Loadfest 2008 in Calgary

Our friend Stuart Crawford has passed this along to me. If you are near Calgary, mark September 27th down on your calendars …

Dear IT Professionals in Western Canada:

Loadfest 2008 is just around the corner and you don’t want to miss the activities that are happening…
Save the date in your calendar – September 27, 2008 from 8:30 AM to 5 PM, this is a Saturday and a great day to learn about what is happening with technology for the rest of this year.

Who is coming?
Rodney Buike from Microsoft is making the trip out from Toronto to show IT Professionals in Calgary when is coming with relation to Microsoft technologies. Get the technical brief on Small Business Server 2008, especially now that it is RTMed. Also, Rodney will show us Hyper-V and Windows Server 2008. Get 3 hours of technical training on SBS and Windows Server. Play with these great products and ask technical questions to the people that can answer the questions you have.

Loadfest 2008 is free for everyone to attend.

Curious about Response Point, Microsoft’s latest small business telephone system? Jeff Loucks is an MVP with Response Point and Jeff will be giving a technical demo on Response Point during Loadfest.

Lunch is sponsored by our friends at AuthAnvil and Scorpion Software. This technical lunch and learn will show you the technical side of AuthAnvil and how to deploy a higher level of security for your networks and clients. Dana is sponsoring our luncheon and he will be available to address questions and talk technical about AuthAnvil.

And that is not it!!!

Popcorn Technologies will be giving a demo on MOSS (SharePoint Server) and how to fit MOSS into your environments.

Loadfest 2008 is free for everyone to attend.

Here is our tentative agenda
8:30 AM – Meet and Greet
9 AM – Windows Small Business Server 2008 Technical Demo
10:40 – Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
Noon – AuthAnvil Luncheon
1 PM – Windows 2008 Server and Hyper-V
2:40 –Response Point

Register today at http://www.samuc.com

NEW! Online Peer Group Benefit for Small Business Specialist and Windows Small Business Server Partners

You may have already heard of this from other sources, but I’ll share the following announcement. I will add that we participated in this last year and I can highly recommend this. This is work that you know you should do, and this program will kick your butt to get it done.
The first step? See below, and get your submission in this week!
—
Microsoft announces Online Peer Groups for active Small Business Specialist partners that took the Windows SBS 70-282 exam.

What are the Online Peer Groups?The online Peer Groups are an opportunity for Microsoft partners to learn, share and complete activities designed to improve their business and professional lives. The content will consist of these six topics over a 12-month period:

1. Vision, Mission, Values
2. Business Planning
3. Sales and Marketing
4. Budgeting and Finance
5. HR and Metrics
6. Vendor Engagement and Wrap-up

The online Peer Groups consist of up to 15 members partners per group. The meetings are scheduled at uniform times. Each meeting will focus on practical, useful content and tools that help you improve your business over the upcoming month and beyond. Homework and goal assignments are required and will supplement the learning. Peer group sharing is also a key part of the best practice exchange and overall learning.
· Must be an active Small Business Specialist (SBSC)
· Passed the SBS 70-282 Exam
· Peer Groups will be conducted in English only (English proficiency required)
· Commitment to participate includes attending peer group sessions and completion of homework
· Pay $600 USD for participation

To learn more or to SUBMIT the nomination form, please visit: http://www.htgmembers.com/online_year1.htm. Form needs to be submitted latest by August 31, 2008 for participation in the FY09 Online Peer Groups. Submitting the form does not guarantee selection. Microsoft and Heartland Technology Groups reserve the right to decline a submission. All peer groups will be conducted in English only.

What Peer Group members have to say:

“Life is too short to learn all these things the hard way. Most of us got in to this business because we are technicians and have to learn how to be businessmen and managers. Sessions like this are the closest thing we can get to having a mentor or hiring a professional corporate President to run the company”

“I entered this program with no specific expectations other than to have the opportunity to interact with and learn from and with my peers. The HTG Online Peer Group experience was simply excellent. Our group had a good mix of firms, in terms of geographic location, company size and experience. This was one of the keys to the value I derived from the program. Most importantly, the program afforded me an opportunity to speak with my peers and interact with them in a very open and collaborative manner and I found that it really forced me to take a critical look at my business model. As a result, I will definitely implement changes in my business this year that are the direct result of my participation in this group. It was worthwhile to take time to work through the exercises, meetings and presentations in order to get the full benefit of a thought-provoking program. I highly recommend this program to any firm that works with SMB clients.”

Microsoft Canada vs US promotions

Has this ever happened to you – you find an exciting promotion from a vendor only to realize that it is not available in Canada? It happened to me today with a promotion from Microsoft called “The Big Easy”. After realizing that this is a US only campaign right now, I sent off a quick email to our friend Constanza at Microsoft Canada. A quick reply later, and I’m told we can expect a similar campaign later this year. That’s great news, as this campaign generates a great deal of interest amongst partners in the US.

In the meantime, though, let’s make the most of our current campaigns, such as this one – SBS Offers
Are you taking full advantage of this and promoting SBS 2003 with SA? This is a great way to keep the pipeline full today and build demand for the upcoming SBS 2008.

Good selling!

SBS released to manufacturing!

Well, it’s been quite a journey from the early beta releases until now. We’ve been working with the SBS dev team for about a year now, and I can honestly say they are some of the hardest working and most passionate people I have ever met. It’s been great to be a part of the journey, and I want to congratulate the team on reaching this all important milestone – great job!

We see SBS2008 as a worthy successor to SBS2003. Further, we are very excited by the new features and how they will benefit our clients. For the official announcement, see the link HERE .

http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2008/08/21/sbs-2008-released-to-manufacturing.aspx

Read Dean’s post for the exciting ways that you can get ready, and be successful at selling SBS2008 in a few short weeks. Good selling!