SMB Community Podcast

I talked to Bob Godgart from ChannelEyes (www.channeleyes.com) about what's new with their cool channel partner tools.

The coolest new product – Channel Candy – is an app that allows vendors to create a branded partner app for smart phones. This will allow you to track the information and updates from your vendors. There will be some common controls from one vendor to another, but vendors will be able to customize as they see fit.

If you're like me, you are a "partner" with 6-12 vendors. But, if you're like me, you might visit each site once or twice a year. Channel Candy will allow vendors to create information channels so you can decide which information your receive. And the vendors can send you to their portal when there's a program they really want you to see it.

Bob gives a lot more detail in the audio.

Download the Interview with Bob Godgart here.

You can join ChannelEyes and download the apps for free. Visit www.channeleyes.com.

While you're there, you will also find a channel with my Small Biz Thoughts blog (thank you Channel Eyes!).

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Report from SMB Nation Fall 2012.

I caught up with Jessica DeVita – one of my favorite people in the IT space. Jessica is an IT consultant, technical wiz, advocate for education in the IT community, Microsoft MVP and a really great person.

Her web site is www.theubergeekgirl.com.

Recently, Jessica was on the cover of ChannelPro magazine and had an article in there about Women in IT. We talked to her about that and the work she's doing to educate women (and men) on IT as field. Check out the magazine at http://www.channelprosmb.com/archive/channelpro_smb_september_2012.

Recently Jessica has been on several panels recently discussion IT as a career choice and on mentoring young women. She will be speaking on November 7th at Santa Monica College for a program called Cool Careers.

As a side note, I asked Jessica how she came up with the name Uber Geek Girl.

Download the Interview with Jessica DeVita here.

This is not my first interview with Jessica. Check out the earlier podcasts at SMB Community Podcast.

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Report from SMB Nation Fall 2012.

Highly Reliable Systems Provides a New Approach to Backup Hardware

Many people don't like tape backups. But most hard drive-based backups have their own problems.

I talked to Darren McBride about the "Highly Reliable" systems and what makes them different. Their story is interesting and compelling. Until this conversation, I wasn't sure about the exact need they filled.

In addition to adding a level of security to the physical handling of backups, Highly Reliable Systems is providing tape replacements from extremely reasonable to 12 TB. Listen to the interview. You'll see why it's worth taking a look at this technology.

Download the Interview Here

Check out their web site at www.high-rely.com.

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The theme of this year's SMB Nation is "Back to the Future." Basically, it's wrapped around all the cool new things we have . . . and understanding them in light of the fact that SBS Server end of life is upon us.

So Harry Brelsford and Chris Bangs over at SMB Nation got ahold of the guy who owns the DeLorean from the movie (Mark Shields). Yes: This guy still drives this car. Then they got ahold of Claudia Wells, who played Marty's girlfriend Jennifer in the original movie.

Claudia attended the first get together on the night of the Preday events. Turns out she's a very nice, normal business owner with a great sense of humor. She owns a high end clothing story in Studio City, CA. She's also got some new movies in the works.

I caught up with her while taking shelter from the lightning storm. She agreed to a podcast.

Download the Podcast Here

Claudia's store can be found at www.armaniwells.com http://www.armaniwells.com/ – High end clothing at discount prices.

In addition she has a personal page at www.claudiawells.com. There you can see what she's up to and even order personally autographed pictures . . . or a copy of the "Save the Clock Tower" flyer.

Just a little extra fun along with the work and educational sessions.

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This article was originally posted June 23, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. SMB Community Podcast: Chatting with Jeannine Edwards and Erinn Davis

Fifteen minutes of information and commentary.

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I caught up with Jeannine Edwards (ConnectWise) and Erinn Davis (LabTech Software) and had a great discussion about what's new, the community, IT Nation, and what they see for the SMB Community in the year ahead.

Download the podcast here.

Jeannine is the Director of Community for ConnectWise, LabTech, and Quosal. Erinn is the Community Manager at LabTech Software. Their job is to nuture the complete communication cycle between the ConnectWise / LabTech / Quosal family of products and their clients.

