14,000 Elbows in Houston
How many partners will be rubbing elbows in Houston next week? If you're going, you'll be running up against about the same number as the year before in Denver and the year before that in Boston. Microsoft seems to have found a comfortable level for attendance at the conference of about 7,000 partners.
The first Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in October 2003 in New Orleans had about 5,500. Attendance was similar for the second conference in Toronto in July 2004. Minneapolis in July 2005 hit 6,500 and Microsoft had 7,000 attendees from 88 countries in Boston in 2006. Denver in 2007 hit 7,300 partner attendees from 130 countries.
This year, a Microsoft spokesman tells me, Microsoft's closing off registration with more than 7,000 partner attendees again. That's not counting all the Microsoft employees, vendor representatives and press in attendance. Happy networking.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 01, 2008