MSDN Blogs: Looking forward to the 2016 Fantastic People of Worldwide Partner Conference!

In one short week, we will once again bring together thousands of Microsoft partners from around the world for our annual Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC)! WPC is my favorite conference of the year as I love the opportunity to connect with all of the partners I have had the privilege to meet and work with over the years from countries around the world, as well as the chance to get to meet new people and partners I have not yet had the chance to meet yet.

I am also happy to announce that once again this year, I will be continuing my annual tradition of “The Fantastic People of Worldwide Partner Conference 2016!”

For those of you not familiar with “The Fantastic People of Worldwide Partner Conference” concept, let me introduce you to it. As I mentioned earlier, one of my favorite parts of Worldwide Partner Conference is getting to see partners from around the world in person that I have the pleasure to work with online throughout the year, as well as the opportunity to meet so many new partners that I may never have met in person or online before. Because I enjoy this so much, I started building a collection of photos of partners and media/press I had the opportunity to meet or see while at Worldwide Partner Conference and then shared a handful of them online one year in a post called Connecting with others – A HUGE value of #WPC10 (Look who I found). As it turned out, the post became very popular and many partners pinged me about it to say “Thanks” for putting faces with some names, for sharing pictures with them, for meeting and talking while at WPC, and asking how could they be a part of that in the future. Because of this, I expanded the approach in 2011 to proactively offer up the opportunity to be a part of the picture post, and the “Fantastic People of WPC” tradition began.

Over the years, there are some familiar faces that can be seen across the collections, and each year there are several new names and faces that become part of the tradition:

• Connecting with others – A HUGE value of #WPC10 (Look who I found)
• Another year of connecting with fantastic people at WPC11! Thank you!
• Connecting with the Fantastic People of Worldwide Partner Conference 2012. Thank you for joining us!
• The Fantastic People of Worldwide Partner Conference 2013. Thank you for joining us! ‎
• The Fantastic People of Worldwide Partner Conference 2014. Thank you for joining us!
• The Fantastic People of Worldwide Partner Conference 2015. Thank you for joining us!

One again this year, I am going to be putting “The Fantastic People of Worldwide Partner Conference 2016” collection together, and as always, I am offering up an open invitation to anyone at WPC who would like to be a part of this year’s collection, and participation is completely optional on your behalf. If you would like to be a part of “The Fantastic People of Worldwide Partner Conference 2016” collection, there are many, many ways to participate:

1. Floating Around: Throughout WPC, I am always floating around the conference venues, attending sessions, bouncing between the various celebrations, etc.. If you see me around WPC, please do not hesitate to come up to me, say, “Hi,” introduce yourself (if I don’t know you already), and let’s have a chat and capture our picture together. (By the way, if I have my Surface out, I’ll be pretty easy to identify with my Cloud Performance Insights / CPI design on it):
   
   
2. Partner events and/or tweet-ups: Often times throughout WPC, there are several partner events that they host and/or tweet-ups that happen throughout the week. If you’re having one and would like me to stop by, please send me the information and I’ll try to attend. If you’re at one and I’m there, please do not hesitate to come up and introduce yourself and let’s chat and grab a picture.
3. At the WPC receptions, such as the WPC Partner Celebration on Wednesday night, I am always floating around, so we can connect there. In fact, there have been several times that partners have tracked me down via Twitter to give me their location at the reception so that we could meet and grab our pictures together. It’s like a “Fantastic People of WPC” treasure hunt.
4. WPC Connect. For those not familiar with WPC Connect, it allows you to schedule meetings with people throughout WPC at pre-assigned times and locations.
5. Social Media: As I mentioned in bullet #3, there have been several partners who have connected with me via Twitter or other social media means during WPC to setup a time to connect, and there are also several times throughout WPC that I will be sharing hints or flat out stating when/where I will be somewhere for anyone who wants to connect. Please feel free to reach out to me during WPC via social media and let’s connect. Remember that you can always see my posts on my blog (http://www.MSPartnerBlog.com) and Twitter.

So to all of you heading off to WPC 2016 in Toronto, feel free to introduce yourself to me or just come up and say “Hi” at Worldwide Partner Conference 2016, and let’s grab a pic together to share with other partners around the world. If you’ve been in the Fantastic People of Worldwide Partner Conference posts before, let’s continue the tradition and grab another picture this year too. After all, we’re all part of the big Microsoft Partner Network family, and I’d love to help build and maintain connections with and between as many of you as I can.

See you all next week at WPC 2016!

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Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman
Director – Sales Excellence
Microsoft Corporation
This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights