Another suggestion for MS on how they can help user groups is to ask the local user group presidents every 6/12 months to go to the weekly TAM meeting to introduce the UGs to the TAMs.
This has a few benefits:
- This introduces the TAMs to user group, thus allowing TAM to provide added value to their clients.
- TAM and most MS staff are required to meet yearly objectives. These objectives could be “give a presentation” to a local UG or help out a user group or …,
- TAM’s will get to know other customers within their city that might be in need of proactive Rapid On Site Support (ROSS) Engineer again showing the value of MS Support.
- Although I hate to say as I dislike sales pitches it will help sell the value of TAMs
The benefits to user groups are clear:
- More support
- More participants
- More presenters and maybe better presenters
- When a TAM knows that a Technical MS staff member or ROSS engineers is in town they could asked help facilitate setting up a User Group meeting.
Here are a few ideas for a future User Group presentation:
- What is a TAM and how can they help you. This should be presented by one TAM and one Customer
- What is a Proactive ROSS visit and have this coupled with a Technical Q&A? For obvious reasons this should be a ROSS engineer.
My past suggestion:
MS partners
How Microsoft can help user groups