I think at some point about two years ago Erick and I were going through a collection of Mojitos at Downtown Disney, talking about a concept for an MSP conference. I believe that the less colorful version of what I said was “Oh no, not another one.” Back then the conference market was pretty much a glorified vendor festival, with barely enough content to even attract attendees. Things got a little obvious when the attendees were left to eat on the soccer field, in the parking lot and entire “content” sessions were just infomercials. Oh please, not another distraction I thought.
Erick really changed my mind when I visited the first Intelligent Enterprise MSP bootcamps. The setup of their shop was very professional, the training was… well… an ass kicking. Almost Matrix-like. Geek walks in. CIO walks out. The session I got to watch was basically Garry, two sales executives and the geek is trying to pitch to them. Watching the “CEO” and “CFO” shoot down the proposals, watching the video recording of the whole thing, trying all the different sales scenarios. Impressive.
So when Erick told me they were going to do a conference bootcamp I was not sure what that experience was going to look like. Obviously the “close combat” training works very well, but does it translate to the crowd of people?
Amazingly enough, it did.
Not your usual conference by any means. The content is basically nonstop, 7 am to 7 pm.
Party at night as usual, right? Nope. Folks have homework. Videos to watch, projects to complete, surveys to do.
This is not your usual SMB conference.
Well, first of all it’s free.
Second, there is an actual agenda and a deliverable. As in, when you leave this place you’ll have stuff you can use immediately. Stuff that let’s you compete in business, not in the techie bs being done by Indians for $1.50 an hour.
I hope if/when Erick throws one of these again many of you reading this blog get a chance to attend. For years many people in the IT field were able to coast through simply on the pent up demand and customers actually wanting servers and services.
Now that things are tougher, that projects are more complex and that competition is intense… you have to step your game up.
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