Did you see Verne Harnish’s main stage speech at the ConnectWise Partner Summit? His presentation on Friday featured some great business books:

Meditation in a New York Minute – Mark Thornton
The First Billion is the Hardest – T. Boone Pickens
Good to Great – Jim Collins
Hidden Champions of the 21st Century – Hermann Simon
The Machine That Changed the World – James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, Daniel Roos
Pricing with Confidence – Reed Holden and Mark Burton
Changing the Channel – Michael Masterson and MaryEllen Tribby
Rethinking the Salesforce – John De Vincentis
The Ultimate Sales Machine – Chet Holmes
Nurturing Customer Relationships – Jim Cecil and Eric Rabinowitz
The New Rules of Marketing and PR – David Meerman Scott
Emergence, the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software – Steven Johnson

Too busy to take notes during the breakout sessions at Partner Summit? Missed the Summit but want to get in on the valuable content? We have already begun posting pdf’s of the breakout presentations on University for our partners, under the Downloads Tab.  Over the next few weeks, more presentations will be added as they are received.

Aaron Booker - Varvid

Jeannine and I had fun at the Poolside Soiree doing a wrapup (above) for the Partner Summit. Best Partner Summit yet for ConnectWise – and Partners and Vendors are already excited about next year…

FYI, There were lots more HD videos produced at ConnectWise than we pushed up to this blog. Some outstanding content wasn’t even going to be delivered due to sheer exhaustion! If you’d like to see all the (33) videos in one place – here’s the link to the Online Video Portal where we uploaded them to:

http://vimeo.com/channels/connectwise

What an amazing week for us as we worked with the Social Media Team.  I have been to many, many industry events over the past three years – and only Microsoft at WPC even tried to pull something off like what the ConnectWise Community delivered.  This Social Media Hub site around the the ConnectWise Partner Summit was super fun to be involved with. Quickly delivered, relevant, and filled with community input, from Guest Bloggers, to uploaded Flickr photos, to the #cwps Twitter feed, and to multiple video producers. Wow!  Thanks to all you Partners and Sponsors for all of your contributions to this site and your patience with all the reporters, photographers, and videographers asking for a few minutes of your time.  Without your flexibility – we couldn’t have delivered these videos.

Kudos to the ConnectWise Community Staff (especially Mary McElwee) and to Deana Goldasich of Well Planned Web for a tremendous event!

Brad Benner - X-BAR

I’ve been here since Sunday, November 1st – spending the first half of the week with my HTG peers reviewing the state of our businesses and discussing strategies for moving forward individually and collectivity. The new HTG meeting format based on Quarterly Business Reviews integrated with Service Leadership data was great – it was much easier for me to paint a clear picture of the health of my business and get targeted feedback from my group members.

The ConnectWise Partner Summit quickly followed and was a great extension of the work, conversations, and content from the first half of the week.

A few highlights from this year:

Robert Lindley’s session, I Want More Than ConnectWise Reports & Dashboards, blew me away. He showed us how to use the set of free and low cost tools that he has assembled for tapping into and analyzing the wealth of data sitting in our ConnectWise database. I plan to use his tools to create a series of widgets that allow me to better manage the health of my business in real-time.

Kendra Lee’s presentation on how to hire a salesperson was perfectly timed for me. I’ve been thinking about (and struggling with) this topic a while. As I look at my revenue forecast for 2010 and beyond, it’s become clear to me that my ability to scale X-BAR will be directly tied to my success in finding and hiring the right salesperson.

I was glad to see that ConnectWise was able to get Datto into the vendor fair. They’ve been quietly building a data backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity platform, and are starting to get some well-deserved attention for their products. I started talking with Datto a few months ago, wanting to explore alternatives to the solutions we’re currently using, and had a few initial technical concerns that were preventing me from moving forward. In the last three months they’ve already resolved most of the issues I had, and are also telling me that they’re putting the finishing touches on a series of other nice-to-haves that I had wanted. When was the last time you had a vendor so responsive to feedback? Watch out, I think we’ll see Datto emerge as a very strong contender in this arena in 2010.

