Today (well, yesterday) was a big day for me. And although none of it applies directly to you and your needs as my treasured readers, I feel it is my responsibility as someone who told you to come to WWPC to see what can come from these social / networking events on a grand scale. So I’m the guy in the pink shirt and here is the big picture:
(sorry Katie, punt was neccessary)
Today I had meetings with my biggest clients and my biggest prospects. I had a meeting with Steven Ballmer yesterday, discussing the very thing I blogged about previously – the importance of ISV solution provider in the Microsoft partner system, as perhaps the only integrator of complex solutions available. I was in a panel with Robert Deshaies (and Paige Bosen and Eric Ligman and literally everyone below Robert Deshaies in the Microsoft Partner Program) discussing the past, present and future of Microsoft SBSC program and how it can further help us here in United States. I also had a very brief couch conversation with Eric Ligman about the SBSC as it pertains to retailers and their chosen approach. While I am sure you can understand the contents of these meetings are fairly confidential, I trust you also know that I have voiced your concerns. The particular value of this, really at any level, is clarity. That brief moment of brevity when someone explains to you the challenges, opportunities, tradeoffs an benefits – and you understand why they made the (at times difficult) decision they had to make. We all run businesses, and serve businesses, and this is why I go out of my way to understand how the best in the business operate, evaluate and decide.
Partners, Partners, Partners
The remainder of the conference went to the partnership meetings. I see these as the natural progression of my business and evolution as a part of something much bigger than Vlad or OwnWebNow. We’ve gone from consulting to ISP to ASP to vendor and now finally arriving and highly customized, personalized and cared for solutions. I often look at other businesses in my league and their attempts to cookie cutter everything and realize thats where we were several years ago.
Where we are today is at a unique role to be able to provide a global presence, expertise in Microsoft’s ever evolving stack, migration to and from Linux, high availability solutions and what I like to call “agile development” in terms of being able to deliver a proof-of-concept solution to customers on a whole new scale.
From conversations with fellow SBSers I can tell you that they all recognize the need to commoditize this business and grab as big of a pie as possible. How? By partnering and using economies of scale. Sure, there are exceptions to this (which is not even close to a rule) and then there is a very different mindset altogether – I am not putting either down for a change, I am just trying to explain mine.
Mine…. is that of staying ahead of Microsoft in service. Not in innovation, not in pricing, not in depth or breth. In service.
Step into the Social
This is the most fun I’ve had at a partner conference… ever. My business meetings wrapped by 5 PM and the remainder of the evening really went to hanging out with some dear friends whose company I truely enjoy. We first went to the vendor party at the CC followed up by the Red ROI Apple goofoff. I have no way to explain this to you in any way that you wouldn’t lose all respect for me, whatever little of it I have left out there, so I won’t even try.
Huge, huge…. just phenomenally huge thanks to Carlson Colomb of Level Platforms. Carlson got us into the infamous ISV Party where I spent some time hanging with Erick, Dave, Karl, Paul Fitzgerald, Nancy, Susan Levine and Mark. It is so nice to have friends on the road, they make such a difference when days get long. Not constantly talking about business, geek and other stuff really takes it to a whole new level. I really wish I could share more with you but I can’t. In brief, this beat last years UK party for me. Yes, really. Ok, maybe just a little peak: One of the club levels was water – so lots of beach toys. This girl got two little baloons, put them under her shirt and was so fascinated by them that she couldn’t stop shaking around; welcome to my league of public embarrasment, I just had to take a pic:
I texted Dean and Susanne about 20 minutes after we got to the party and just told them they had to be at the ISV party. Susanne “you are not to blog about anything I just told you” Dansey.. <censored> Long story short, Dean, Susanne and I ended the day with a nice quiet bar on the 16th street mall in Denver. They taught me about Australia, UK history, nuances, language, states. It was a perfect way to wrap a phenomenal day.
Last year, fundamentally, changed my business, my personal life and the way I work. Will this one live up to it?
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