Geek Speak

Just in time for the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays, the SS SMB Nation has arrived at the island of misfit tech toys. Here is the exclusive scoop.

Using the holiday break to reflect, recharge and renew, I gathered up all my misfit tech toys that are consigned to a shelf in my home office LOL. Then I placed them on the SMB Nation sailing vessel for arrival just in time for Santa to distribute to up-and-coming geeks world wide.

A quick peek of the snap show a few highlights.

Harry Brelsford and David Tulip discuss their professional history and experiences in the IT industry. David shares his journey from joining Newman Business Solutions in 1995 to growing their IT department into a £1.5 million MSP by 2009. He now leads the Network Group, which supports around 100 technology service providers in the UK. They reflect on the IT Nation 2024 conference, highlighting its educational focus and high attendance of 4,500 people. David mentions upcoming events for the Network Group in 2025, including celebrating their 30th anniversary at Wembley Stadium and expanding their reach to 250 organizations over the next three years.

A common refrain in technology (heck any area) is the need to both stay current and lean forward to remain relevant. Like you, I can remember pivoting from the sad demise of Novell NetWare to Window Server (remember NT?) leading up to the granddaddy of all migrations: the end-of-life (EOL) *and* and of service of Windows Small Business Server (SBS) to whatever (cloud et. al.). Do you realize that all happened in 2014 - ten years ago. This was the same timeframe as the Windows XP (EOL). Another example of voluntary (for some of you it was involuntary) professional evolution from break-fix to the Managed Service Provider (MSP) business model based on monthly recurring revenue (MRR) (invented by the telcos IMHO)

Here We Grow Again - Looking Around the Corner into 2025

I recently attended a keynote at the Mindset Reset conference

Calling the NERD HERD!

Be There - the Holiday Party for the Rest of Us! 

Our most popular mantra and message to IT Pros, Managed Services Providers (MSP), Geeks and Nerds is that you are NOT ALONE! 

I’m not claiming to be Nostrdammus with his legendary forecasting capabilities in the 1500s. But the data doesn’t lie and I saw it with my own eyes. Let’s geek out on this. 

Dropping Prices

Let’s start with the end-in-mind as author Stephen Covey said in his book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”  So the end of the story is about the housing market: buy, sell or short.

GEEK WIN!!!  I cut the cords today! Finally I sat down and reduced Spectrum down to Internet-only and then added YouTube TV. Total bill went from $280 to $140!  Should done this a lot sooner...other thoughts.

Spectrum kept trying to throw in a new mobile phone (boo hiss - I don't need another phone)

For free - Spectrum added a goofy TV service called TV Stream with 90+ Tier 2 channels I either get with YouTube TV or don't care about...

In other cable provider/streaming news:

Join us for this important online on November 12th - here are the dets!

Welcome to the forthcoming 2025! Join our expert panel as we double-click into this migration scenario impacts SMB partners, MSPs, VARS who depend on MAPs to run da’ IT business and serve customers. Not many people are aware of this quickly forthcoming change so its CRITICAL you attend this Webinar to get the FACTS to insure the continuity of your business operations.

After quickly re-defining MAPs and its history, we’ll look at the fourth pathways to MIGRATE off of MAPS.

And we’ll save plenty of time so you can ASK your important migration questions

Date and Time:

November 12, 2024

1:00pm CT

Panelists

I recently conducted a limited investigation of dogs v. cats. The focus was food. The methodology was an on-site visit to a grocery store to compare similar treats for both dogs and cats. The baseline results were the cat food was nearly 29% (28.6807% to be exact) more expensive.

This was calculated, as seen in the pictures below. The dog kibbles/treats were $4.48 and the cat kibbles/treats were $5.98. What does it mean?  On the surface, cats are more expensive than dogs. But I have questions.

Are food manufactures profiting off the deep love and affection cat owners have and will pay whatever it takes to keep Maggie the Calico Cat happy?

When asked, the community always responds strongly! Here are some examples.

Katrina

In late August 2005, Katrina struck and overall did $186.3 billion in damage with New Orleans taking the biggest hit. The legendary Jeff Middleton (and SBS MVP), a New Orleans resident,

gave a passionate speech a few weeks later the the thrd SMB Nation Fall conference. It was emotional and motivated several SMB Nation members to go to New Orleans and assist in the IT recovery for small and medium businesses (SMBs). I recall Bob Hood from Chicago as one of the volunteers.

For giggles, go to the LinkedinRoastMe site HERE – drop in your LinkedIn profile URL and get ready to laugh. Basically we’re talking about high jinks to take your mind off matters. Here is an example of roast (LOL): “Oh, Juliette, a Business Analyste Métier at Vaudoise Assurances? You must be the life of the party—if the party is filled with spreadsheets and SQL queries! I mean, nothing screams excitement like analyzing insurance claims all day. Your skills in crime analysis must be quite handy when you're trying to figure out who stole the office coffee. And Tableau software?

We caught up with Carlson Choi - the charasmatic CEO of up-and-coming Cork at the Pax8 Beyond 2024 event in Denver during June 2024, Cork is in the small and medium business (SMB) space. This is a solution for Managed Services Providers (MSP) to add to their portfolios. 

At the recent IT Nation 2023 event, we pulled Kyle Hanslovan away from his busy booth to get an insightful update on Huntress. This firm provided technical solutions to the Managed Services Provider (MSP) community and has high favorble ratings. And for good reason - they've earned that right. I've tracked them over the years and impressed with this update showing continued growth. Hoefully you'll be impressed as well! Listen the podcast in the link below.