Summit 2019: A New View from Cari Corozza

Didn’t make it to Summit this year? We’re sharing a series with our team’s experience and insights from Summit 2019. Cari Corozza shares her thoughts as a first-time attendee:

Music blasting, lights dancing, excitement in the room—I felt like I was walking into a concert.  In reality, I was walking into the opening session of Summit 2019 in sunny Orlando, Florida.  I felt so much energy coming from the people around me and I was excited to be a part of it.  If you’ve been to Summit before, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  If you haven’t been to Summit yet, it’s something you need to experience!  Despite being a NAV end-user for almost 4 years prior to joining the New View Strategies team, I had never attended Summit before.  The experience lived up to all the hype.

I left at the end of the week feeling excited and refreshed.  I had new knowledge and new connections and I felt like I had grown into the community.  There are many things I took away from this first Summit experience, but below I wanted to share two of my biggest impressions from the week.

Gaining exposure to new topics

As a former accountant working in NAV, I can process journal entries, accounts payable, and month-end close processes in Dynamics NAV as second nature.  But the great thing about Summit is that there are so many sessions to choose from on a plethora of topics, and rest assured you are getting top-notch information from the talented presenters.

If you want to stick to topics strictly in the areas of NAV or BC that you work in on a daily basis, you can absolutely do this.  These sessions are valuable because even if you use a certain function every day, you might get a new perspective on it or pick up little tips and tricks to make your life easier.  It helps to see how others are doing things and gain new insights from experienced users.

You can also choose to explore topics that you might not encounter as regularly.  You can sit in on an administration or manufacturing session to help you become more familiar with the other areas of NAV and how users are working with these functionalities.  It might even give you an appreciation and understanding of the other departments within your company, as well as a few thoughts to bring back to them.

I want to highlight two of my favorite sessions from the week:

• Shawn Dorward’s Excel Life Hacks- Tips and Tricks for Excel Users- As someone who knows a good amount about excel and its functionality, I was shocked by the things I didn’t know. Two of my favorite tips were the ‘change case’ and ‘trim and clean’ functions. I could tell that others in this session were equally as astounded as I was by the time-saving tricks Shawn taught us, and his infectious enthusiasm made the session even more enjoyable!

• Kerry (Rosvold) Peters’ 50 Tips in 50 Minutes for Business Central- Kerry is a New View

Strategies colleague who has a wealth of knowledge on Business Central, and in this session she shared 50 tips to make life easier for BC users.  It’s awesome watching everyone’s faces light up as they learn something that they’ve been trying to do without success, or something they never knew they could do they will save them a whole lot of time and effort in the future.  This session also included the new BC wave 2 releases, and they are worth checking out!

Realizing you are a part of something so much bigger

As a natural introvert, it was a bit daunting stepping into the expo center the first time.  There are hundreds of people floating around networking and checking out the vendor booths.  At first I wasn’t sure where to go or who to talk to, but as I started to talk to new people as well as see familiar faces around, the room seemed less crowded and more comfortable.

It’s motivating being around people who are as excited to learn and share their knowledge as you.  As a community, it’s important that we all stay involved because there is so much valuable information to be shared and connections to be made.  Throughout the week I met a large handful of people whose names I was familiar with in the NAVUG community, but that I hadn’t met in person before.  It’s great to meet these NAV living legends and exchange a few thoughts with them.

It quickly hit me that everyone was in this place for the same reason, and it doesn’t matter whether you’ve been a part of the NAVUG/BCUG community for 10 years, or even just 10 days.  I’ve experienced this on a much smaller scale at NAVUG Chapter meetings and Focus 2019, but Summit just hits you full force with community.  I realize how lucky I am to be a part of this awesome group of people, and I would encourage everyone to get involved on any scale, whether it be joining a local Chapter or even just participating in the NAVUG community posts.

Interested in hearing more from Summit 2019? Click here to read Mark Rhodes’ take-aways.