Office 365 at National Small Business Week - San Francisco: More than just technology

In 1975 Microsoft was founded as a small business after Paul Allen showed Bill Gates and the idea of Microsoft was born. In three short years the year-end sales exceeded $1 million. Since the beginning, Microsoft has worked to tackle big challenges and we take pride in the solutions we provide for businesses of all sizes.   

At Small Business Week - San Francisco we looked from our roots to the present and celebrate small businesses in the U.S. Below is an overview of our time at the event including how we celebrated and some of the people we met.

Day 1

We started the celebration with the Flavors of San Francisco, the kickoff event with Microsoft Store, T-Mobile and Windows Intune. At the event we saw Office 365 customer wichcraft, 1,100 conference attendees, and over 50 restaurants, vendors and companies.

[Image left to right -  Raesue Kao, wichcraft, Bhvika Thakkar Senior Office Product Manager, Sklyer Fortuna, wichcraft, Penny Delgadillo Senior Office 365 Product Manager, Asha Sharma Senior Windows Intune Product Manager, Diego Aguirre Microsoft Store Technical Advisor, Sam Masody Microsoft Store Business Development.]

Wichcraft is a great example of how a small business harnessed the power of Office 365 to drive their business forward.  Founded in 2003, the unique sandwich shop has grown to 15 locations in three cities.  The local Office 365 team stopped in for lunch to support local business and see how our technology has made the collaboration, accessibility and analyzing data seamless for operations.

[Image left to right: Penny Delgadillo Senior Office 365 Product Manager, Matthew Tennant Office 365 and Cloud Social Media, Bhvika Thakkar Senior Office Product Manager with Sklyer Fortuna of wichcraft for lunch!]

Day 2

The theme of the conference "Saluting the Heroes of Our Economy" rolled into day two with a day full of connection, inspiration and education.  Rodney Bowen Wright, director of Microsoft Bizspark, spoke on The Cloud: More than a Technology Decision. His presentation included an open discussion with the audience and examples of how current small business customers have utilized Microsoft Cloud technologies to increase productivity, sales and collaboration.

 [Image: Small Business Administration Representative introducing Rodney Bowen Wright at this presentation.]

The end of the day was celebrated with over 100 social media influencers who attended a Tweetup hosted at the Microsoft San Francisco office.

[Images: Microsoft tweetup]

Next

We continue to celebrate next week in Washington DC for National Small Business Week.

May 20 - 26: During the by National Small Business Week we're hosting the Accelerator Room: Touch down, Connect, Network and Relax. We will also host a tweetup on May 22nd with a special guest from the Small Business Administration and Microsoft SMB at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Washington DC.

If you can't join us in person follow us online at @Office365, @MSCloud, @TMobile, @WindowsPhone, @MicrosoftSMB and @SBAgov for all the latest or register for the webcast of the events. http://msft.it/SBLS.

As part of our celebration we are giving away 1-year of Windows Intune our Cloud Based Security and Management, sign up by June 8th http://msft.it/NewSignatureBC.