The can’t miss event every year in the MSP world is none other than IT Nation which is just around the corner. Every year we like
to highlight some of the “must see” speakers and vendors that will be around for the show being IT Nation veterans. Without further ado, let’s begin!
Events (the FUN stuff):
The event really kicks off at the Welcome Reception Wednesday Night from 5pm - 9pm. Grab a drink or two, mingle with other IT & MSPs, and check out over 100 vendors. (see below we have a list of our favorites!)
If you haven't already heard, directly after the Welcome Reception there is a HUGE muti-vendor party, Wednesday Night from 9pm until you drop. You still have time to register and jump into the cool vibe of the Blue Martini Lounge. Feel free to spread the word this one is a MUST! Register HERE.
A big thanks and shout to to those vendors who are participating....
Thursday evening from 6PM to 7:30PM there is a "Pub Crawl" in the Solutions Pavilion (same as the Welcome Reception) which is another chance to mingle and check out the vendor areas.
Thursday Night from 8PM - 11PM, head on the bus over to Universal Studios Florida®. Experience incredible rides, chill in the speakeasy, and enjoy dinner & cocktails.
By Friday Night if you still have any steam left from 7PM - 10PM - Spend the evening networking, and enjoying a dizzying array of food and drink at our IT Nation Around-The-World Party!
Speakers (the Real Deal):
Patrick Lencioni - Friday, Nov 10 - 8:30AM - Keynote
Patrick Lencioni is founder and president of The Table Group, a firm dedicated to providing organizations with ideas, products and services that improve teamwork, clarity and employee engagement.
Lencioni’s passion for organizations and teams is reflected in his writing, speaking and executive consulting. He is the author of eleven best-selling books with nearly five million copies sold.
Paul Dippell - Breakout Sessions
CEO, Service Leadership
I say it every year, for as many sessions as we have sat in on with Paul, you never walk away without thinking if you are at the "top of your class" in the IT biz. Take it from us this is a can't miss speaker hands down. He has several topics he covers from trends, business valuation, and best practices.
The Future of Best-in-Class Managed Services
Safely Selling & Delivering to Large Accounts: Offense, Defense, and Trojan Horses
M&A - Post-Acquisition Integration: Avoiding the Common Failure Point of M&A
Multi-Branch Operations: Successfully Running Two, Four, Ten, and Forty Locations
Optimizing a Project Practice - Project Profitability and Quality in an MSP Firm
Gary Pica, CEO - TruMethods - Breakout Sessions
Gary Pica is a pioneer in the managed services field. He is one of ChannelPro's 20 industry visionaries and MSPMentor's most influential leaders. He has already built two top performing MSPs. Today, Gary is the President of TruMethods, a training, peer, and accountability firm aimed at helping IT solution providers reach their full potential as MSPs and cloud providers. Gary shares the key ingredients that transformed his business and his life through his training process. Today, hundreds of IT providers around the world utilize the TruMethods business transformation framework.
Picanomics 2.0: The New MSP Math
Pricing and Packaging Strategies to Dramatically Increase Recurring Revenue
Arlin Sorensen - Breakout Sessions
CEO & Founder, Heartland Companies / HTG Peer Groups
This is the guru behind HTG Peer Groups. Arlin is a salt of the earth kinda guy that comes from a part of the US where life, family, and legacy is as much a part of the story as hard work and business. If you have the chancedefiantly jump into a session and hear Arlin give you 2 cents on the world from his view maybe it will get you thinking about the future.
Jamison West - Breakout Sessions
CEO/Founder, Teamatics
Brad Gross - Will be @ THE After Party Wednesday Night
Once again, another guy you have to learn from at IT Nation. Let's face it, NOBODY loves attorneys. Just like mechanics or insurance agents you always feel like you are being spoken to in another language and being ripped off. This is where Brad Gross turns the tables. Brad is a lawyer BUT one who came from the technology realm himself. He gives it to you straight and will answer your questions in English! You will learn about agreements, compliance items, and general legal concepts around the IT world. Brad unfortunately had some conflicts this year and won't be doing break out sessions but will be at THE After Party @ Blue Martini Wednesday night. Make sure to chat with him if you bump into him.
