Orlando, Fla. – Microsoft went against tradition on day one of the Worldwide Partner Conference by announcing next year’s host city and date: Toronto on July 10th to the 14th.
Usually Microsoft’s worldwide channel chief waits for the final day of the conference to make this announcement. The Worldwide Partner Conference was last in Toronto in 2012 where it broke several attendance records.
Phil Sorgen, Microsoft’s worldwide channel chief, told CDN that partner feedback indicated that Toronto was a great city to visit. Sorgen lived in Toronto for five years when he was the President of Microsoft Canada.
“Toronto is back by popular demand. The decision to go back to Toronto was because of the city’s infrastructure and the great proximity to daytime activities and nightlife events. As you know WPC is an all day and all night type of conference and the partner’s value in a location that is close to conference centres, arenas and places to eat,” Sorgen said.
Microsoft Canada channel chief Jason Brommet echoed Sorgen’s sentiment that the doors will be wide open at the Toronto Worldwide Partner Conference 2016. Brommet said the company will welcome competitive partners to Microsoft. “We are open to those partners to come and join us in 2016. My goal is to get the biggest participation in WPC history and we would love to see thousands of Canadian partners at WPC 2016,” he added.
The last time WPC was in Toronto more than 15,000 people representing 156 countries attended the conference. Of those 15,000 people approximately 5,300 were gold partners, 2,900 silver along with 200 or so compete partners.
WPC is Microsoft’s single largest event of four that they do annually.
Microsoft Canada President Janet Kennedy said in a statement that she is looking “immensely” forward to welcoming colleagues and valued partners from all over the world back to the great city of Toronto.
“Canada is a very important market, and with our recent announcements such as the opening of the Microsoft Canada Excellence Centre in Vancouver, locally delivered cloud services via two data centres in 2016 and now the return of the WPC to Toronto, it reflects Microsoft’s dedicated commitment to this country.”
Here is a video from Kennedy on hosting the Worldwide Partner Conference in 2016.