Community is an often used word in Microsoft circles.  Step away from the software and they can’t help but talk about the groups of people and businesses in this way, whether you’re a partner, customer or employee.  A quick search yields the Dynamics Partner Community Blog and if you drop by the Microsoft Dynamics Community page you can then box yourself in even further as being part of a Role Tailored Community or Product Community and the concept begins to look a bit forced.

If I were in a cynical mood I could say that this is just an exercise in marketing outreach designed for Microsoft to deliver messages to sets of people it wants to sell its licenses who, whilst they might listen to Microsoft, rarely hear them and go off and do whatever the right thing is for their own business instead.  If I were feeling really cynical I’d say that if you’re busy with business you frankly don’t have time for this kind of thing.

And yet, here I am signed up to attend the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington this year where I’ll join tens of thousands of Microsoft Partners and several thousand Microsoft employees for five days of keynotes, networking and breakout sessions.  And I’m really looking forward to it.

Why is this?  Well, after spending so many years working with NAV and AX partners, and if I take the definition of ‘community’ as the mass noun “The condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common”*  then it is my community.  I may be in the business of recruitment but my community is not with other recruitment consultancies – we may have a common interest in terms of the services that we provide and the interests of our candidates and customers but other than that we’re competitors and I can think of people I’d much rather spend my time with (I’m sure the feeling is mutual).  The Microsoft Dynamics NAV and AX partner community is somewhere I feel at home, where I have an interest, an investment, some heritage even.  The partners I work with are valued by their customers for their depth of knowledge and years of experience.  The candidates I place are sought out for the same reason.  I am hopeful that it’s why my customers come to me.

So as more and more of my community finalise their plans to head out to WPC, I thought it was about time that I joined them.  And if you’d like to join me in discussing the changes, challenges and opportunities of operating in the NAV and AX market today, then let’s connect.

^{*Source: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/community}