Live from WPC - Sonoma out

Posted by Mike Snyder on July 14, 2006  |  Comments (2)

With the Worldwide Partner Conference wrapped up, I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the event…complete with the good, the bad and the ugly!

The Good

• As expected, Windows Vista and Office 2007 got most of the attention at the conference but Microsoft CRM was easily the third most talked about product! There was an excellent Microsoft CRM demo during the Steve Ballmer keynote. Microsoft CRM is absolutely on fire, adding over 50,000 users in just the last quarter.
• Speaking of Steve Ballmer, he was GREAT at the keynote on Tuesday. He’s obviously very energetic, but more than that you can just tell that he’s smart as heck. Most importantly, his speeches aren’t full of “marketing blah blah blah”. He explains the technology roadmap and Microsoft’s vision in a very down to earth and digestible format.
• Big news about Microsoft CRM #1 – Microsoft will begin offering a Live! Hosted version of Microsoft CRM out of their data centers beginning in Q2 2007.
• Big news about Microsoft CRM #2 – the pending release of the new mobile edition through the Microsoft CRM Sandbox in a few weeks.
• We spent a lot of time in the Microsoft Kiosks on the Expo floor learning about some of the products coming out in the next six months. Some of my personal highlights included InfoPath 2007, Exchange 2007, and Groove 2007.
• I was hurting to find a Starbucks throughout this conference, but I finally hunted one down yesterday morning.
• Lots of goodies and swag from the expo floor.
• Plenty of software and beta giveaways at the various sessions. We got Windows Vista, Office 2007, the Microsoft CRM VPC, and other DVD’s. Of course we could download all of this stuff too, but sometimes it’s nice to just have it on a DVD to save you time.
• We were invited to participate in a focus group about the Microsoft Dynamics Snap add-ons. They just released some new snaps on the Sandbox, and we are asked for feedback on the direction of future Snaps. They have lots of very slick Snaps on the horizon to be released over the next 6 months.
• Attendance at the conference was amazing with over 10,000 people from all over the world. That means that we were able to make lots of connections with other partners and talk with the real experts behind the Microsoft products.
• The Microsoft CRM “Ride the Wave” party on Tuesday night was excellent. The food and drinks were flowing of course, but it was fun to talk with all of the partners and Microsoft employees that work on Microsoft CRM.
• We heard from a reliable source that Microsoft will soon release a new VPC image that demos the integration between Microsoft CRM and Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains).
• Microsoft offered a mobile version of the event website at www.wpc06.com. This website allowed me to browse the session details from my smart phone (see below on why I couldn’t browse the website from my laptop).
• The city of Boston was a great host. We were able to take in some of the local events, and had a good time despite the horrible accident in the tunnel.
• Microsoft COO Kevin Turner gave an excellent keynote speech on Thursday morning. This was the first time I heard him speak, and I was impressed. His background is from Walmart and Sam's Club, so I'm looking forward to what he can bring to Microsoft from those other successful companies. My favorite quote from Kevin was "Demo! Demo! Demo! We need to do more demos!". Love it!
• Overall, the conference was great and we'll definitely attend in 2007.

The Bad

• There’s always way too much marketing fluff in the presentations, particularly the keynotes! Out of a three hour session, we might only see the software and/or a demo for about 15 to 20 minutes. That’s brutal. Of course we need some background and vision to set the context but they could easily eliminate 50% of the PowerPoint slides I had to sit through. My dream is that the agenda would list ahead of time how many PowerPoint slides each session will contain. This way if someone wanted fluff, they could pick the sessions with a lot of PowerPoint slides. But if someone (like me) wanted to see more software demos they could chose the sessions that contain the least number of slides.
• I confirmed that Windows Mobile devices don’t support some basic (expected) functionality that other phones do. In particular, you can’t copy/paste or multi-select records on a Windows Mobile 5.0 device. Bummer.
• I missed the “fabulous Matt G”! Microsoft had some guy named Rodney Sherwood MC’ing the event. He was marginal, and he’s definitely no Matt G. I think they should use real Microsoft employees for these events instead of using these cheesy hired guns.

The Ugly

I have attended six or seven different Microsoft conferences over the past few years, and this conference had some of the worst logistic problems I’ve seen. Of course, the event logistics are NOT run by Microsoft, instead they rely on CRG Events to handle these issues. So while I don't hold these grudges against Microsoft, CRG Events is now #1 on my bad list. Among the snafus:

• They ran out of food at every single meal I attended. If you didn’t hit the meal within the first 20 minutes of its start time, you’d be out of luck.
• Internet connectivity was non-existent for me. They had a free Wifi network BUT it turns out that my Intel Pro wireless card isn’t supported so I could not get online. The conference help desk experts informed me that many of the Intel wireless cards aren’t supported by the particular Wifi hardware (Aruba) used at this conference. This is particularly ironic because Intel was a platinum sponsor of the event! Therefore, I could not get online wirelessly. To make matters worse, they didn’t offer any wired connections where laptop users could plug into the network! So…basically I couldn’t get online with my computer all week. That sucked.
• They needed more power outlets for users to plug into. Conference attendees were fighting like cats and dogs to plug their laptop into one of the few open outlets.
• The structured networking area was way too small and it was booked to capacity. It was difficult to setup all the meetings we wanted because there simply were not enough tables for people to meet.
• Conference feedback forms were only to give feedback to the sessions and presenters. I didn’t see any way to submit feedback on the many logistic issues we experienced.

Another issue about the conference (outside the control of CRG I assume) was the location of the event hotels. They were FAR from the convention center, and it would literally take 30 to 60 minutes to get from the hotel to the conference. I think most of that is just due to the layout and traffic from Boston, so there isn’t too much flexibility to improve that in the future.

"Sorry Intel, I know you're a platinum sponsor but we don't support your wireless cards here!" - CRG Events