Microsoft Inspire 2020 goes virtual for the first time and instead of a 5-day live gathering at Las Vegas, this year partners will join digitally on 21 & 22 of July 2020. Before proceeding to this year’s event agenda let’s make a quick timeline recap of how we ended up with this 2020 Virtual MS Inspire and how the interworks.cloud team handled global events during this unprecedented times.

July 2019 – A powerful, immense, and successful participation

A crowd of over 40,000 engaged tech community members, came together, Sunday 14 July to Thursday 18 July 2019, to celebrate Microsoft Inspire at Las Vegas, Nevada. Held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Inspire is Microsoft’s largest annual partner event of the year. Booth exhibitors, sponsors and attendees experienced four days of intense networking, highly informative sessions, new connections, lots of inspiration and fun.

The interworks.cloud booth was staffed with 10 VPs and Executives from the Sales, Marketing, Product and Customer Success departments, that contributed to this unparalleled success for 2019. Offering not only one-to-one demos but also live product presentations —showcasing its latest developments and add-ons — to prospects and clients, interworks.cloud managed to create high traffic at its booth, measured in real numbers!

– 500+ visitors that engaged with the team and wanted to learn more about the solution and how they could embedded it in their businesses.
– 200 different companies, from large value-added distributors to direct Microsoft CSPs, as well as independent software vendors and indirect resellers.
– 35+ countries, clearly demonstrating the need of our solution in every corner of the planet.
– 40 current customers that made it to Las Vegas for the event and wanted to catch up with the team and find out how to leverage interworks.cloud’s brand new and upcoming features.

January & February 2020 – The initial preparations

Following January’s rituals, like every year, the interworks.cloud team was getting ready for the 2020 MS Inspire concept and logistics preparations. And back then, the biggest problem was if this year the team was choosing more Europe or US airport layovers.

When the global pandemic struck and started rapidly spreading to Europe, the US and every corner of the world, all event preparations froze, including MS Inspire 2020. The uncertainty of the future and the preparation for a “new normal” brought a shift to both personal and professional reality, including global events.

May 2020 – The 2020 interworks.cloud Virtual Summit

With traditional business conferences suspended, interworks.cloud hatched a plan to get cloud players and business leaders from across the world together—virtually. On May 20th ,2020 and for 8h straight, interworks.cloud performed its first successful Virtual Summit.

Participants in this Virtual Summit were treated to glimpses of a tech-driven future: from scenario planning to navigate future corporate strategy, through tailoring marketing approaches to the new realities, to how tech and AI can help oil the wheels of economic recovery and combat Covid-19 itself. The summit tackled key strategic choices too – with speakers stressing the importance of pressing hard on the pedals of innovation and transformation despite the tough times. It also looked at societal questions – like how tech can help NGOs and offer all people brighter futures.

Feedback was highly positive, with participants expressing a 100% satisfaction rate and describing the summit as having an “all-star line-up,” “very informative,” and a “great experience.”

July 2020 – Microsoft Inspire: The Digital Event

Returning to the present and only a few weeks before the Digital MS Inspire, we have all the details for this year’s event. Attendees will hear from a range of Microsoft executives to learn more about the strategies they can use to help their customers going forward and understand how Microsoft can help them.
The 2020 featured speakers lineup is still evolving but like every year, keynote speeches include Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s One Commercial Partner, Corporate VP, Gavriella Schuster and Microsoft’s President Brad Smith.

What’s more, for the first time, participation is free of charge, allowing whole companies and not only team representatives, to join and live the Inpire experience. You can register here!

In order to maximize participant’s digital experience, Microsoft lets you create a custom schedule that best suits your needs, by offering 3 different time zones – Japan Standard Time (JST), Central European Summer Time (CEST) and Pacific Daylight Time (PDT). See the full schedule here.

To create a digital fuzz on Social Media during 21&22 of July, Microsoft urges all involved members to create connections, empower possibilities and celebrate achievements with the rest of the community members, by including #MSPartner and #MSInspire in all their relevant social posts.

So, we might not be there to see you live this year, but our team is virtually joining to stay aligned with Microsoft’s announcements, updates, and vision.

Feel free to reach us anytime for a virtual conversation!