As mentioned earlier, I had the privilege of being invited to speak at Microsoft Serbia’s Sinergia 2014 event at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Belgrade, last October. With a little more room in my schedule, I can finally share some pictures of this event.

I flew from Amsterdam to Belgrade on Sunday October 19th. After an uneventful Air France flight over my home town, I had a layover at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, where I had my first experiences with flying Air Serbia. Due to the 45-minute walk between terminals, I arrived in the nick of time to get boarded. I was seated in the last row on that flight.

I arrived at Nikola Tesla Belgrade Airport slightly after 10 PM. I was greeted at the airport and brought to the Crowne Plaza hotel in Novi Beograd.

This is where I met a nice (new) room and my head met a bed on the 6th floor. This is a Sleeping Advantage floor.

The next morning, after enjoying the view and breakfast, I picked up the conference bag, shirt and badge.

This was the first day of Sinergija 2014. The Keynote with Damian Caro, technical evangelist for Microsoft, was the first session presented:

According to the schedule, my first session ‘10 most common mistakes when deploying AD FS’ was up at 1PM. I decided to get ready for it by reviewing the slides, demos and presentation room. (Aegean). Then, I presented the session to a 50-person audience in a 70-person room. Fun, but alas no pictures…

After the sessions, Microsoft Serbia invited the speakers and organizers for dinner at Biber Restaurant, which gave me the opportunity to catch up with Aleksandar Nikolić and meet Romeo Mlinar.

The next morning, my presentation ‘Virtualization-safer Active Directory and DC Cloning’ was up in the first time slot:

Feeling energized from this session, I decided to get some work done afterwards in the speaker room:

As the (technical part of) Microsoft Sinergija 2014 drew to an end, everyone I knew and met left the venue. I had a nice dinner in the hotel’s restaurant and went to bed afterwards, knowing my flight back to the Netherlands would leave at 6:40 AM and I had an appointment with my chauffeur at 4 AM to drive me to the Airport.

Of course, all appointments were met and I was one of the first people at Nikola Tesla Airport that morning. Also, being the first person to board the Air Serbia flight, I was seated in Economy Comfort, in the front of my class. You gotta love these airlines…

Flying back, I realized I had a great time in Serbia and a lot of fun.

Thanks Aleksandar and Sinergija team!