It’s the end of the first day of the Microsoft Partner Conference and I’m inspired, excited and exhausted. The keynotes although very product focused (sell Microsoft Office!) were both interesting and motivating. Heck, I’m nearly ready to try Vista – nearly. We’ve heard at least 12 times today how successful the Vista launch was. I think 18 repetitions is the official brainwashing number the CIA uses. The three break out sessions that I chose from the 180 options available (see yesterday’s blog) were informative and thought provoking. I went to the “ISV Super Session”, trolling for potential clients, Gartners’ “Reading the Tea Leaves” session to support Tiffani (she’d do the same for me) and “Sales Leadership – a Fulcrum for Success”, as I needed to know if it was truly inappropriate for a small business (see yesterday) or just a typo in the conference guide. Although it wasn’t that relevant to me – a small business sales leader – there was definitely a typo on the guide book as the session was worthwhile for a small business owner. I wonder if the mistake kept away any potential attendees that would have really benefited?

Other than the keynotes that were packed with over 5,000 bright eyed attendees, the other most crowded session I attended was the ISV session. I expected to learn how Microsoft worked with ISV’s, and instead I got an hour-long pitch on why I should develop my software on the Microsoft platform. I think as an ISV, I wouldn’t invest the time and money to come to WPC if I hadn’t already made the decision to develop on the MS platform. In addition to the product pushes and advertisements for other break out sessions, they did announce some programs that leverage Microsoft’s buying power to help the smaller ISVs – a channel recruitment resource (the York Group), SEO experts, and benchmark reports from MarketingSherpa. I didn’t get to connect with any partners (yet) to ask them if they use the tools that Microsoft provides. That’s tomorrow’s mission.

The sessions were good, but it’s the personal connections made that I really enjoy – and the reason I attend partner conferences. From the dozen conversations I had over breakfast, coffee, lunch, soda, dinner and cocktails, I’ll highlight three for you.

The first one (chronologically) was a meeting with Mike Haines. Mike used to be the channel analyst at Gartner and is now the GM of Partnering Strategy for the US team at Microsoft. We had a great chat about partner-to-partner collaboration, which has been Mike’s stump issue for the last couple of years. We worked on an end-all-be-all solution for how to engage partners in working with each other, but we didn’t come to a final answer, yet ?. We discussed our [Amazon Consulting’s] new customer subscription renewal tool and collaborative deal management tool in the PartnerPath solution that helps vendors collaborate with partners. He seemed to really like how we work with other systems to provide add-on functionality, instead of expecting the vendors to rip-and-replace their current partnering solutions. And, of course, we discussed the talent shortage in the industry, and how organizations like Cisco were trying to help solution providers attract, develop and retain experienced individuals. Mike told me that Microsoft was looking at some similar programs and we might be able to help there.

My second great conversation was inspiring and scary at the same time. I met Bill Botti, COO of Alternative Technology and Amazon Consulting board member for lunch. It’s always nerve racking for me to meet with a board member – I never feel prepared enough! We chatted about the direction of Amazon Consulting and our focus on designing, implementing and automating partnering for technology companies. He’s still a huge fan of our work and believes we’re on the right path expanding into implementation services and automation – because it helps us increase client satisfaction and continued engagement. We also talked about Alternative Technology being purchased by Arrow and what that meant for the value-add that Alt Tech is known for. I was excited to hear that Arrow is going to leave them alone as a wholly-owned subsidiary. We finished our salads discussing the growth in the technology market place, the new vendors they’ve brought on (VMware, for example) and of course, golf. Bill has a great leadership style – his goal is to hire great people so he can spend more time golfing with customers and vendors. He got in 82 rounds of golf last year … and he lives in Denver! That’s my new dream…

I’ve saved the best for last. I had a great conversation with the president of a Microsoft gold certified partner at the bar tonight (like you didn’t know that was coming). He’s an SMB “reseller” (hates that word), based in Framingham, CT. He had been out all night “socializing” already and was going to take his beer back to his room to do email, until I talked him into staying at the bar with me. He had already been to the Symantec party that night and to the Microsoft US party at Inesco Field – where I was too. Our first heated debate was that he thought Huey Lewis and the News ROCKED, I disagreed and thought they were much better when they played my high school prom (yes, a long, long time ago). Since he’s also an IBM business partner, I got into the comparison discussion. He is a die-hard, loyal fan of IBM - wouldn’t sell anything else. However, he says their partner program is the worst among the lines he carries. He wasn’t too complimentary about SonicWall either, but that was more in product and pricing than the program. Even as I supplied him with a constant stream of local brews, he never wavered in his admiration of Microsoft. He loves the products, the people (his CAM) and the program. Just before we both turned into pumpkins at midnight, I asked the question about partnering with Dell…ugh, did I get an earful. Never, never, never. The trust was broken and there would never be a personal connection like he has with Microsoft and IBM. Waiting for your call, Michael…

More tomorrow…