On a personal and social side, I’m quite down and out today, on a number of fronts for a number of reasons.

On a professional and corporate side, however, I am excited, clueless and more driven than ever before. I used to tell my friends and coworkers, if you leave this meeting without feeling stupid you haven’t learned anything. This was one such four day meeting and prepares for a very interesting year. I’ll explain in more detail later, as things drop. Funny, I’ve grown up to the point that even I have to be secretive. I can’t divulge anything that happened prior to noon.

Today: MAPS

Today I had a long afternoon meeting with a lady that is in charge of the global Microsoft Action Pack Subscription and Strategy. For all intents and purposes you should assume that the following is a crackpot fantasy that I am making up. You’ve been warned, so now on with the fable:

I chatted with a lady about doing a video interview today. “What do you do”, Vlad asks. “I am in charge of the global strategy empowering Microsoft partners” she says. “What exactly does that entail?” wonders Vlad, tweaking his goatee. “I am the defender of the action pack” and with that she raised her sword and said “for the honor of Greyskull.”

Now that I have eliminated any possibility of this being taken seriously…

This is someone that runs one of the simultaneously most beneficial and most controversial of Microsoft programs. One that both empowers and infuriates Microsoft partners. One that brings out some special feelings for every Microsoft partner dealing with SMB infrastructure.

So the first request I had, aside from asking to video tape her, was to get her to dumb down the Action Pack business for me. How does it work? How do you decide which software to put in it? How do you accept feedback? What do you do with feedback? How do you select which software you add or drop from the Action Pack? How are you policing it? How are you distributing it? How are you fulfilling orders?

Your basic questions from a third grader curious about why the sky is blue…

But rather than to pass me off she humored me and explained all the little nuances, intricacies, bits, crumbs and pieces of decisions that make MAPS what it is. To sum it up, rather unscientifically:

When you design big programs you think of the whole world. What works in USA does not work in Russia, what fits in Australia does not fit in Germany and when your goal is to give all worldwide partners the same advantages there are some interesting things to consider.

Then I did a bit of show and tell. I pulled up my laptop and went straight from my blog to the smallbizit Yahoo group to the thread I started on Monday when changes to MAPS legitimacy were first announced. I told her that I sympathize with the tough position she is in and wanted to show her that even in the community we can’t come up with a decisive solution and we don’t know (or care about) all the facts.

She took her time to sit with me and go through all the 20+ responses on the subject. She explained in detail why things happen, how they work, how the decisions are made, etc. I can honestly say I understand and appreciate what Microsoft has to go through to keep things fair.. Tax stuff – nope, privacy issues. Proctor MCP Tests – nope, too complex for developing countries. Certifications – nope, partners would get locked out and get upset, etc.

Why this matters…

Indirectly speaking, this is very important.

All everyone wanted to talk about was my meeting with Ballmer. Strictly speaking, what we discussed would impact roughly 3 out of 40,000 of you that come to my site each day.

But the section above, about MAPS, impacts a good majority of you no matter where you are because this was a discussion with someone who sets up the worldwide strategy for Microsoft to establish, promote and grow the Microsoft Partner Program. And unless you work for Microsoft… you’ll never know how it all works or why it works the way it does.

So why is it important?

Because, as Microsoft Partners, even if we don’t like Microsoft decisions we are more willing to live with them if we are explained the cause, the constraints and the justification.

The best way Microsoft decision makers can reach us without fighting a lot of red tape is through blogs. Unlike David, I don’t write memorandums demanding change, I’ve worked with Microsoft long enough to know that doesn’t work. All I do is encourage them to keep the channel of communication open, to blog, to speak their mind. Pardon the expression, but I ask them to be my partner.

Consider the irony of this for a moment. 10–12,000 Microsoft Partners paid on the average $1,600 for just the ticket to get into the room to have a talk with Microsoft and Microsoft partners. Thats a big chunk of change just to have a conversation. Thats exactly what blogs are. They are free. They are open.

And dear Steve… Wondering how we could work better together? Imagine a partner conference where complaints and objections have been voiced online and the partners met annually not to complain but for the sole purpose of growing the business and providing higher end solutions. Imagine the partner ecosystem in which the top 10,000 companies are well informed by your senior management, as decisions are made, and we instead focus not on addressing the past business obstacles and missed opportunities but the future business growth potential. Now that is the kind of a partner program I would invest into, heavilly, because it would produce clear and immediate ROI.

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