Police involved as Microsoft breaks up Huddle’s publicity stunt [Video]

The police were called outside Microsoft’s SharePoint conference at the Anaheim Convention Center today when collaborative cloud sharing software startup Huddle pulled a PR stunt in the form of marching a 120 person band, plus ten cheerleaders accompanying American footballers, into the conference center’s entrance.

In full disclosure; I was doing some video work for Hudddle via my production company Newspepper, but I felt blogging about the incident necessary when the drama unfolded and police were called by organizers at the Sharepoint conference.

The band was told to stop playing the music and leave the property, a few minutes later the police arrived and told Huddle’s founder Andy Mcloughlin the conference center was private property and out of bounds.

Huddle, a five-year-old startup based in London and San Francisco was trying to demonstrate to SharePoint customers there are other, (and in Huddle’s opinion better) options when it comes to choosing cloud based collaborative workspaces and wanted to get the attention of its biggest competitor in the market.

The 💜 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

Huddle has been using Microsoft’s .net and business solutions through the Bizspark program for years, but it seems Huddle felt it was time to cut the cord from Microsoft’s program: “We appreciate the relationship we’ve built with Bizspark, but at the end of the day they have a product which is a competitor and just like in the early days when Salesforce used to disrupt Oracle and  SAP conferences, we need to show we are thinking big,” said Mcloughlin.

Keep up with all the latest Microsoft news at TNW Microsoft.