Microsoft Sinergija 2012 – Review

Posted on November 4, 2012 by Bojan Jovicic

This year Microsoft Sinergija had the slogan “Moving Up”, with focus on the cloud. This is my sixth year in a row to present at this regional ICT conference. I had two tracks: one about Microsoft Dynamics AX and one about Microsoft Office 365.

As an MVP for Microsoft Dynamics AX I was invited to open the track and give the introduction about a good local partner company, Merit Solutions. Merit is focusing on Microsoft Dynamics AX and Microsoft Dynamics GP in North America, but has strengthened their local presence with implementation of their Life Sciences module “MaxLife” in local pharmaceutical company. Merit is real young and agile company (they are using Scrum), but they have really considerable number of reference implementations, upgrades and similar projects. They also worked on creation of exams for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 as I did

In the spirit of conference slogan, my second track for presentation of our implementation of Microsoft Office 365 in Delta Sport. We were the first Microsoft pilot in the region and then we went into production. This was done with the help of a local ICT company, CPU, which has top notch employees including Nebojsa Šešlija (ex Microsoft Exchange MVP) whose expertise was very important in our implementation.

At “Grand opening ceremony”, GM of local Microsoft Office mentioned our Office 365 move as reference case. The opening was really enjoyable featured “a cappella” choir Viva Vox.

Day before the conference, local Microsoft DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelist), Siniša Perović organized a dinner for all MVPs and other long time lecturers. It was great and a real pleasure to talk again in person to some of them. Also the event beside the technical knowledge, provides a excellent chance to network.

PS> Hats off to Alessandro, Aleksandar, Catalin, Dean, Nenad, Ivan and Siniša for staying until the end

Microsoft Sinergija (Synergy) 2011

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Bojan Jovicic

This year I will be speaking at the annual Microsoft conference Sinergija 2011 (Sinergy).

As a CIO I am very proud that this year there are even two speakers from our company’s IT team, beside myself. This is a significant acknowledgement both to the whole company as well as to my work in inspiring and motivating others to grow and learn, but also to join the community and share the knowledge (starting with 2009 when one of my associates held one track, to 2010 and this with two of my associates being presenters).

You are kindly invited to come and check their sessions:

- System Center Service Manager – Implementing ITIL framework on 19.10. at 10:30 – 11:30.
- Data Mining In Retail Industry on 20.10. at 16:00 – 17:00.

As for me, I will be doing five tracks. The most important is Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 (a new version of Microsoft’s Flagship ERP system). I will be doing a session on Agile and also three community tracks (one of them is Agile/Scrum User Group meet-up and also Microsoft Dynamics User Group meet-up).

Community tracks are free, so anyone can come (more info: http://msacademic.rs/News.aspx?id=588).

Lean Architecture: for Agile Software Development

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Bojan Jovicic

I recently got my hands on hard copy of an excellent book of James Coplien – Lean Architecture: for Agile Software Development. I was one of the reviewers for the book and have only the words of praise for it.

This book brings the world of the architecture right in the context of agile. If you are using Lean, Scrum, XP or any of the other agile approaches in any of the roles in the process, this is the book for you. If focuses on the collaborative approach as one of the key success factors of the good development teams. Written in the clear and understandable tone, with the concrete samples in almost every popular language, you will get your hands deep on the new approach that is complimentary with the idea of the book.

James was one of the main promoters of Scrum in Serbia and has already twice visited our country and passed a part of his knowledge without compensation.

The book is currently top title on Amazon for agile and architecture. If you have space to order it, I think this is an excellent choice.

Microsoft Dynamics & the Cloud

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Bojan Jovicic

Recently I have been asked by Software Advice (click here to visit their site) to share their interview about Microsoft Dynamics and the cloud with Marie Huwe, General Manager of Marketing for Microsoft Dynamics.

The interview is 14 minutes long and presents Microsoft’s roadmap for getting Microsoft Dynamics products in the cloud. You will hear about cloud partner profitability guide, cloud best practices, Dynamics marketplace and other cool tools that Microsoft is planning to apply. For me it looks best that some of these tools will be powered and will be accessible by Microsoft CRM which itself is the first one of Microsoft Dynamics products which is already in the cloud. You see the interview here.

Here is the link to Cloud partner profitability guide and one other pointer related to cloud and Microsoft Dynamics AX with focus on version 2012.

