What Does It Mean To Be A Microsoft Partner?

On the heels of the Microsoft Inspire partner conference held at the Mandalay Bay conference center in Las Vegas, the community will be coming together to share our collective feedback on the keynotes and announcements, program changes, and partner movements on Wednesday, July 31st at 9am Pacific / 12pm Eastern  as part of the next #CollabTalk TweetJam. Our topic will be “The Evolution of the Microsoft Partner Network” with a panel of partners, RD’s and MVPs, solution providers, and community influencers coming together with those who attended the event in-person, as well as those who watched the keynotes online.

You can join the community discussion using Twitter and the #CollabTalk hashtag, leverage the dedicated CollabTalk TweetJam page, or your favorite Twitter platform. You do not need to be an “expert” to participate in the online conversation, and can ask questions, comment on the questions posed, or just “lurk” in the background. These online discussions are open to anyone — you do not have to be on the panel to participate.

This month’s tweetjam and our amazing stats are once again being sponsored by our friends at tyGraph.

If you have never participated in one of these tweetjams, it’s pretty simple: anyone can jump in and share their thoughts, or just lurk in the wings and absorb the wisdom of the crowd. Either way, it’ll be a TON of content to consume in a single hour. You can follow the live session using the Twitter UI of your choice (Twitter.com, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Twubs, whatever). How it works is that I’ll post a series of questions every few minutes, and people will respond to Q1, Q2, Q3 and so forth with A1, A2, A3, always including the #CollabTalk hashtag with their answers. Feel free to reply as often (or as little) as you’d like, ask your own follow up questions, share relevant links, re-tweet others, and engage with the audience.

The questions we will discuss during the session include:

1. For those who attended, what were your 3 top takeaways from Microsoft Inspire this year?
2. With more and more focus on Teams, Dynamics 365, and Azure, how is Microsoft’s technology direction impacting your business?
3. Does the about-face on internal use rights (IURs), on-prem support, and new CSP requirements impact your business? If so, how?
4. Is your business participating in the Microsoft co-sell program, and if so, what have been the outcomes of your partnership?
5. How is the evolution of partner competencies and specializations impacting your business?
6. What is the value of membership in the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP)?
7. What other announcements should Microsoft partners and customers pay attention to from Inspire 2019?

As always, there will be side-questions, side-conversations, and wise-cracking throughout. This is open to the public, so please join in the discussion! The dialog is usually thought-provoking but also fun.

Participating on this panel (so far):

• Toby Richards (@tobyrichards), gm of partner programs, ww channels & programs at Microsoft
• Rudy Rodriguez (@eljefe1), principal at Dunamis Marketing, IAMCP Worldwide Treasurer, IAMCP US Board Member & Region Chair
• Ragnar Heil (@ragnarh), Office Servers & Services MVP and Microsoft alliance manager EMEA for Quest/Metalogix
• Dux Raymond Sy (@meetdux), Microsoft Regional Director, SharePoint MVP, and CMO of AvePoint
• Paul Solski (@paulsolski), managing director & founder of AIM International
• Eric Riz (@rizinsights), SharePoint MVP and ceo of Empty Cubicle
• Kelvin Kirby (@kjkirbu), ceo of Technology Associates
• Ed Senez (@edsenez), president at UnlimitedViz and TyGraph
• Paul Swider (@pswider), Microsoft RD and MVP, cto at RealActivity, and enterprise SharePoint strategist
• Eric Overfield (@ericoverfield), Microsoft Regional Director, SharePoint MVP, and founder of PixelMill
• Stacy Deere-Strole (@sldeere), SharePoint MVP and owner of Focal Point Solutions
• Heather Newman (@heddanewman), co-founder and cmo of ContentPanda, Office Apps & Services MVP
• Adam Ball (@AdamCBall), co-founder of COUCUG, Teams and Skype for Business MVP
• John White (@diverdown1964), SharePoint MVP and cto at UnlimitedViz and tyGraph
• David Gersten (@dsgersten), principal at Dynamic Consulting and IAMCP US board member
• David Willis (@Exclaimer), senior marketing executive at Exclaimer
• Dana Epp (@DanaEpp), Microsoft Regional Director and Security MVP
• Suzanne George (@spgenie), chief architect at Cognizant
• Jeff Shuey (@jshuey), business advisor, mentor and community engagement expert, co-founder of IAMCP Seattle
• Brian Tenney (@brian_tenney), vp of business development at JourneyTEAM
• and your host, Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), Microsoft MVP & RD, founder & ceo of CollabTalk LLC, cmo of revealit.io

If you would like to join our panel, please drop me a line. If you have questions, please connect with me via @buckleyplanet. And thank you again to tyGraph for your support of these CollabTalk tweetjams! And finally, if you are interested in being a sponsor of a future tweetjam, please contact me at CollabTalk