Powers Unfiltered

If you’re a Microsoft partner, (specifically, in the Visual Studio Industry Partners, or VSIP program), and you have any sort of free offer, you owe it to yourself to check out something called an MSDN Flash.  (It is, of course, not easy to find this opportunity on the dreaded partner.microsoft.com site.  Searching on “MSDN Flash” finds a single document, completely unrelated to the process of submitting content for an MSDN Flash, but stay with me.  Go to http://www.vsipmembers.com/partner/content/msdnFlash.aspx, and fight through all the conflicting login requirements.  Once you get in, the process is simple — you  give them a title, a 20-word description, and a link, and they’ll get you into an MDSN newsletter if they like your offer.)

We did one at Digipede this week — I submitted a short description of our free Digipede Network Developer Edition, and pointed recipients at our download page.  

The results have been quite good – Monday and Tuesday, we had more than double the average daily number of visitors and pageloads on our Web site, and we’ve fulfilled at least five times the normal volume of requests for our software from architects and developers who fill out our request form.

The VSIP program has other benefits, but this one is quite tangible – a measurable uptick in customer and partner leads.

Many thanks to the VSIP and MSDN teams!