SMB Nation officially kicked off its 2013 fall conference in Las Vegas this morning (following its pre-day programing yesterday) with Harrybbb’s traditional welcome and keynote speech.
(Pictured): CompTIA's Kate Hunt poses with Harrybbb after accepting her community award as SBSer of the Year at SMB Nation's Fall Conference in Las Vegas.
Held during the breakfast session, Harry’s speech was preceded by a presentation from Sharon Fry, Executive Director, Outlook Foundation. During her discussion, Fry mentioned the work and mission of the Outlook Foundation, which is of course to provide donated computers, which are then refurbished and reallocated to under-resourced children, siblings separated in foster care, and deploying members of the military. As an aside, SMB Nation is currently running a special for local Las Vegas attendees to bring a gently used PC to donate, which will grant them a discounted admission of $99 to the conference.
Fry also paid homage to Outlook Foundation’s Founder John Iasiuolo who recently passed away this summer. If you remember, SMB Nation paid tribute in a blog post here to John and the work he and his wife, Christine, have done for the SMB community via the foundation.
Harry then followed with his keynote address, which focused largely on the “Disappearing MSP Middle Class,” which he recently blogged about. The conversation largely focused on the maturity of the SMB community, and how the master MSP is built for scale, as well as how you will need to “hang on fast” and avoid the middle class “trap.”
Harry also revealed the steps for the transformation of SMB Nation, which include a new membership model with benefits, as well as a 22-city road show tour, sponsored by Lenovo, D&H, OOMA, Microsoft and others.
We also can’t forget to mention that XP Migrations are at the forefront of this conference, namely the discussions that will be had surrounding the April 8, 2014 deadline that’s looming. In order to help assist our community with these efforts, we launched today a new XP Migrations Guide, which you can download here. Harry and other speakers will also be discussing various XP Migrations strategies throughout the remainder of the conference.
Rounding out Harry’s keynote was of course the presentation of the Jim Locke Award (formerly known as the SBSer of the Year Award) to two community members. This year’s winners were Richard Tubb and Kate Hunt of CompTIA. Hunt was present to accept her award, and during her acceptance speech she noted how community to her is about giving back and supporting the industry…Tubb was not able to attend the event, as he had a previous engagement in Europe already lined up.
That’s all for now…check back here for more updates and information on the event as the day goes on!
