Earlier this month, Microsoft France organized the ‘Pitch your WP7 app to SteveB’ competition in Paris. For 60 minutes, developers pitched an exceptional jury made of Steve Ballmer and the CEOs of the most successful French Internet companies (Meetic.com, Free.fr, Vente-privée, etc.) and the CMO of Orange, the biggest partner for the local launch of Windows Phone 7.
As you can see on the picture, it really looked like American idol and, and as you can guess, Steve Ballmer and the members of the jury were over the top, to say the least.
Finalists were students, BizSpark startups, mobile agencies, and companies like Quiksilver or Yacast.
The winner of the competition is Arcane Tower defense, a nice XNA game, 3D and multiplayer that works on the Phone and on the XBOX.
At the end of the day, Steve said in front of 1500 Microsoft employees that this event was one of the very best events he ever did at Microsoft. He also mentioned about this event at the PDC10 keynote this week.
Highlights of the event:
- 250 Apps submitted for the competition in 3 months.
- 10K followers on our Facebook page.
- 20K ‘likes’ on Facebook.
- 300 attendees in the audience, the room was more than packed.
- 4500 connections to the Live broadcast (a record at Microsoft France).
I strongly encourage you to watch the show online, and don’t miss the end, when the moderator asks SteveB to sing ‘la Marseillaise’ in French. 
