Two weeks ago, I was in Belgrade to deliver two presentations at Microsoft Serbia’s Sinergija event and to spend time with friends.

I traveled to Belgrade via Paris on Sunday October 16th. I was greeted by the events chauffeur and we arrived at the Belgrade Crown Plaza at around 11 PM. Of course, Romeo, Aleksandar, Tomislav, Nenad and Luka were having drinks in the lobby, so I joined them briefly before heading to the hotel room I shared with Wekoslav Stefanovski from Macedonia.

The next morning we enjoyed breakfast at the hotel and then headed to registration and on to the Keynote room. I sat down with Ben Armstrong for a couple of minutes before the keynote and then joined the crowd.

I also attended Ben’s follow-up session on Containers and walked around a little bit.

After the keynote I started preparing my first session: ‘Azure Active Directory Join for Windows 10 Bring-Your-Own Scenarios’. Since this session was scheduled last-minute, I didn’t have high expectation for the turn-out, but I wasn’t disappointed.

We had a nice interactive chat about claims-based authentication and the evolution of joined Windows-based devices to greater collectives. I also met with Mustafa Toroman.

After some more sessions, we drove to the Sava riverside and had dinner with the Sinergija speakers and then headed to the Sinergija party, where I wisely chose not to consume any alcohol, because I had another session on my calendar.

The next day, I delivered my ‘Virtualizing Highly-Sensitive Domain Controllers on Hyper-V and Azure‘ session to a packed room. Again, a lot of interactions, frowns and, of course, amazement on how far we’ve come. Afterwards, I reminisced with Ben on the progress Microsoft has made since I first delivered the session at Experts Live in 2014.

After the main event, we took a moment to relax and then enjoyed a night in Belgrade, visiting the impressive Kalamegdan Fortress with tour guide Tomislav Lulic, and Kafana, the oldest restaurant in Belgrade, where we enjoyed Serbian cuisine, accompanied by violin music.

On Wednesday morning October 19th, I flew to Paris and onwards to Amsterdam, back home.

I had a lot of fun!
Thank you!