Well over a decade in the making, MAPS finally has some legitimate barriers that establish who can obtain the Microsoft Action Pack Subscription, aka, thousands in free Microsoft software.

How big is this? Very. Specifically for the frugal SMB sector that sometimes bends the line to obtain software. The difference with the new requirements is that Microsoft will no longer meet you half way, open the rope, give you a hug and welcome you to all the big software you need if you don’t sell Microsoft solutions. Oh, you do? Great – prove it. 600 e-courses to choose from. Official announcement here.

Upcoming Assessment Requirement

A new online-training and assessment requirement will go into effect November 30, 2007. New and renewing subscribers will be required to take any Microsoft E-Learning course and then pass its associated assessment with a minimum score of 70 percent. To continue receiving your Microsoft Action Pack Subscription, you will be required to pass an assessment every two years. You can get a head start by taking one of more than 600 free courses in the Partner Learning Center with associated assessments. To help you find relevant courses quickly, use this saved search tool. You must be a Partner Program member to access the Partner Learning Center. Not a Registered Member? Enroll today. To ensure proper credit for your completed assessment:

Use the same Windows Live ID when you sign in to the Partner Learning Center that you use to sign in to the Microsoft Partner Program Portal. Select and complete a course, submit your assessment, and exit the course. Print the completion certificate at the end of the assessment and save it for your records. If you have additional questions about the assessment requirement, visit the MAPS Managed Newsgroup. New Special Edition Toolkits Microsoft offers two Special Edition toolkits, specifically tailored for Microsoft Small Business Specialists and Web solutions providers. Additional requirements must be met to receive these toolkits.

Microsoft Small Business Specialist Community
The Small Business Specialist Community Special Edition kit is designed exclusively for active, enrolled Microsoft Small Business Specialists who serve small-business customers. This kit is delivered up to twice a year and includes additional internal-use software benefits, training opportunities, and special offers to give you a competitive edge in selling your services based on Microsoft technologies. If you are already a Small Business Specialist, you will receive an email notifying you that you can order your free toolkit. Read the latest toolkit information. Or, find out how to become a Small Business Specialist.

Web Solutions Providers
To help you take advantage of growth in the Web-based commerce market, we’ve created a Special Edition kit for Web designers and developers—or anyone who’s building a Web solutions business. This kit, delivered twice a year, contains tools and products, technology resources, business resource papers, and special offers to support your business objectives. To receive the free Web Solutions Special Edition kit, you must pass one of the three, free Web Solutions online courses and be an active Microsoft Action Pack subscriber. If you meet these requirements, you will receive an email notifying you that you can order your toolkit. Note: If you pass one of the Web Solutions assessments, this also meets your assessment requirement to receive the full Microsoft Action Pack Subscription.

This is huge. This also kills the nag curve, in my opinion. You know the one, that sold $20 of Microsoft software last year but needs a copy of Visual Studio and Expression because “I must install all Microsoft software ever made on the oft chance that I will need to support it”; Need dev tools, pass Dev classes. Need Web tools, pass Web classes. Pure, simple.

Now I know the next objection – those exams are way too easy, anyone can pass them! – ok, maybe. But its a far cry from “Do you recommend Microsoft software”, “Yes, I do.”, “Ok, give us 4–6 weeks”

Thank you Redmond and thank you Judy!

Every now and then poor planning and an incredible growth curve meet to make something special. We’re having a special maintenance cycle this weekend at OwnWebNow and rather than to test our luck I’ve extended the maintenance cycle by 5 hours to make sure everything thats being brought online is done in a manner that won’t cause me to have to apologize for a week straight.

Absolutely every single core service is being scaled up, along with both physical and topological change in the infrastructure: new DNS server core, three more data centers.

Tip for newbies: never be a smartass in an engineering meeting. For example, if you hear someone say the above to you and you are compelled to say “No biggie, whats the worst thing that could happen” prepare for everyone else to pause and look at you, visually painting “fault point” on your forehead. On the flip side, its a hell of a way to get a Saturday off

One of the joys of business travel is the mandatory trackback week that happens when you make it back to the office. If you’re lucky, someone has listened to your messages and written down the people to call back. If you’re even luckier, Shockey Monkey has logged all the phone calls in your events and you just go down the list. But this post is about the ultimate lack of luck, the one that is accompanied with message playbacks, the whothefareyous, etc.

