Tuesday, July 10, 2007

WPC Small Biz Symposium Kicks Booty

Small Biz Symposium notes

Thing One: Access to Microsoft. Pretty much every MS employee in the SBSC community is here.

That includes World Wide team leaders, the people who run the show in the U.S., members of the SBS development team, and the people who design, build, and support the SBSC web site.

Uh. . . No one from PSS/CSS.

Thing Two: Not sure why, but this is the only small biz event I've been to that hires a real motivational speaker to jazz people up and get them buzzed for the day. Robin Crow was entertaining and excellent. They did the same thing last year with the Sloan Brothers. Hope more folks do this.

Thing Three: Got some info on Microsoft's strategies for the next 12-24 months. Security campaigns; helping customers get more customers; productivity; business solutions. All "branded with SBSC." Looking forward to the materials on that.

--
Side note: I can't forget to remember something I've heard twice from two different people:
SBSC will be revised with SBS 2008. There will be requirements. Cousin Larry's Pretty Good Technical Consulting may not get to stay SBSC without actually knowing something about the product.

I consider that good news.
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Side Note 2:
Public announcement (promise) that the action pack will begin to have some requirements.

There will be online training requirements and online assessment requirements.
So Cousin Larry's Pretty Good Dental Office will have a tougher time being an Action Pack subscriber.

I think everyone considers this good news.
--

Afternoon sessions were good.

Afternoon networking and schmoozing was excellent. The only drawback is that it's hard to break away with one person unless you get in a taxi and go to the other side of town.

Of particular interest was Susanne Dansey. See http://www.uksmbgirl.co.uk/blog. Awesome as usual.

To be honest, her seminar sounded a little "old school." Providing business value through great customer service. I went cuz I'm a friend.

But it was awesome. I took notes through the whole thing. Turns out she's an MVP for a good reason. Great material, well thought out, and very nicely presented.

I learnt a lot.

--

Final lesson: After three Microsoft Intergallactic Partner conferences, the entire show continues to kick ass and take names.

Well worth the money.

And the real show doesn't start until today.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:53 PM

    PSS/CSS were at TechEd (you remember your book at the booth). WWPC is sales and marketing.

    That's why.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maybe. But when I look through the sessions I see lots of hands on labs and feature presentations that look like they're the TS2 slides I'm going to 100x in the next 12 months.

    So it's not all sales and marketing.

    There's a lot of "messaging" about how partners and MS can work better together. That's not sales or marketing.

    ReplyDelete

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