More and more I.T. Conferences are springing up, all with great content for their particular audiences. We’ve seen some new SMB-focused conferences spring up in recent years and gather steam and acceptance with their attendees, such as the SMBSummit and the ITPro Conference. As more of these conferences spring up, it makes it more difficult for the SMB IT Solution Provider to decide where to spend their time and hard-earned money.
Our good friend Matt Makowicz posted a great blog describing several of the best IT Conferences out, and some tips and tricks on getting the most out of your conference visit. See his post here. Another great post on attending conferences was written by our friend Karl Palachuk – whose post really contains valuable tips on general conference planning and attendance as well – see it here.
One of the “must-go” conferences that we all agree upon (among others) is Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, or WPC. This year it’s in Houston, TX on July 7-10, 2008.
One of the key differentiators for attendees at Microsoft’s WPC’s is their social networking service called WPC Connect. All registered attendees can utilize this online socializing tool to share information about themselves, their organizations or products/services, identify other attendees they'd like to meet, communicate and collaborate with them, and schedule meetings with them in a section set aside specifically for that purpose within WPC. It's an area containing hundreds of tables with numbers, and through WPC Connect you can send a meeting request to any other attendee (and I mean ANY OTHER ATTENDEE, including Microsoft staff - get my meaning?) and book a time and a table. What an awesome way to get focused attention from the folks you would not have the opportunity with anywhere else....
So choose your conferences carefully, using Matt’s and Karl’s blog posts as a guide, and I’ll see you there!
Erick Simpson
MSP University
www.mspu.us
Hi Erick
You have nailed this one...so many choices, when do we have time to run our businesses if we all go. We have CompTIA and CMP paying for people to attend their conferences and they are all good as well. However, where do you draw the line.
In my opinion these are the must attends:
1. Microsoft WPC
2. SMB Summit
3. SonicWALL Peak Performance (SonicWALL Partners)
4. SMB Nation
Thanks for the awesome posting
Stuart Crawford
Calgary, AB
http://www.stuartcrawford.com
Posted by: Stuart Crawford | February 07, 2008 at 07:50 AM