CompTIA Breakaway 2012 an Event for Education and Networking
With the CompTIA Breakway 2012 event now in the books; I wanted to reflect on the event and what the major takeaways were. This event has always been presented with the utmost of thought, and the experience for the attendee from registration through to the final day is one of the best in the industry!
The biggest thing to note about Breakaway is that it is an educational event first, and for some this may not be understood, especially for vendor participants. Vendors are not provided opportunities to have breakout sessions about products or solutions and are only provided booth time at the end of the days to show off their products to participants.
Having been to Breakaway for the past few years, I have understood this and have been able to set my expectations based on this fact. The educational breakout sessions are relevant; though course material is good, basic courses should have more advanced counterparts to give attendees options when they are comfortable with the basics of subject matter. According to CompTIA, this is something they are working on for future events based on feedback that they have received.
The real advantage for vendors and solution providers alike comes from the networking opportunity. Most of the who’s who in the industry including vendors, solution providers, and media attends the event. This provides a unique environment to schedule meetings, get insight, and discuss trends within the community.
For ExchangeDefender this was the key to the event! A great number of our current partners attended the event, giving us the opportunity to meet with long-term partners that we had never met, and talk about new products and services such as the new CloudShare solution and Managed Messaging solution. The feedback and excitement around these new solutions was amazing and even Vince Tinnirello from Anchor Network Solutions gave ExchangeDefender a shout out at the MSP Partners Meeting at Breakaway.
This year CompTIA provided a mobile app for navigating the event. This was a welcome approach to years past with paper agendas. The new “green” mobile approach really made the experience of finding breakouts, keeping track of the event, and creating meetings a fun experience. The app approach also speaks to the dominance and adoption of mobility in the channel and public sector, and was a huge part of the talk at Breakaway. Mobility is big buzz right now, and it is in the phase of emerging solutions for Solution Providers that we have seen from managed services and cloud solutions at previous events.
CompTIA Breakaway 2012 was definitely a success! CompTIA did a great job of soliciting feedback from vendors and Solution Providers to make future events even better through several breakouts. This speaks volume to a forward thinking organization willing to not only accept the good, but to ask for criticism as well. It was great seeing Exchangedefender partners and meeting with soon to be new ones as well and we look forward to future events with CompTIA.
Frank Gurnee
VP, Channel Services, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x4777
frank@ownwebnow.com