I’ve written in the past about the basic courtesy of leaving voicemail. Today, I have more gems to share with you.

If your name includes more than one syllable make sure you spell it – twice. Trust me, I don’t know you.

If you left your phone number and the fax picked up when I called, I am deleting you from the callback list.

If you threatened legal action if the phone call is not returned the same day.. guess what, even if I was so inclined to help you all legal threats get a legal review before they are responded to in any way. 

If your name isn’t Steven Ballmer, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison, tell me who you work for. No, Bob, I am NOT going to call you back because..

Never, ever, ever call me while driving your car. I know you can hear yourself think over the 2000W speakers while driving through a tunnel – but I can’t. And I can’t call back the number “704-hey- hey- hey- hey- I- can- be- your-girlfriend extension #19 yes you need a new one”

If you are from the south and you double as the dog track race announcer, please speak slooooooooowly. It’s a toll free number fod gods sake, we’ll pay.

You didn’t tell me why you were calling. Here is how it works. I’m not a government employee. I do not call in sequence. I am not an indian call center. I will not return your call in the order it was received. If you didn’t say why you were calling I am assuming you’re a distributor of luxury anal beads. And thank you for yet another call but as I said the last 20 times, I’m good, thanks.

You’re probably thinking I am making this up jsut to be funny, for what its worth, I’m on your side. I can’t believe what I hear out of the other end of the phone either. But you know what, I’ve encoded it and uploaded it to Vladville so you can feel it for yourself:

“Hi. Umm, I talked with Vlad earlier this week about setting up an ExchangeDefender. Um if you could call me back or if someone can call me back at your earliest convenience so I can get the account set up and some email addresses transfered into it that would be great. Thank you very much. Bye bye.”

Listen to the above voicemail (mp3, just 120 kb, well worth it!)

Thats it – 19 seconds. Whats wrong with that you say? It had no time zone information, no time to call back, no company name, no phone number, no email address, no sepecific reason for the call (yes ExchangeDefender but nothing identifiable to tell me who this is) and finally, for the cake topper: Didn’t even bother leaving his name.

Windows Home Server Goes Gold.. for once, our opinions of this product are in line thought my impression of this product has slightly more red pigment on that gold color spectrum chart. But, alas, I’m under NDA contract for this so here is all I can tell you about it: [ ]

Though to WHS teams credit, there is genuine interest out there for this device/system. According to the blog, there are 6 OEMs signed up to bring the accompanying device to market and it seems the only test of success will be the final price point and whether people indeed use this as more than yet another USB hard drive.

This guy made my day to the point that I’m starting a new blog category for him: Awesome.

This guy got upset with his cell phone carrier. We’ve all been there.

He then got in a tank and knocked down 6 cell phone towers. Now that deserves an award! Perhaps not the one for excellence in customer service because I can’t imagine what they must have told him, but when you drive someone to do this…. you’re obviously very skilled.

Where is JD Power when you need them, there is customer disservice, but then there is the creation of such utter rage that forces a man to steal, climb into and drive a tank into 6 cell towers. Can you hear me now? Good. Booom. Can you hear me now? Good. Another one bites the dust.

Wow. Is Bell South still on Peachtree St?  More details at Gizmodo.

As one of my friends from down under recently told me: Don’t mess with Aussies, we killed Steve Irwin. Point taken, believe me.

The other night I was traveling back from WWPC with two girls from Microsoft that were heading to their MDX meeting. I did my best as a Floridian to give them an idea of what to do, where to go, how not to get robbed… but about the only thing they had planned to do was sleep for a few days and recoup from WWPC. Strange, I thought. Then I pulled two back-to-back 12+ hour sleep nights and am still adjusting to the time zone changes, maybe they had the right idea after all. Either way, I’m in bed with the LCD glare and I figured I’d offer you some perspective on what WPC did for me this year.

