Thank You Microsoft

As much as I can’t agree with their message and direction, I have to extend the huge kudos to the Digital WPC team at Microsoft for making the keynotes and side sessions available to the partner audience at large. To be able to sit in my office as a Floridian in a tshirt and shorts and watch the news come out live instead of through someone else’s eyes and reports has been amazing. As a partner, thank you!

Now comes the grueling task of sitting down with my team and picking apart the notes, the powerpoints, crunching numbers, designing surveys and trying to figure out how we can continue to stay one step ahead of the rest, shed the stuff that keeps us from being flexible and move forward.

I always like to take the weekend after WPC off to clear my mind a little and let the keynote euphoria wash out a little. Microsoft is great at selling themselves and their opportunity and it takes a few days to put down the Koolade, evaluate where we’re at with respect to where we could be and what we can actually pull off in a meaningful way.

Regrets: I wish I was there. WPC is about so much more than the keynotes and sessions, it’s about learning what the business possibilities truly are and learning from people that are not exactly the same as you. My boy just had his first two nights of sleeping straight through the night so in the hindsight it probably wouldn’t have killed me (as in wife with a steak knife) if I had gone. I wish I didn’t screw Mark Crall by putting an explicit image right above his corporate logo, sorry about that man. I wish we lead into WPC with a bit more of an open mind towards Apple and Google and SalesForce as it seems that trend is getting far too strong for Microsoft to ignore so neither should we.

I think Kevin Turner said it best today:

“Always bet on what your customers are telling you.”

Same to you bud. Now back to work on trying to open that conversation up, even when it revolves around something I may not like to hear.