:59.327 --> 00:23:03.082
And then, all of a sudden, michael Jackson Thriller came on and everybody was on the dance floor.
00:23:03.082 --> 00:23:31.336
Right, it's not creating environments like that and instead just trying to foster an environment where people feel super comfortable to shoot the breeze without trying to make it hokey, you know, and I'm not a big fan of treating people like adults and letting them kind of create birds of a feather sort of a thing that are very open to letting others come in.
00:23:31.336 --> 00:23:43.071
I've always used an expression in business, right, and I've always called it the cool table, right, and I always say hey, you know, listen, there's plenty of seats at the cool table, right, we're all sitting at the cool table.
00:23:43.071 --> 00:23:44.405
There's plenty of seats here, right.
00:23:44.619 --> 00:23:47.133
The one rule is y'all got the cool table right, we're all sitting at the cool table, there's plenty of seats here, right.
00:23:47.133 --> 00:23:53.068
The one rule is y'all gotta be cool, right, and if you're not cool, your seat's gonna get taken away, right, and you're not gonna get a whole bunch of chances to not be cool.
00:23:53.068 --> 00:24:19.192
We might give you one chance to not be cool and then say hey, you know you gotta be cool, but then if you're not good, and that's because people don't want you to sit here anymore, right, so you know, I just think you foster an environment where y'all be cool, right, like Frosty the snowman and and and that sort of thing folks I think find helpful and and approachable, excellent.
00:24:19.652 --> 00:24:21.333
It's a great perspective to look at.
00:24:21.333 --> 00:24:26.096
It's one of the things that I often hear asked is what are some criteria?
00:24:26.096 --> 00:24:29.359
What should I look at when determining which conference to go to?
00:24:29.359 --> 00:24:41.348
And I think by you putting it with the context of the content, the sessions, the speakers and the networking, you can never undervalue the power of networking, value the power of networking.
00:24:41.348 --> 00:24:57.102
I had mentioned it before and I always say a lot of people think, oh, I'm going to have a drink or someone's having an event afterwards, but I have met some great contacts at those events and have had some great business discussions and even formed business arrangements, engagements, partnerships, customers.
00:24:57.269 --> 00:25:03.459
I mean anything that you could fashion in those environments where you have the opportunity to sit down and talk to someone and really talk to them.
00:25:03.459 --> 00:25:04.933
And I like the point that you put.
00:25:04.933 --> 00:25:09.250
Where it's not the stand up on stage, everything's going to be rosy and work perfectly.
00:25:09.250 --> 00:25:12.453
It's to be able to sit and talk to community members.
00:25:12.453 --> 00:25:47.852
And this is where I think, like I'm a fan of the content by community members, because you get not only the the session on how to use something potentially, you know, for the sake of the conversation, but you can hear real-world examples or someone that actually uses it and how they can implement it to give you more value for the session that you're attending, other than just something I could watch on YouTube or even showing how are they using it from their perspective, and it gives you another view from an end user of using an application that you may end up taking back.
00:25:47.971 --> 00:25:53.384
or maybe you network with that speaker and gain that information and take it back.
00:25:53.384 --> 00:26:07.499
So there's a value in that and you know, being someone that's on the other end, where in the early days of working at end user, I went through those sessions and I learned a lot and then brought it back and become successful.
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