WPC Last Year (2006)

Whenever you do reviews of investments you always compare time periods. How did I do this quarter vs. last quarter? Met expectations? Exceeded growth? Failed miserably (like there is any other kind of a failure):

In the now infamous suicide note, last years event fundamentally changed how I do business, how I make my business a part of my life.. in a way, last years WPC marked the death of the old Vlad who seemed to be preoccupied with work, immediate surroundings and very little else. I’m quite glad I killed him because deep down I believe he would have killed me eventually. Before I sat at this lake with Susanne and Dave, both of whom have moved on since then as well, I had spent days in meetings with middle aged guys who seemed to have lost their technical edge, who seemed to be in a rut with their business and trying to outsource everything, some that had big dreams and were perhaps just begging for a landing in a sea of reality.

What was particularly sad was the WPC Attendee Party that year; I remember running around trying to meet up with someone and in my circles around that Boston square I saw those same guys, standing far away from the stage, by themselves, almost without a friend in the world.

I decided that was not going to be me in 20 years. They say the change begins when you decide; what they don’t say is that it can take some time till the change you decide upon gets planned, implemented, documented and finally executed in full effect.

So this year, towards the end of the concert at the WPC Attendee Party, I pulled back from my friends at the Coors Field and walked back to the distant left seats and sat there for a few minutes. Went through the videos, went through the photos, played for a minute in my cell phone. I took a moment to reflect back on the previous year: the good, the great, the bad, the ugly, the muddy…

… no regrets. Year to date, I like this Vlad much better than I did the old one. Perhaps thats about all you can expect from life, that each year you see yourself as having improved.. something.

A..B..C..

Always..Be..Closing; That in itself is Microsoft’s World Wide Partner Conference. Closing deals, closing opportunities, closing project resources, closing hopefully a successful year. WPC 2007, for me, was all about validation. Have most changes I’ve implemented made sense for me, for my company, for my family?

While I am sure you can understand that I cannot share the specifics of parties, discussions and details due to confidentiality…

This year was different, it was not about Microsoft anymore as an enemy or a friend, it was more about me and where I am heading, with Microsoft obviously being the 900lb gorilla. Every now and then people share with you some small tidbits of knowledge that really affect your perception of what is around you.

Little while back I was complaining to a friend about my inability to bring out people to my user group meetings en-masse. His response?

Maybe it’s really about the people that do show up, not those that don’t.

Which, extended to the Microsoft partnership, means: It’s not about the $800 trillion in the business I will never see but in the $XXX million in business I do see. Maybe it is all about my partners and customers, not about the future ones that aren’t coming, aren’t doing what we do now, aren’t interested or can’t afford us.

When you approach a professional conference in such a way, and do not give in to someone elses vision (ignore and reject banners)… when you only come to turn your vision into reality, pursue your agenda, further your goals and plans..  Things look a lot different.

WPC 2007: Validation

I established my agenda long before I got to Denver. I established my next years goals way before I went on the road to begin with. I know where I fit, I know who I am, and I am blessed (lucky) to be able to finally focus on what I am really good at.

So this year, I was determined not to sell a single CAL, a single copy, a single deal or a single lead.

This year, I was determined to say: Listen, I know we suck, how can we make this better?

And I did. Some, and to be honest, many didn’t think we suck at all. But I get that all day long. I wake up to a pile of orders. I go to bed with a pile in a processing queue. I get fanmail all day, far more so than trouble tickets. But I wanted to know what sucked.

Even though nobody would play with me and go as far to say that we suck, I really pushed my partners, coleagues and others to tell me their little annoyances. Give me some ideas. Tell me what you usually do with it. How do you deal with this situation. What about that. Have you considered xyz. Oh, you want it to do that. Ok. Hrm. Ok.

To me, this year was about validation of all the changes I had made last year, based on the vision Microsoft had for me (yeah, right) and based on what I saw my customers demanding from us. They are two very, very different things but our customers and partners pay us a heck of a lot more than v-Microsoft does.

Was I right in making the drastic changes I’ve made over the last year? You bet. Is Microsoft right with their direction, hopes and dreams? God I hope not, but its their perogative.

Did I learn anything new?

Yes, I did. What I specifically learned is that I am no longer a small business. Or perhaps, I no longer have the small business mentality. This was painfully obvious in a lot of conversations I had with Microsoft, partners, customers, vendors.

I had also, in no small part through Vladville, influenced a big change in the community, evidence of which I’ve seen over and over again.

