I’m BACK! I’m fired up to have my “feet on the street,” telling the Windows XP Migration story around the world via a series of “Million Mile” workshops. We’re literally using planes, trains and automobiles to teach partners about this amazing opportunity and customers about the need to migrate ASAP before April 8th.
Over the past two weeks, it’s been an honor and a pleasure to see herds of my friendly nerds and meet new geeks. Here’s a brief summary of my WW Windows XP Migration madness!
NorCal/SoCal!
Two weeks ago, it was all sunshine as I spent a few days conducting four workshops. A few days in the Bay Area included both my customer and partner events followed by me attending the Cloud Expo, a conference in its 11th year, held at the Santa Clara Conference Center. Admittedly, this conference was enterprise cloud (combined with BIG DATA), so it was a strange fit for me. But I did bump into Joe Foos, who I interviewed HERE in my Joe the Computer Guy blog. One highlight from the Bay Area segment was “becoming grounded” in what small business is all about. I stayed with my life-long friend Tom Benkert who is a solar and lighting salesman serving SMBs. As we chatted late into the night and he joined me on my daily workout, it was apparent that his challenges are my challenges are your challenges. Customers not returning telephone calls. Bidding on work you don’t win. Winning work that’s not a right fit. And I thought it was just me using my Salesforce instance experiencing all of these same behaviors! So thanks Tom for the real world-ism!
On to Southern Cali, where I enjoyed a whirlwind tour accompanied by long-time teammate Jay Weiss from ComputerHMO. We met with the Irvine Chamber of Commerce to schedule a future date in January for a compelling customer event regarding Windows XP Migration. We are now forecasting that customers will “hear” the Windows XP Migration message in the early new year but not sooner (apparently April 8th is too far away). Always an advocate for work-life balance, we found that special 90-minutes for a bike ride (we are cyclists) along the coast, stopping at Balboa Island. Then rushing for a Friday night partner event at the Mission Viejo Microsoft Store – we rocked the partners with a motivational message to grab the migration opportunity now. Ask ‘em what a Section 179 is for giggles.
Florida
I’ve been long overdue to visit Florida for both personal (nice weather) and professional reasons. That said – having five workshops and visiting IT Nation was on the agenda over three days. Busy is an understatement. I was joined by Chris Bangs, our VP Sales/Marketing, as he zoomed around with me to well-attended customer events in Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Miami PLUS two partner events in Orlando and Fort Lauderdale! At IT Nation, we engaged in “Hallway 101,” talking to the movers and shakers in the ConnectWise community. In general, the opinion about capitalizing on migrations was mixed. On the one hand, you had a certain elitist arrogance with upper caste MSPs saying that migrations were below them. On the other hand, you had aspiring, hungry MSPs asking for more information now! With any community, you scale the societal strata from A to Z, as long as you use ConnectWise at this particular event. A shout out to Windstream for hosting our tour in Fort Lauderdale (see the pic).
The takeaway from the Florida week was my time with Scott Cayouette in South Florida. I and Chris spent some quality time with Scott learning the life of a sole proprietor SMB IT Pro. Scott has elevated himself above and beyond his IT services to serve as a community leader with IAMCP, SBS User Group Leads, GITCA and other like-minded groups. He reflects the working man doing the work of the SMB IT customer. It was real. It was real good.
This week its Portland and Seattle. Join my Portland event Tuesday, November 18, 430PM and Seattle on Thursday night, November 21 at 6:00pm See ya there!
PS – there is a rumor going around that there is a Harryb dancing vid of me at a Fort Lauderdale Moose Club…don’t believe it!