Austen Clark - Manging Director - Clark Integrated Technologies - Breakout Session
Austen is the Managing Director of Clark Integrated Technologies, based in the UK. With 20 years of experience in the IT industry and a leader in the MSP community, he regularly takes speaking opportunities to share lessons learned with other Business Owners and Entrepreneurs through his engagement of Peer communities. He has built up a wealth of experience in Leadership and Development through his participation with HTG since 2010 and the ConnectWise community since 2008. He regularly writes and provides media comment on the state of the Cyber Security landscape in the UK and promoting ‘Trust’ in developing Cyber Security awareness within the Business Community.
An Assessor in CE / IASME certification and GDPR compliance he brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to developing SME Security Policies and Compliance for the future EU regulations.
Coming – May 2018 the EU GDPR Regulation You Do Not Want to Ignore
Brad Benner- Founder - SmileBack - Breakout Session
Brad Benner is the founder of SmileBack, the customer satisfaction platform that has become a vital tool for the members of ConnectWise Community. Delivering 10x more feedback, SmileBack is successfully used today by more than 600 MSPs and IT Solution providers who, in turn, support more than 45,000 companies. They credit SmileBack with helping them get in tune with their customers, improve their processes, increase productivity, and motivate their teams.
After selling his own MSP in Seattle in 2010, traveling the globe for a year, and then moving to Europe, Brad decided to start SmileBack with the conviction that customer experience is the only sustainable competitive advantage left for service providers competing in an increasingly crowded and commoditized marketplace.
Beyond SLAs: Why Customer Experience is the Key to Growing Your Business
Reese Ormand- CEO - Techvera (BVoIP Partner) Breakout Session
Reese Ormand is the CEO of Techvera, one of North Texas’s fastest growing technology firms. Since acquiring in 2009, Reese has assembled a team of experts, transformed the business model, quadrupled revenue, and built a name in the industry. Originally a break-fix computer repair shop known as Geek on Wheels, the company was rebranded as Techvera in 2016 to better align with their managed services model. It’s been quite the adventure for Reese and his team – just three years ago, he was a hosted guest at IT Nation evaluating the ConnectWise suite. When Reese isn't working, he enjoys time with family, traveling, reading, and playing poker. He is passionate about helping fellow entrepreneurs and executives empower their organizations with the right technology.Vendors & Friends of BVoIP who are exhibiting @ IT Nation (in no particular order):
MSP CFO – Booth 719
MSP CFO has ConnectWise integration lets MSPs know with certainty which clients, engineers, and agreements are profitable – and which ones are costing them. They have a results-driven analytics allows managers and CEOs to stop wasting valuable time each month digging through their ConnectWise data to create profitability reports; we put this invaluable information right at your fingertips. Stop by and Talk to Larry about how to figure out your TRUE bottom line.
eFolder – Booth 717
eFolder is a leading supplier of business continuity, cloud file sync, and cloud-to-cloud backup for IT solution providers. eFolder delivers wholesale services to the channel, enabling partners to deliver branded, end-to-end backup and disaster recovery and file sync solutions while generating highly profitable, recurring revenue. eFolder has an entire Star Wars theme going with plenty of photo ops. Make sure to swing by and talk to Matt & Adam!
IT Glue – Booth 600/615
How many times have you heard some complaint about documentation or lack thereof? If you want to finally find an answer to the elusive "missing piece to the puzzle" then go no further than IT Glue. Hint, BVoIP uses IT Glue and IT Glue uses BVoIP. Make sure to stop by and say hi to Dave Goldy & the #gluegrew
Smileback – Booth 906
How about an easy customer survey where your customers can click on smiley faces and leave feedback on how things are going? Smileback makes it happen and is super useful. BVoIP uses Smileback internally. You can see our customer satisfaction score on our support page. Make sure to stop by and say hi to Brad.
Sonicwall – Booth 308
Sonicwall has been around as a rock solid UTM / Firewall / Router solution for ever. We use Sonicwall internally
@ BVoIP and highly recommend their MSP program where you can roll UTM-as-a-Service into your service offering.
OnPage – Booth 120
BVoIP has a strategic partnership with OnPage. You can see some of our Integrations listed especially On-Call Management and RMM alerts integrations. Make sure to stop by and say hi to Joe tell him George sent you!
Connect Booster – Booth 604/605
Are you having a hard time getting paid on time? Are your customers always late? Maybe you wish you could automate the entire accounts receivable story? ConnectBooster totally blows the story out of the water and may even be able to save you a few bucks on your merchant processing bill! Make sure to stop by and say hi to Brady, Ryan, & Team.
