I spoke to Mary-Jo Foley about Microsoft Inspire 2020, Microsoft Partners, Microsoft’s Coronavirus response, and more

I was lucky enough to be able to sit down (virtually, of course) with Mary-Jo Foley earlier this week. Mary-Jo (MJF) is a 30-year veteran of the tech industry and has been covering Microsoft since the start. She always has great insights to share about Microsoft and the wider tech industry.

I was interested to get her take on the way Microsoft have moved over to running virtual events, using Build 2020 as an example. Although she was initially worried how the Microsoft Build organizers would handle the scale, she was impressed how everything worked out, describing it as “the next best thing to being there”.

We chatted through how this would translate to Microsoft Inspire, which is predominately a partner networking conference. This year is very different – being no cost and open to all.

We also talked through how different partners might be feeling going into this year’s Inspire and what they would be hoping to get out of it. This was a fascinating part of the discussion for me, and I was really interested in where MJF thought partners should be focusing their efforts.

We finished talking through Microsoft’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and what it’s like as a journalist dealing with today’s Microsoft.

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