One of the best guidelines these folks have is: "If it can be monitored and managed, it can be put in a contract." (And of course it can then become recurring revenue.) In the end, it's all about predictable costs for the client and predictable revenue for the consultant.

Jeannine will be one of the keynote speakers at the SMB Online Conference next week. Her talk there is on Five Proven Strategies to Triple Your Cloud Profits – Even If You Have No Cloud Strategy Today. Read more about that at www.smbonlineconference.com.

Our discussion covered cloud services, the hype in the market, the future of growth in our business, and a lot more! Check it out.

For more information, see

– www.connectwise.com

– www.labtechsoftware.com

– www.quosal.com

– www.TheITNation.com

– Facebook.com/connectwise

– Facebook.com/labtechsoftware

– Twitter.com/connectwise

– Twitter.com/labtechsoftware

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This article was originally posted June 16, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Freeday Friday Report: Three Conferences in Eight Days

This is a very different Freeday Friday podcast . . . and the last one we'll produce.

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My report on IT Pro Conference in New Orleans. "Trusted Identity" and what it means in the big picture. A few comments on delegation of trust and what that means to our clients.

My recommendations based on the topics from this conference. I talk a bit about the kinds of white papers and "lunch and learn" seminars you might create on cloud computing, modern security concerns, BYOD, and mixed (Windows/Non-Windows) environments.

Then I talk about the Autotask conference and their expansion into international markets. After that I went to TechEd North America and the "Birds of a Feather" sessions I moderated there. In addition to the community activities at TechEd, I report on a cool new laptop and a bit about Server 2012.

My presentation on Relax Focus Succeed and work/life balance was very popular. Holy smokes. They cut off registration when they realized it was at 162% of capacity for the room. My Birds of a Feather presentation on publishing was also pretty popular (though far less crowded) and included publisher reps from Microsoft, Wiley, and O'Reilly.

I spent some time with Jerry from ASCII and Thomas Dawkins from Microsoft Technical Communities. Thomas and I recorded a podcast that I'll post up in a few days. Stay tuned for that.

Anyway . . . Here's my report on the three conferences I attended over eight days of travel. Total time for this is about 25 minutes.

The last few minutes is an announcement that we are no longer going to produce the Freeday Friday podcasts. I'll talk more about this in my weekly newsletter. You can subscribe to that at http://www.mcssl.com/app/contact.asp?id=75012.

Download the podcast here.

For more good information, please see my blog at http://blog.smallbizthoughts.com.

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This article was originally posted June 15, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Thomas Dawkins Introduces Microsoft Technical Communities

While attending the Microsoft TechEd North America conference last week, I literally ran into Thomas Dawkins just wandering the floor. Thomas is a senior IT Pro Audience Marketing Manager at Microsoft. He is responsible for relationships with IT Pro Groups and User Groups.

In this interview Thomas gave us some hints about the community involvement for the year ahead. Microsoft Technical Communities will officially be launched next fiscal year (next month). Services include helping user groups with speakers, funding, and training. It is also clear that Microsoft is engaging groups in many other markets besides the "small and medium" market we know so well.

If you listen carefully, you'll hear a very big hint about funding for groups and product launches. For more information, see the new site at www.technicalcommunities.com (content will be up once the program is officially announced).

Download the Interview with Thomas Dawkins (Time 4:41)

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This article was originally posted June 15, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Len DiCostanzo Reports on Autotask Community Live 2012

June 2012 – Orlando, FL – A buncha people gathered in Orlando for the Autotask Community Live conference. This is, of course, a very product-specific conference. Many of the panels were run by users. The coolest thing about that is that 83% of the attendees were first-time attendees, so they were eager to find out how others are using the tool.

We had a great time learning about what's new with Autotask and what's planned for the year ahead. I interviewed Len DiCostanzo, Senior Vice President, Community and Business Development for Autotask. Obviously, Len was super-busy. So we were lucky to grab a few minutes.

Len gave me some great information, including that 83% stat above. Over 90 sessions, more than 70 run by customers. You can tell from this interview that he is very jazzed about the entire event and enjoyed it like the rest of us. For more information on Autotask, please visitwww.autotask.com.