I have also seen, first hand, how the Karma tends to work in your way when you don’t only look at yourself, at your company, at your wallet… but also at that of the others and take their best interest before your own. It’s not easy, but looking back over the past 3 years there are very few regrets and a lot of triumps.

I have also seen and heard the fundamental principle behind success of a community, business community. No, not from Susan Bradley, not from Steven Ballmer, not from the PAMs/PCMs/TS2 guys. I was sitting one day with a partner, who shall remain nameless, and a third partner who wanted us to develop a solution. We’ll call them Partner A and Partner B:

Partner A to Partner B: Ok, so where do you come in?

Partner B to Partner A: I am just here to make an introduction. We work together often, these things work in such a way that eventually everyone wins. I just wanted to get you together and see how you can make this happen, we’ll sort this out on the backend.

(not 40 seconds later)

Partner A to Vlad: Oh, and what about _____?

At which point I turned to Partner A and just pointed. Nuff said.

Oh, what about Microsoft?

Prior to the event I had written that anyone that thought WPC was about Microsoft was a fool. I stand by that, even more so now that it has ended. Whats even more interesting is that the partners I hung out with also seemed to come to the same conclusion – it’s not about Microsoft.

This of course is going to hurt the Microsoft marketing department a little bit but hey, everyone paid for their ticket and made out what they needed to. I think last years endless vision of unimportant things, as I like to think of it, told many of us in the audience that despite the numbers and the dreams there really isn’t much for us up there. Not if we wanted to grow, not if we wanted to continue in our roles and keep our existing relationship with our clients.

So this year the keynotes were largely ignored. As I’m figuring will be most of Microsoft’s future stack. Not to slant Microsoft in a big way over this, they are a public company with greedy investors and they have to do what they have to do to grow their market share, even if it means killing all of their ISV partners, marginalizing their consulting core, antagonizing their licensing sales force and patronizing the entire channel. Perhaps one day Microsoft will be able to stand on the stage with HP, Quest and Unisys and have a huge hug fest but that ceremony will not live to see any of us that are actively looking elsewhere. You wouldn’t run after a bus that just ran you over, would you?

Again, validation. This has been written on the wall for years and now its actually showing up. Those of us who have seen this have adjusted our approach, changed our direction, moved our marketing and accordingly our investment in the future of our companies. That is why business plans exist folks, so they can be reviewed, judged and adjusted.

If its not about Microsoft, what is it then?

The fact that we were all busy with our own agenda, not that of Microsoft Corp, meant that we could sit down and discuss our wins and losses. Our changes. Our developments. Our ideas. Key word: our.

I spent most of the week walking around with Karl, Dave and Erick and just comparing notes. Meeting other partners and seeing whats on their mind. But really, at the end of the day, what this was really all about was a huge board meeting with people I respect immensely, working and branstorming the new business plan. We went from presentation to booth to meeting to lounge to lunch… constantly throwing out ideas, suggestions, recommendations. At some point it stopped being a conference and it became a little summer CEO camp. I hate to put it in such an amateur way, given the maturity of the subject, but that is what the whole thing was about.

Even on Day 1, not 8 hours into the conference, Susanne knocked it out the park for me. One of the biggest issues for 2007/08 at OWN is the customer service angle. How do I take “Vlad’s Own Web Now” and make it stand on its own without destroying the satisfaction ratings we enjoy now? How do I gently go about changing the very core of what made this company successful? How do I tell my partners and customers just what we intend to do for them over the next 3–5 years without them looking at me and getting the feeling that we’ve completely lost it?

Susanne explained that to me (and maybe 50–60 others) in roughly under 50 minutes: “This is a circle. This is where you are, this is where your partners are, this is where your customers are. The world goes in this direction, now… push. Got it? Good, 5 is a good number on the evals, thank you, try the beef I’ll be here I’ll week.”

As I wrote before this, life is what you make it, your company is what you develop it into. WPC was all about me. And I think I did well.

What about the leads, the sales, the touches, the cont..

What about them? We’ve got a good product & service, we don’t need help selling it.

What we do need help with is making sure our partners and customers know we’ve got their back, so they remain our partners and customers for the long time to come. That means not screwing them for a 5% incremental revenue and a good quarter, that means not giving up the principles for immediate gratification, that means not being afraid of competition when you know you’re doing the right thing, that means not trying to close the doors that aren’t really open, that means not forcing.