BrightGauge – Booth 519
Dashboards, Reporting, Reporting, Reporting, and more Reporting! This is an awesome platform that lets you pull data from multiple sources and create true business intelligence. Make sure to stop by and say hi to Eric, Bryan, and crew.
WiseSync –Booth 514/515
Our friends from Down Under created an awesome link between ConnectWise and sleek accounting platforms like Xero. They also have a cool tool called Wise Pay that allows you to bolt-on payment gateways so that your customers can pay you. Make sure to stop by and say hi to Paul and the ninjas.
Aisle8 –Booth 209
Asile8 has some cool IT / MSP centric hardware that is not too shabby. The one that we like is the remote power reboot line called Wattbox where you can remotely power cycle equipment manually or automatically from an app. It's pretty helpful especially for on-prem equipment.
Inbay –Booth 609
Want to go 24/7 but struggling to figure out how to do it? Inbay is a company based out of the UK who specialized in outside Help Desk and Noc services. They strategically work with IT and MSP shops to augment or increase their service coverage.
Marketopia –Booth 607
Terry and Crew came from the MSP space themselves. Marketopia was built to help IT and MSPs really fast track their marketing, proposals, and all around business generation plan. Is this something you struggle with? Stop by and see how they can help!
Rapid Fire Tools –Booth 319
Rapid Fire Tools has been around for some time. They pride themselves in an automated way to speed up customer report, infrastructure analysis, HIPPA compliance reports, and more. Do you struggle to generate polished reports for your prospects and clients? This might be for you! Make sure to stop by and ask for Mark.
Warranty Master –Booth 304
Tired of chasing after warranty renewal dates for your hardware? Do you wish there was an easy way to keep up to date and present your customers with reports of when their renewals are? HERE is your answer. They tie right into ConnectWise so it's smooth sailing.
World Synergy –Booth 207
World Synergy offers a unique combination of Marketing, Applications Development, and Technology services created specifically for owners and executives.
Auvik –Booth 400/401
Auvik's infrastructure-focused RMM (remote monitoring and management) helps you grow your network services profitably. Delivering unprecedented insight into client networks and automating complex and time-consuming infrastructure tasks, Auvik’s cloud-based software is the ideal complement to your existing endpoint management. Auvik was named to the ChannelE2E 100 list in 2016, which identifies top disruptors and innovators in the IT channel. Make sure to stop by and say hell to Jacqui & Caitlin.
Pax8 –Booth 500/501
Pax8 is the leading value-added cloud distributor offering top cloud products and solutions to the IT channel. The Pax8 cloud marketplace provides efficient and intelligent cloud product configuration so service providers can easily create and customize bundled solutions for their customers. To fuel partners’ success, Pax8 offers on-demand marketing programs, sales assistance and training, provisioning automation, and subscription billing. Pax8 is rolling our their 2.0 version of their ConnectWise integration which is stellar! Make sure to stop by and say hello to Ryan, Don, and the Flight Crew.
Webroot –Booth 502/503
Webroot protects your clients against sophisticated threats—no matter how or where users connect. Designed with MSPs, resellers, and distributors in mind, the Webroot® Channel Edge® Program offers competitive margins, recurring revenue, lower operational costs, and proven next-generation security for endpoint, mobile, and web. Word on the street is the Webroot exec's are in town and will also be at THE After Party Wednesday Night!
BitTitan –Booth 708/713
BitTitan is the global leader in Managed Services Automation, transforming Technology Services Providers into Modern Managed Services Providers. Our MSPComplete® platform empowers organizations to realize their maximum potential through business process automation. Technology is invisible, companies work better, and people are happier. Make sure to stop by and check out MSP Complete!
DropSuite –Booth 705
Dropsuite is a global cloud software platform enabling SMBs in over 100 countries to easily backup, recover and protect their important business information. Dropsuite's network of preferred reseller partners has a combined customer reach of millions of small and medium-sized businesses worldwide. Dropsuite's products include website backup, email backup and archiving and file-based server backup. DropSuite will also be at THE After Party Wednesday night.
Wow, that's a lot but trust me IT Nation can be overwhelming especially if you have never been there before. Do yourself a favor and make sure to look hard at the agenda and figure out your game plan BEFORE you go or else you can easily get consumed and be dizzy afterwards. We hope to see you there!
