Partner Opportunities in the Microsoft Ecosystem

During his Microsoft Inspire (#MSInspire) keynote, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talked about the ongoing digital transformation of every industry and sector, often referring to the “tech intensity” of Microsoft’s partners, experts, and customers, telling the audience:

“While the pandemic has taught us that no business is 100 percent resilient, those fortified by digital technology are more resilient, more capable of transforming when faced with these secular structural changes in the marketplace. We call this tech intensity, and every organization and every industry will increasingly need to embrace it in order to be successful and grow.”

As we typically do every year in July, our focus for this month’s community discussion will expand on this theme of “tech intensity” and explore some of the themes and guiding principles from the annual partner event, held online for the first time due to the COVID-19 quarantine. While we lost so many of the opportunities to connect and meetup in person this year, the number of people globally who were able to participate in the conference and hear directly from Nadella and other Microsoft sales and marketing leadership increased tenfold — and our goal is to tap into that audience and talk about how Microsoft’s focus and goals will impact our own businesses.

Join us for this #CollabTalk TweetJam on Thursday, July 30th at 9am Pacific / 12pm Eastern as we convene to discuss “Opportunities in the Microsoft Partner Ecosystem.”  Participate in the discussion with other members of the community as we share feedback, ideas, and takeaways from this month’s Microsoft partner conference, and share how the event may/will impact your own business strategies.

You can join the community discussion using Twitter and the #CollabTalk hashtag 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 is being sponsored once again by our good 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, 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. What are your takeaways from this year’s Microsoft Inspire conference and/or related announcements?
2. How is your “tech intensity,” and how well are you/your customers weathering the current global economic climate?
3. How have your operations and/or priorities changed, if at all, during the current global economic climate?
4. As Microsoft Partners, how are you focusing on remote work, business continuity, security, and/or cloud migration?
5. How can companies better leverage technology innovation to drive business and societal outcomes for good?
6. As Microsoft Partners, where do you see the greatest opportunities for growth in the next 2-3 years?
7. What advice would you give to Microsoft to improve their support for, or interactions with Partners?

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 always thought-provoking and fun.

Participating on this panel:

• David Gersten (@dsgersten), principal at Dynamic Consulting and IAMCP SoCal board member
• Sharon Weaver (@sharoneweaver), consultant, trainer and ceo of Smarter Consulting
• Jeffrey Schwartz (@jeffreyschwartz), editor-at-large for Channel Futures and Channel Partners Online
• John White (@diverdown1964), SharePoint MVP and cto at UnlimitedViz and tyGraph
• Laura Rogers (@WonderLaura), SharePoint MVP, consultant, and owner of IW Mentor
• Kevin McDonnell (@kevmcdonk), senior technical architect at Ballard Chalmers
• Jeff Willinger (@jwillie), Office 365 MVP and independent consultant
• Stacy Deere-Strole (@sldeere), SharePoint MVP and owner of Focal Point Solutions
• Eric Riz (@rizinsights), SharePoint MVP and ceo of Empty Cubicle
• Seb Matthews (@sebmatthews), consultant, entrepreneur, evangelist, freemason, world traveler
• Sean McDonough (@spmcdonough), SharePoint MVP and chief technology officer at BitStream Foundry LLC
• Ed Senez (@edsenez), president at UnlimitedViz and TyGraph
• Erica Toelle (@ericatoelle), Office Apps & Services MVP and Microsoft Compliance consultant
• Adam Ball (@AdamCBall), co-founder of COUCUG, Teams and Skype for Business MVP
• Vlad Catrinescu (@vladcatrinescu),SharePoint and Office 365 MVP, speaker, and author
• Suzanne George (@spgenie), chief architect at Cognizant
• Bradley Geldenhuys (@bradgcoza), founder and ceo of GTconsult
• Sascha Fredrich (@saschaF80), IT consultant of Microsoft solutions at bei Bechtle AG
• Tobiasz Koprowski (@KoprowskiT), Data Platform MVP, founder and consultant at Shadowland Consulting
• Michal Sobotkiewicz (@michalsobot), founder and ceo of ObjectConnect and KanBo
• Nick Brattoli (@Byrdttoli), Microsoft MVP, founder and lead consultant at Byrdttoli Enterprise Consulting
• and your host, Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), Microsoft MVP & RD, founder & ceo of CollabTalk LLC

If you would like to be included on one of these panels, please drop me a line via email, LinkedIn, or Twitter. 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.