“They are saving space for that new condo development,” I said while talking to folks at the Avalara booth. Certainly, the space occupied by Microsoft in the center of the exhibit floor, which I believe carried the name Customer Experience Center (Yuck) , at the Convergence user conference very sparsely populated – the actual kiosks were spaced far apart and the kiosks themselves were lower profile than Microsoft has typically had at these events.

From the moment you landed at Louis Armstrong airport in New Orleans the most notable thing about Convergence (outside of Microsoft) was the visibility of cloud vendor Acumatica. A young lady with a sign “Convergence attendees” stationed at the baggage claim turned out to be distributing Acumatica canvas bags.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had less of a clue of what might happen at Convergence 2013, the thirteenth show. And I have attended everyone starting with show No. 3. In 2010, there was a big build up to the expected announcement about the cloud from CEO Steve Ballmer. But that turned into a slam-bam-thank-you-Steve event in which the highly anticipated statement on the cloud became a “we’re all in” hit-and-run declaration.

Compensation for the two top executives for the Sage Group dropped by double digits for the year ended September 30. CEO Guy Berruyer earned about $1.5 million for fiscal 2012, down 27 percent from the prior year. CFO Paul Harrison got roughly $862,000, a similar drop. Only pay for the members of the executive committee is reported and the other member, David Clayton, left the board in February 2012, but continued work until June last year.