I went to the 5th Annual SMB Nation Conference this past weekend put on by Harry Brelsford. It was once again held at the Microsoft Conference Center on their campus in Redmond. It was good to see many old friends from all over the world.
Friday night was the SBS User Group Leaders meeting led by Scott Cayouette of Florida. Rick from Exclaimer hosted the food and drink. The only official business was the reaffirmation of Scott and David Houston of Ireland as co-chairs for the coming year. David couldn't join us in person so Anne Stanton kept him informed of what was happening via Instant Messenger. The rest of the meeting was a round table discussion about how to grow your group, etc. Scott made sure that everyone was able to participate.
After a nice breakfast in the mess tent, the conference kicked off with a great keynote by Eric Ligman of Microsoft and Arnie Mondloch of the US Partner Group. Eric told of of several new resources and campaigns aimed at the Microsoft Small Business Specialist. One customer facing campaign is 'We've Gotta Guy'. Check it out at www.wevegottaguy.com. Somehow I've let myself fall out of the loop. Eric's talk has inspired me to start making better use of the resources Microsoft is providing to SBSCs.
One of the 'features' of this year's conference was complimentary Microsoft certification testing. I hadn't realized that until Sunday morning. When I did, I went to register to take the CRM Customization exam, MB2-442. Unfortunately, as hard as they tried, the staff could not find any of the Dynamics exams. Too bad Microsoft makes the Dynamics stuff so hard to get at.
Of course the conference was full of many great presentations. I mainly attended the business development sessions (Pocket MBA). Managed services was another biggie with numerous managed services vendors in attendance.
There were a bunch of vendors this year. The exhibits filled the large room used in the past for meals, thus the mess tent. I was pleased to meet Steve Lawton from Acronis in person. Steve had been so helpful on a client issue I'd had a while back. And it was also great to see Kristen Wild of StorageCraft who had been gracious to come to San Antonio to present to the Alamo PC SBS SIG earlier in September.
And of course there were evening events. Saturday night there was a great magic show held in the ballroom of our hotel. We had front row seats so it was great. At intermission, Harry Brelsford presented the SBSCer of the year award to Karl Palachuk. A much deserved honor.
Sunday night Jeff Middleton of SBSMigration.com fame and long time SBS MVP hosted a get together at Waldo's, a local pool hall and jazz joint. Jeff had a bus shuttleting between the hotel and Waldo's all night. Thanks' Jeff!
All in all, another great conference.