Acumatica Summit

A Customer/Developer MVP’s insight. 

Things I loved and things I didn’t.

Once again Acumatica held an amazing Summit. So many exciting happenings.  So many new shiny features I’m looking forward to playing with when they are released. 

One of my favorite things about Summit is Hackathon. 

I loved spending time with fellow developers and soaking up as much wisdom and guidance as I can.  As a newer developer in the Acumatica world, the connections I’ve made through Hackathon and the soon to be officially renamed Developer MVP(?), All Star(?) program have been such a blessing.  Hackathon is an ideal setting for developers, and even other fields to learn from each other in a face-to-face setting, meet new people, program our little hearts out, and reconnect with friends from former Hackathons.

Another thing I love about Summit is connecting with other customers.

As the Information Technology Manager for two manufacturing companies, learning how other Manufacturers utilize their implementations and optimize functionality.  Being in a niche industry like tobacco, I enjoy learning about how others have been able to work through little gotchas where Acumatica doesn’t quite work with the reality of manufacturing world.  Sharing between customers about their difficulties and solutions helps so much with road mapping business processes going forward.

The sessions themselves is where it turns from loved, to liked, and then to wish were different. 

I love going to the sessions to see what new features are coming, what has been released and have questions answered regarding the impact on current and future functionality.  The structure of this year’s Summit was decided different from last year.  There were no hands-on courses after the end of Summit as they’d had in years past.  This year they also did not have a dedicated technical/developer track.  The sessions that were offered were very ‘fluffy’ compared to years past.  While informative, they lacked the meat of previous Summit sessions.  While I am technically a customer, my background is in development and programming and this year’s sessions were very much what Mom used to refer to as ‘mind bubblegum’.  Light and non-mentally taxing sessions that I felt are on par with the cookie cutter romance novels. Lots of words, but not a lot of substance.

Another thing that was lackluster this year was unfortunately my beloved Hackathon. 

While it was only my second year participating it was my third Summit, and I had very high expectations and anticipation of the event.  In past years the teams were very balanced, and the participants had met several times virtually to discuss projects.  This year the teams were not well balanced, as they were shuffled multiple times in advance of Hackathon as participants officially dropped out or did not respond or show up at the event itself. There were no SAS instances ready at the start of the event, nor Acumatica established Git repositories.  If I wanted to be petty, I would also point out the lack of table numbers to direct new participants to their teams.  Communication from Acumatica in advance of Hackathon felt more reactionary rather than proactive. 

While this is a minor complaint, the food this year was lackluster in comparison to years past. 

The breakfast was much lighter than expected.  Strictly fruits and bread items.  Not conducive to anyone who is following a lower carb diet.  Not a single hot food to be found.  Another minor annoyance is that there was a decided lack of snacks between the meals.  Previously, there had been grab and go snacks in between sessions and meals.  The meals served during Hackathon were also not well received by the participants.  While technically ‘5-star’, food was either bland, had very odd combinations of flavors, or not generally suited for the developers to munch and program at the same time.  Overall, meals just didn’t feel well thought out for the audience.