Free Small Business Summit

There is a great opportunity to get lots of free advice for starting and running a small business next week at the Microsoft Small Business Summit. The summit runs from noon to 4pm (eastern time) on March 24th through the 27th. The schedule looks like it has lots to offer so make sure you register for the event soon. Topics listed on the schedule are everything from marketing, branding, and publicity to technology, finances and how to handle start-ups.

Two speakers that I know I do not want to miss are John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing fame and Andy Wibbels who wrote the famous book Blog Wild. I will also try to get to the sessions on entrepreneurship, life balance and using Vista successfully. In case you can’t make your favorite session live, Microsoft is repeating the entire schedule later each afternoon and making recordings available after the summit. If you can be there live, it should be great. The seminars will be transmitted to your computer using streaming audio and video. You will be able to interact online and submit questions to the speakers during their talks. It sounds like there will also be an online discussion forum during the seminars.

It seems curious to me that the giant Microsoft is focusing on small business information. I think – what on earth do they know about SMALL business….. but their summit promotional material claims that most of the company worked for small business before signing on with the giant. Of course, it is a very well developed marketing technique to hold an event like this. That is the way of marketing now in the information age, you must be willing to share information in order to gain credibility and customers. It is heartening to me to see that even the giants of the world follow the same strategies that solitary coaches do to promote their business.

Join me at the summit. Let Microsoft market and we will get smarter and more informed because of it!!