Not… forcing. I see many people fail. I see many projects fail. Something they have in common is either a general lack of interest/effort or more commonly the outright disregard for anything but pure force being put into the item. Forcing in terms of pushing your partners, in pushing your clients, in pushing your employees, in pushing your external support staff.. Folks, I cannot say this enough… You cannot force things. On your best day you can present the things in the best possible light, offer the alternative or two, all the honesty and sincerity as you can put on the plate and hope the other party makes the right decision.

Consider the opposite. You’ve nagged someone into something. You’ve forced someone into a contract. You’ve overpaid/underpaid someone into a position they didn’t want or fit into. You’ve screwed a partner/vendor. You won. Yes, you won. Congratulations. Here is your medal. Just what do you think will happen to your victory party when the other side realizes just how badly you’ve screwed them?

Folks..  Life… business… success… loss… all of which I’ve had the pleasure to experience over the past 28 years is all about the balance and inner peace. If you can’t be at peace with what you do, if you can’t enjoy your victories and cry over your losses, if you can’t see why you do what you do in the greater scheme of things… then whats the point? But if you can, and if you live and put everything you do in a somewhat greater context.. then little blips and turns in the road don’t need to be more than what they really are, and more importantly, they won’t affect you any more than they should because there are bigger things to create and enjoy.

Is that realization worth $1,800? F yeah. I only wish I could have spent it when all I had was $1,800.

A few months ago I spoke to Dana who was working on OpenID authentication for AuthAnvil. OpenID, eh? (not a slant on Canadians, just pure interest in decentralized authentication technology) It got me thinking, I comment on a ton of blogs and I almost always have to look up the password in my KeePass database. Pretty lame.

OpenID concept is pretty simple. You run an authentication server (which can literally be a single web page) on your web site and by embedding information using those cool META tags you allow remote OpenID-enabled to redirect you back to the script where you log in and get redirected back to the original site. In effect, you authenticate (ie: login to wordpress) and because you’ve proven your ownership of the site (www.vladville.com) the remote end can query and get extra info like your name, email address, etc.

Anotherwords, you do not need to generate another password and then guess it and request reminders when you forget it. For just a blog comment? Screw it, who would waste so much time doing something like that. I spoke to soon.

Enter The Geek

I saw that Pablo commented on my blog today. I go over to see what he said and apparently his site supports comments authentication via OpenID! Ohhhh really? Well, let me hook up this OpenID thing then, he doesn’t get to be cooler (work with me here, OpenID = cool!) than I am.

Three hours, two OpenID frameworks, and one broken WordPress template later, Vladville is OpenID enabled. Not  only can I use OpenID authentication to comment on remote blog sites, but you can use OpenID authentication to comment on Vladville!

Now back to stick it to Pablo; Comment time, auhenticate using other OpenID, http://www.vladville.com and go.. BAM, his site errors out. All this efford to make OpenID work on this end so I can post a comment back on his blog and his safe_mode ruins the day:

Warning: mkdir(./tmp/): Permission denied in
/usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/
openid/openid-classes.php
on line 101

Warning: opendir(./tmp/): failed to open dir: No such file or directory in
/usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/
openid/openid-classes.php on line 401

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already
sent by (output started

 at /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/openid/
openid-classes.php:101) in /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/
openid/openid-classes.php on line 360

Son of a b….

It never ceases to amaze me how much time and skill I can throw to a complete waste. On the bright side, its likely that a blog spammer will implement OpenID before any of my friends (other than Sarah; come on girl where is your OpenID?) do and will have much easier time promoting drug sites over vladville.com.

It’s been a real victorious day at Vladville  

Over the past few years I’ve been fortunate enough to go to so many places and conferences.. and undeniably.. WWPC 2007 was easilly the most fun I’ve ever had out in the field. I wish every day could be like that, wake up at 8AM and work like crazy till 4PM and then party till 3 AM. Repeat.

Yes, I’ve told you all the wonderful ways that I’ve managed to pull off successful things at WWPC, business wise, but you can also be successful doing other things at WWPC. I think Dave said it the best: This is the best part of the business. When I’m back I can look at the awards and think of all these good times and say (I’m doing well)! That is why I always bring a video camera with me, it is so much richer than pictures alone and brings back so many great memories. Yes, a picture can take you back to what you think happened, but the video lets you live in that moment.

