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Body: Dal and TJ from Trendmicro have the unenviable task of kicking off the day this morning with the keynote at 8am. This is after a couple of massive parties last night which I understand finished with an open bar sponsored by bandwidth.com. I’m sure that there would be MANY sore heads this morning. Myself – I was out of there by midnight and heading to bed. I’ve gotten a pretty sore throat over the last few days as I’m coming down with a cold or something – the upside is that it sounds like I’ve been partying hard, so … Continue reading SMBNation – Keynote Day 2 – TrendMicro

Body: Lunch is over – and it was really nice food – good one HarryB. Susan Bradley and Ofer Shimrat are now onstage presenting  a session on The Gotchas of SBS 2008. They have defined a gotcha as a “feature” of SBS 2008 that we may not have uncovered as yet. Ofer says “The biggest gotchas in SBS 2008 have NOTHING to do with technology – they are all about how you deal with the customer”. Interesting statement isn’t it. Our customers are the ones that are going to be some of the biggest issues with SBS 2008. It’s up … Continue reading SMBNation – Session 4 – SBS 2008 Real World Requirements

Body: Session 3 brings with it the one and only Amy Babinchak – ISA Goddess. Amy’s extremely quiet manner often puts people at a sense of false impression. Her quiet voice makes them think she does not have much to say, nothing could be further from the truth. Amy has forgotten more than most of us know about ISA in the SMB space. Therefore her presentation on Selecting a Firewall in the SBS 2008 era is certainly one not to be missed. She’s started off by giving a history lesson of the firewalls that have been in older versions of … Continue reading SMBNation – Session 3 – Firewalls – What to choose

Body: Session #2 – Jeff Middleton, the self proclaimed King of Swing, is up on stage now talking about SBS 2008 migrations. He listed all the features of SBS 2003 and then in one click turned it into SBS 2008. He then blew away the myth for everyone that the migration process to SBS 2008 will be so simple.  Going back to my earlier post today on the SMBNation Keynote – if we continue to undersell ourselves to our customers, if we continue to underbid the VALUE that we provide to the customers business then we will be out of … Continue reading SMBNation – Session 2 – Migration – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Body: Ok – so it’s 8am on Saturday morning here in rainy Seattle. The legendary HarryB has opened the keynote with a overview of what’s happening and passed the baton over to the Intel Dude (sorry missed his name). They started with a video in which they took a the actual silicon from a CPU and showed it to user. Users had no idea that the brains of their computer was “this little thing”, and made comments that “wow it looks complicated”. These are typical comments that most users make about IT and the services that we offer. However whilst … Continue reading SMBNation – Keynote

Body: The Grand Poobar of Search Engine Guide – Jennifer Laycock has posted a summary of the recent Small Business Marketing Unleashed event in Columbus, Ohio.  http://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/recapping-fall-small-business-marketing.php  Now her view might well be biased by the fact that she was the key person responsible for the event, or it might well be reflective of the others that attended the event. Talking to the many that were present at the event, I believe it’s the later 🙂  At any rate, I’ll be watching out for the dates for the next event in April and hoping it lines up REAL close with … Continue reading Small Business Marketing Unleashed – Review

Body: Today is Wednesday here in Columbus, Ohio, and I’m sitting here by the pool doing some work after the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference wrapped up last night. This is the second time I’ve been to this event, the last time was in Houston in April this year. I decided to come back to attend the event a second time round as I really felt like I had missed out on a lot of content the first time round. Typical of most events, there were multiple streams and as always you can not be in both streams at once … Continue reading How to make friends and influence people

Body: In a few moments, I board my first of three flights today to get from Sydney, Australia through to Columbus, Ohio.  This is the start of a 3 week trip in which I’ll be attending 2 conferences and 2 weeks of solid long day training on the new SBS and EBS products.  I’m in Ohio for the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference and I’m really looking forward to catch up with the people I met earlier this year and also to learn even more about how we can promote / market our business online.  Then next Thursday, I fly … Continue reading I’m on my way….

Body: Ok – so we all know about Microsoft investing $300M to promote their new products.  We in the SMB space don’t have that kind of money which is why I’m going to the 2nd Small Business Marketing Unleashed event in 2 weeks time in Columbus, Ohio. I attended this conference in Houston, TX earlier this year and am going back for a 2nd round in Columbus, Ohio in a few weeks. This event is focused on how we as SMB people can get the most bang for our buck in terms of online marketing. This is an SMB focused … Continue reading Small Business Marketing Unleashed Event

Body: Well guys – it’s the end of an insane week this week. TechEd is finally over – well for me at least. I’ve been preparing for TechEd and the SMB PreDay now for a number of weeks and I think by and large it was successful. I know that there is a lot of great feedback and I’ll be going over this next week with Robbie to see what we can do better. SMB PreDay – We had around 250 people at SMB PreDay and it was really great to see the turnout. Based on the show of hands, … Continue reading SBS 2008 / EBS 2008 Training and TechEd Australia