UPDATE 4 Oct 2007
For those who weren't at the UK Microsoft Startup Accelerator Programme launch event (or fell asleep during my introduction and didn't wake up) on Monday the 1st of October, here is, in order of appearance both some pictures and videos.
Ryan Carson
Lars Lindstedt - Video
Brent Hoberman - Video
Steve Ballmer - Video (demo starts 15 minutes in)
Marc Holmes
Steve Ballmer Video - Q&A
Panel Discussion - Saul Klein, Ben Way, Cary Marsh - Video
Many thanks to Cary Marsh and the team at Mydeo for hosting the videos.
This morning we had nearly 180 people turning up for an event at Microsoft's London office in Cardinal Place near Victoria Station. The title of the event was "The Online Opportunity" and the intention was to bring together some of the UK's brightest developers, entrepreneurs, and investors who are working in the Web 2.0 space. Having spent a fair amount of time over the last couple of months putting this event together it was great to see it all come together on the day (and a bit of a relief, to be honest).
From our perspective, this was an opportunity to connect with people from both Microsoft partners and companies that don't currently use Microsoft technologies and have a dialogue about what's happening in the Web 2.0 world and what the opportunities are for partnering with Microsoft, so I was happy to see so many innovative companies represented. Not only did we have some fantastic people in the audience, we also had a very strong lineup on the stage.
- Ryan Carson had kindly agreed to facilitate the day and kept us all on track and did it with the style and verve that he is renowned for, hat and all.
- When we put the agenda together I rather selfishly grabbed the opening slot to talk about the things that I'm thinking about in my new role. Having spent the last four years running the Microsoft Technology Centre, it was nice to get back up to present, and although I faced a slightly bleary-eyed Monday morning audience I think it went OK. I've posted a PDF of my slides here, but for an explanation of the slides you'll have to wait for the video of the presentation, which will be available here shortly.
- We then had Brent Hoberman, co-founder of lastminute.com and now working on a new venture, mydeco.com talking about what it takes (apart from luck) to be a successful web start-up. Unfortunately I had to leave the auditorium for Brent's session to meet up with Steve's speech writer to discuss some last-minute alterations to his deck so I'll have to watch the video before I can comment, but the people I spoke to during lunch found his talk very useful.
- After Brent, Steve Ballmer arrived on time, something that is always a little bit of a worry at an event like this, given how packed his schedule is on the kind of five-countries-in-five-days trip he's on at the moment. I guess I'm not the most unbiased observer, but every time I hear Steve speak I'm impressed at the breadth and depth of understanding he has of both the business and the technology. Not everyone will agree with everything he says, and I'm looking forward to hearing what the non-Microsoft bloggers in the audience thought. As part of Steve's presentation, Marc Holmes gave a very quick series of demos of Silverlight, Popfly, Seadragon, and Photosynth which went down very well. Marc has just the best presentation style and his quick-witted humour always gets a few laughs. Following the demo, Steve officially launched the Microsoft Startup Accelerator programme here in the UK, with five launch partners: Corebridge, Miomi, ViaPost, Zebtab, Miomni, something that I will blog about extensively in the future. Finally Steve fielded questions from the audience, and continued much longer than planned, which suggested he found it a worthwhile exercise.
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Steve making a point
Steve Ballmer with Ryan Carson's hat in the foreground |
- When Steve and entourage departed for their next engagement (at London Business School) we had three people join Ryan on stage for a panel discussion and Q&A: Saul Klein of Seedcamp and Index Ventures; Ben Way of makingrain.com, Viapost and Miomi; and Cary Marsh of mydeo.com. Again there were lots of great insights and useful advice for the entrepreneurs in the audience.
At the end of all this it was lunchtime and there was a huge amount of buzz and networking as people tucked into the sandwiches and sushi. It'll probably take me a couple of days to follow up with all the new contacts that I made in just an hour!