For example, here is how I got a % share of KP Enterprises. (2 Mb video); pwn3d

Denver was certainly a place to catch up with some interesting people… Yes, thats my eyes rolling back into my head. (just kidding, she was great)

And I found the creepy murals! Eehgwthw… That thing was very disturbing.

But I’m heading back to Orlando, to help push the product and accelerate opportunities of my partners! Forget about swag, I’m gonna start shipping Heineken for every ExchangeDefender mailbox provisioned.

And I was accompanied back by two wonderful ladies from Microsoft UK; The one on the left (Neha) will be working with Dave Overton who recently moved into a new position, the one on the right (Jen) is the new Robbie running marketing for the SBSC stuff. Love Dave and Robbie, but talk about an improvement, at least visually, and thats at 1:30 am. 

And I’m back. Home sweet home.

I walked by my Polycom earlier this morning and was surprised by the number of digits you can fit on the phone in terms of the number of missed calls. Ouch. Don’t expect a lot from me next week guys, actually most of the next month or so might not get to see a lot of Vlad as I’m in meetings and helping move things around here.

So dear road, it’s been fun, it’s been a pleasure. Time to go back in the lab and work on the master plan. What is the master plan Pinky?

From the mailbag:

Subject: Where’s the beef Vlad?

Enjoyed the reports from WPC thank you for doing them. It looks like you had a great time.

Thank you for representing our interests to Microsoft. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I would like to know if you have considered writing more about the direction we should be taking in smallbiz based on all you have seen this week?

…. personal stuff here ….

Scott, thank you for the email. However, it is unlikely you will see that – for a considerable time; allow me to explain:

Giving direct business advice based on my experience borders on consulting and it would be quite dangerous for me to attempt that. Unless it is listed under articles, everything you see here is AS-IS with no warranty at all. You just see my thoughts, opinions and impressions and you are welcome to accept them, dismiss them or use them in whichever way you see fit that doesn’t violate the copyright.

But that’s all it is. I go through great trouble not to use the spell checker not to make this appear like a newspaper or a proper publication. I hope all of you following this understand that everything you see is just one mans opinion, not the gospel, not fully researched and backed paper or article. I don’t know how many times I have to write “truely” or “akward” to prove that;

Now……. Having said that. Microsoft TechEd and Microsoft WWPC are very expensive tickets. Ones that also come with a week of lost productivity, away from my family and fankly very long and exausting days for someone that has spent his professional lifetime in front of a monitor. Add to that the SMBTN, the SMB Nation, the Swing Migration conference, etc. Make no mistake, I have come to neither of those events with a press pass.

I came to learn and network and, as I wrote last night, talk to my peers about the changes I am making. Consider it a free business plan evaluation if you wish. I come to get product feedback and service ideas, partnership opportunities, etc. Its a pure business investment on my part. And frankly, its not something you get for free. I remember talking to Chris a long time back about the opportunity costs of new products and services. I told him that if I really needed that incremental revenue all I’d need to do is sit down and push a little on the things I’m already doing.

Thats why I do this, thats why I continue to come to these conferences, thats why I continue to invest time and effort into being here. It is a long term investment in the future of my business. Likewise, it is not an investment that I am willing to offer to the strangers for free, a book project I intend to use to bring in the money or anything I expect to use for anything but the long term success of Own Web Now. I had this very conversation with Susanne and Dave yesterday, that of my overall lack of motivation when it comes to doing more direct work to pursue indirect reputation in the community. I already run a very successful, respected and profitable business so any further investment into that, outside of the direct parter directed/beneficial in a restricted fashion, just seems like building a really large house and inviting people to live in it for free.

Update: .. and its not like I don’t already give enough via the VladCast, Vladfire, Vladville and all my many freebie projects. I have worked very hard to earn this reputation and will continue to put up the things I find interesting that I feel you ought to look at. But its just an incentive, a motivation… to do better and look higher. It is not a feeding bottle, a book, a guide, a blueprint or anything of the sort. At some point you just have to sit back and say – “I get it! Now I’m going to work for it.” That… is not something I can do for you, that is something you do for yourself.