Download the Interview with Len DiCostanzo (Time 3:53)

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This article was originally posted June 15, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Mark Moreno Gives a Mid-Market Perspective on some SMB Events

One of my favorite people in the SMB/MSP space is Mark Moreno from C & M Support Services. I think I first met Mark at the IT Pro Conference in New Orleans five years ago. But I also see him at SMB Nation and several other events. In the last ten days I ran into Mark at two separate conferences: the 2012 IT Pro Conference and Autotask Community Live.

Both Mark and I flew straight from New Orleans (the IT Pro Conference – see this blog post) to Orlando. So no time off for good behavior. Um . . . I guess that's appropriate. Anyway, we had a great time learning about challenges and opportunities in consulting today. It's actually pretty nice to jump in with both feet and totally immerse yourself in the business side of your business for a week or so.

Mark is known as "Christ's IT Guy." He specializes in helping large churches with their technology needs. He often works more in the mid-market rather than the SMB space. But he also does a lot of Small Business Server installations because there are plenty of businesses that have a lot of employees but only 10-50 actual computer users. Of course Mark is an Autotask user.

Mark talks to us about the Third Tier "Brain Explosion" preday event for the IT Pro Conference; the 2012 IT Pro Conference; and the Autotask conference. You can tell that Mark is really working hard to integrate all this knowledge into his business.

Download the Interview with Mark Moreno (Time 5:18)

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This article was originally posted June 15, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Six Podcast Reports from New Orleans IT Pro Conference

June 2012 – New Orleans – Jeff Middleton's IT Pro Conference was a great success last week. Two days of panels and discussions on the theme "Trusted Identity: Faith in a Technology World" were very well received. About 150 attendees spent the time in a conversation that wound around through discussions of

– Trusted Advisor roles – Identity Theft – Social Media Privacy Breaches – Hosted Environments – Government Oversight – Unintended Electronic Disclosures – Branding Realities in a Business or Technology without Trust – Partnership and Service Provider Failures – Identity Federation (Facebook, Gmail, Passport, service aggregators) – Social Media

and more!

Naturally, I decided to catch up with some folks and get their impressions of the whole event. I started with Andy Goodman, a long-time community member and leader. Andy has been working for/with SBSMigration.com for almost a year now. He was instrumental in making this event happen – and introducing Jeff's new brand – IT Pro Experts – ITProExperts.com. Here's Andy:

Download the Interview with Andy Goodman (Time 1:11)

Next up, I talked to Ben Yarbrough from Calyptix Security (http://www.calyptix.com/). In the conference, and in this interview, Ben talks about how security devices have really become very different from one another. The feature sets are now quite amazing.

Download the Interview with Ben Yarbrough (Time 2:52)

One of the ever-present members of this community – and Jeff's conference – is Jan Spring from eFolder (www.efolder.net). Jan is an absolute fireball and one of the great brand ambassadors in this community. She gave us a quick sound check.

Download the Interview with Jan Spring (Time 1:00)

One of my favorite people in the SMB space is Jessica DeVita. Jessica has been involved for awhile, but she has recently decided to crank up her participation and "voice" in the community. She is a Microsoft MVP, a speaker at the conference, and is one of the people watch in our space. We talked about the future of our community – and a lot more.

Download the Interview with Jessica DeVita (Time 5:23)

Another one of my favorite people is Mark Crall, now from Storage Craft (www.storagecraft.com) and a former MSP from North Carolina. He talks here about choosing vendors and creating relationships in the channel.

Download the Interview with Mark Crall (Time 2:12)

Finally, I talked to Mitch Garvis, who travels ALL the time. Based in Canada, it is always a pleasure to run into Mitch way down in the Southern United States. Mitch is a Microsoft MVP, a Virtual Partner Technology Advisor at Microsoft Canada, and his blog is at http://garvis.ca. Mitch gives us some great reasons to attend community events, and this conference in general.

Download the Interview with Mitch Garvis (Time 1:23)

My personal thoughts on this conference – and some ideas about what you should be doing to educate your clients about modern discussions of "Trust" and delegation of trust will be posted separately in the "Oceanic" edition of the Freeday Friday podcasts. As soon as I get around to it.

Bottom Line: A great conference as usual. Great community. Great topic. Great discussions. And, as Mitch reminds us: They have beer.

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