What makes a partner tick?

sloethen — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:23:57 GMT

I have accepted a new role at Microsoft. New to me and new to the company. DPE Partner Evangelist. I have been a Developer Evangelist for several years, and have always wondered how to reach the group of partners that falls below our major partners. All partners are important, and I feel the smaller ones offer a much larger group of developers that need our help. So, here I am.

I have no quota, I am not a sales person. My sole job is to try and understand the challenges of being a partner in the current custom development and web development world. I have a territory of the central region. Midwest, Heartland, South Central and North Central districts. I live in Kansas City, so central to this area.

What do you need as a partner to grow your business? What programs would you like to see? What programs that we currently have do you look at and wonder what the hell are they thinking? I can make no promises about being able to change anything, but I am loud, and will make some noise for you. And my management is dedicated to growing your business and making sure you get what you need to run a healthy company.

Also, what cool things are you doing? Great projects? Interesting use of technology? I also help run a show on channel9 (http://www.codetolive.net) and my part of the show is highlighting the great work our partners are doing. Want to be a star? This blog will focus on my partner focused work, I have another blog I keep for oddities and technical stuff at http://www.geekswithblogs.net/thesenator so subscribe to both if you want to keep up to date.

Looking forward to getting to know more of our partners, and working together to care for and grow our development world.

I can't believe they pay me to do this.....

What makes a partner tick?