Retail IT Summit 2011

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Bojan Jovicic

This is one of the conferences where I initially planned to attend as a visitor, because of industrial focus (retail), but I got invited by organizers to present instead.

The event will bring together representatives of leading retail chains in Serbia, who will attend a one day event (10th May 2011) on which they will follow the presentations and exhibitions of the biggest international experts in retail area (you can get more info and detailed list of exhibitors here).

I will be presenting about our way of working with focus on our award winning in-house developed retail solution and its application in sports and fashion retail, with brief touch on our ERP system: Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Decisions Spring 2011

Posted on May 3, 2011 by Bojan Jovicic

To my great pleasure, I have been asked again to speak about Agile Software Development and Microsoft Dynamics AX at one of the greatest virtual conferences on Microsoft Dynamics products: Decisions!

MSDynamicsWorld.com has been hosting these semiannual events for a couple of years now, and they are tremendous, free resources for learning and networking. This time it is spring version, and is again features 4 days dedicated to different Dynamics products, as shown on promo below:

One interesting thing is that expert will be answering questions from the audience through live chat after the sessions. And you may want to consider stopping in to the networking lounge at the event as well and continuing the conversation with the presenters or other attendees, as that tends to get some lively discussion. If you already attended this event, then you know from your own experiences how interesting this can be.

Here are the links for programs for individual days:

June 14 – AX Day – http://decisions.msdynamicsworld.com/content/dynamics-ax-day-program
June 15 – GP Day – http://decisions.msdynamicsworld.com/content/dynamics-gp-day-program
June 16 – NAV Day – http://decisions.msdynamicsworld.com/content/dynamics-nav-day-program
June 17 – CRM Day – http://decisions.msdynamicsworld.com/content/dynamics-crm-day-program

And you can register here.

PKB – Agile Project Management

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Bojan Jovicic

Belgrade Chamber of Commerce is hosting a mini event about agile project management. The event is supported by PMI (Project Management Institute) Serbia and our Agile Serbia user group.

There will be a presentation of a research about software project approaches used in Serbia, we will hear what is happening with PMI and Agile and I will speak about Scrum.

If you are interested to come (21 Apr 2011, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM) you can find more details at http://www.scrumalliance.org/events/334-pkb–agile-project-management.

Microsoft WinDays 2011

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Bojan Jovicic

I was really delighted to be accepted to present at the biggest IT conference in Croatia – Microsoft WinDays. This is a conference with a long tradition and splendid organization.

Being the first person to present about Microsoft Dynamics AX, I was really enthusiastic about it. The track showed key business advantages but also the technical resons with focus on agile. It went well and it was nice to see that Microsoft Dynamics AX is used in Croatia.

Conference was held in beautiful seaside town of Rovinj.

Microsoft Sinergija 2010 – Review

Posted on January 9, 2011 by Bojan Jovicic

Having been a regular lecturer in the past four years, I was really excited with this year’s Microsoft annual conference: Microsoft Sinergija. It is celebrating its 10th anniversary and was internationally oriented (both in speaker and audience sense), becoming one of the most important IT events in the region.

Many side events were also organized, both of educational and entertainment type. There was a gala opening, a party and also a remarkable Influencer Summit featuring an outstanding fusion of technical and community content. Here you can read about Influencer Summit and also get some statistics about the whole Sinergija (3000+ attendees).

As I wrote before, I was already invited as a speaker in Microsoft Dynamics Area, but more important was that this year made me even prouder than last year in my coaching career, as now even two of my associates presented on their own. Each held a very informative and amusing track. The auditorium was quite pleased with both of them and so was I. My track was together with our business partner NPS, and we did a really notable talk with demos on their excellent work with us in field of Human Capital Management in Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Future managers and Microsoft Dynamics AX

Posted on December 27, 2010 by Bojan Jovicic

Another case of my willingness to help others and promote Microsoft Dynamics AX was in the academic circles – I was a guest lecturer at the Faculty of Organization Science, Belgrade University on December 1st, 2010.

The lecture was of interactive kind; after I had presented key possibilities for business management using Microsoft Dynamics AX and how we solved some challenges in practice, I was being asked a vast variety of both technical and practical questions on the subject. It was truly exciting to see the immenseness of the creative energy among students and the way they were inspired by the lecture. Many of them already have the minds of managers and have engineered their own ways of possible using of Dynamics AX.

Local Microsoft office has provided the students who attended the lecture with free gifts in the Dynamics AX style.

You can check the event invitation here (page is in Serbian).

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