90 Minds Community

Envision Update - from our own RedTail's Chris Brunelli (VP of Sales) We made the right call with not sponsoring this event. It's a ghost town with less than 3,500 in attendance, down from their peak of 12,000 a few years ago. They managed to increase the sponsor commitments from deep pocketed partners (PWC, Toshiba, HP, Infosys, Thomson Reuters, etc.) but even they are questioning returning due to the abysmal turnout. Half of the ISV partners here will not return next year The ERP VARs that relied on this event to drive revenue (MSFT year end 2 months out) and they used to drive opportunities from lead capture.

Thanks Jeff - great report. Did Microsoft announce any official attendance? Did they announce where Envision would be next year? I think MSFT offloaded more of the technical training to the GPUG folks who seem to be planning an event in Anaheim to replace Convergence (I think with MSFT assistance) then they have a conference in Florida in October. It's a crowded conference season and you have to wonder how many conferences people (and sponsors) will attend.

Yes - thanks for the update Jeff. It is interesting that - as much as people complain about Sage (with reason usually) - they are actually growing their Summit attendance.

And @WayneSchulz - it's my understanding that, although Microsoft is supporting the GPUG technical training conference, that conference came because the GPUG people saw a void and decided to fill it. It wasn't a pre-arranged thing with Microsoft. It shows that a determined group can provide a user based conference that will be well received and promoted when there is a hole for a specific type of conference.

At what cost though @PeterWolf ? I can't imagine what Summit costs them in dollars at this point.

Good point. I wonder how many Sage Live customers they need to pay for Summit? Oh well ... it 2.5 more years, that will be some other management team's problem, right?

Yes @PeterWolf - the main difference with Envision is I think it was a $1,200 conference vs $199 to $99 for Summit. But I get the gist and I agree that overall conferences are starting to look like a tough sell. It could be that some of the big ones (Salesforce) are starting to suck the oxygen out of the others. My gut feel is that maybe vendors are getting a little burned out with webinars and the constant treadmill of trying to host/promote/close and for a period of time are willing to spend a little extra on some of these conferences. I don't think that lasts forever and the MSFT conference space looks exceptionally busy but maybe they are playing with such a large pool of potential attendees that there's room for more. Also, it might be just me but Sage's 60 sessions on Sage 100 appear to be far more relevant than in the past. In addition GPUG tells me they were talking to Sage last year as well so there's definitely competition for the type of things 90 Minds does. Don't ever think there's not an organziation or two thinking of how they can do what we do but do it better.