IAMCP Italy Shares their Best Practice around P2P and Conversations
1. The first one is an event we call “IAMCP Vision” and it’s an encounter between IAMCP (open to members only), and the SMS&P management line. It is positioned in July to catch all the “news and directions” that Microsoft had for the upcoming fiscal year, and it’s an open discussion moment in which we (the association) bring on the table a pair of arguments, and MS bring theirs.
Then the “owner” of the subject introduces it, presenting pains, news, and urgency (in a very “open” fashion) with some slides, and the counterpart (MS or IAMCP) answers.
This year was the first time we set up this event, and we bring on the table 4 arguments (2 from MS: Cloud and MPN, and 2 from us: Competition and Market)
It was an extremely interesting moment in which we involve the SMS&P Lead in Italy, the lead of the Partner Management Team, and the Director for the Partner Program. We discuss openly about the whole and discover something about our market situation which allows us to set plans (as companies) and to better align our objectives to MS (as IAMCP).
2. The second initiative was “IAMCP Conference 2011” which is the new name from I-WPC as we called last year. Here, the idea is to bring to the Italian channel what we “learn” at WPC, by adding our points of view and what’s changed in the meantime. Last year the event was nice and fun, and this year we want to add something and to “mark” the event as a standard annual event.
We ask and obtain to do the event jointly with the Microsoft Channel Kick-off, and so we define a 2 days event: The first one is open to IAMCPees only, and the second one the standard MS Kick-off.
This allows us to “blend” the agendas. For us this will be both a “recruitment” event (we decide with MS to invite to the first “reserved” day some partners to show them the value of being associated) and a “funding” one (MS allows us to open the event to sponsors who cames from the market like Symantec, NetApp, Citrix and the like). We’re now in the meantime of defining everything with them but the premises are good.
We think this initiative can be brought to other countries as well, feel free to contact me or Gianni to had more information regarding it.
More info available from Andrea Pescino or Gianni Cavazza