We just finished our first tradeshow, Microsoft TechEd in Barcelona. Next week we will do IT Forum as well.

TechEd: Developers, as it is officially called, was good for us, but not entirely the way I expected.  But first, here is why it was a success to our young company. We met with a lot of potential customers from our immediate vicinity, Denmark and Sweden. And several of those showed sincere interest and a couple even more than that. And to these people it is a comforting factor that Safewhere has actually started down the road to become an international software company. To them it means more customers to push Safewhere along the right path of continued innovation and development.

1. The Safewhere brand is unknown. Period.
2. Developers are not all that concerned about managing authorizations across deployed services and applications. They lean more towards computational and programming challenges.
3. Developers going to TechEd are pretty focused on what Microsoft will do to them and for them. Short of brand recognition, Xbox giveaways and chocolate fondue (no kidding, Compuware really did that - while at the same time employing a Formula 1 racing theme!), getting the attention of a developer takes our preparation of them even before they ever arrive at TechEd.

Now, that’s my analysis anyway. And our response is simple to identify and hard to execute: PR and Partners. PR generates recognition and partners generate interest in the concrete solution.
 
So in conclusion, I really had no idea on how it would go. It went very well – and next week at TechEd: IT Forum will most likely be even better.

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