Verne Harnish! How can I talk about highlights without mentioning Verne? The keynote he delivered yesterday morning and subsequent workshop in the afternoon was a much need jolt to my business senses. I found the framework he provided for identifying what was holding my business back (people, strategy, execution, or cash) very insightful. I’m looking forward to reading his book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, when I get back to Seattle next week and putting his suggestions to work.

Brad Benner / Principal

X-BAR
219 First Ave S #420 / Seattle, WA 98104
DIR 206 388 5150 / FAX 206 352 2760
www.xbarit.com

I noticed that a number of folks weren’t as alert as they normally are on Friday – even saw some nodding heads during a session or two.  I’m sure that this had “nothing to do” with the fun that was had on Thursday night…  Jeannine summarized the festivities nicely!

Three great parties from Quosal, Kaseya, and GloStream – one night only.

Our favorite interview of the week had to be a character we ran into at the GloStream Party on Thursday night.  Dell’s dancing to the live band was memorable (and is unfortunately undocumented) but when you talked to him, you really learned “something new.”

Ted Hulsy - SonicWall

I am writing a quick blog post after an all day session with the SonicWALL VAR Council on Saturday in Orlando. We “book ended” our VAR Council meeting at the end of the ConnectWise Partner Summit, since such a large number of partners were in town for ConnectWise (http://twitter.com/#search?q=cwps) and HTG (http://twitter.com/#search?q=HTG).

The ConnectWise Partner Summit was an extremely impressive event. I loved how ConnectWise and the larger partner community leveraged social media before, during, and after the event. With the frequent tweets, Facebook posts, Flickr and YouTube feeds, there was a continual stream of commentary, high praise, rants, and new insights from the partner community. This was the first multi-day tradeshow event where I felt it was absolutely essential to stay glued to Twitter throughout the show.

The #cwps hashtag enabled the partners to provide feedback in real time on the likes, dislikes, and opportunities for improvement. Trust me, the ConnectWise crew was following the Twitter feed throughout and were given immediate feedback on the content and events that were getting folks jazzed up.

More importantly, the flowering of so many social media outlets made the event accessible to folks from all over the world, live and in real time. The heaps of praise on Twitter about the content, like Verne Harnish’s talks, are the best advertisement Jeannine Edwards can hope for.

Kudos to Jeannine and the whole ConnectWise crew for hosting such a terrific event. Our sponsorship contract for 2010 is in the mail.

Ted Hulsy
http://twitter.com/tedatsonicwall

Raja Pagadala (The Final Step) and Jason Foord (Infotech) came across the Pond to attend the ConnectWise Partner Summit and their HTG Meeting – they’re both new users, but big fans.

The Final Step: http://www.thefinalstep.co.uk
Infotech: http://www.infotech.co.uk

Matt Pardo runs a small Managed Services Provider out of Austin, TX.  He’s a “switcher” from another PSA and is thrilled with the additional functionality that ConnectWise gives him.  He’s excited about implementing many more of ConnectWise’s features in the coming year.

Wow – what an amazing week! I’ve flown some 9 hours from the UK to be in Orlando, FL for the ConnectWise Summit, but it’s been more than worthwhile!

Richard Tubb - Netlink IT

The keynote speakers were very superb – beginning on Thursday with Arnie Bellini laying out the future of ConnectWise as it relates to Partners, with some exciting features around collaboration and sharing between Partners being a highlight. Arnie gave a shout out to all of the ConnectWise User Groups including my own UK User Group colleagues – a group we’ve wittily named “Five Hours Ahead”…

Chris Anderson spoke on the concept of free services, including the notion of “Freemium”, something I heard many delegates talking about through the rest of the day. Tom Davenport also spoke about the benefits of Processes and Analytics for Business, with some very thought provoking insight.

Fridays Key-Note speaker had the audience hanging on his every word though – Verne Harnish, author of “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” ran through a presentation at break-neck speed, and I can’t have been the only member of the audience who is going to end up with a huge Amazon book bill as a result of the recommendations Verne made to us. A real highlight of the Summit.

Then there were the Break-Out Sessions, which were quite literally jammed packed without exception. I’ve come away with reams of ideas and notes which I’m looking to execute on as soon as I’m back in the UK next week.

All of that, and I’ve not even talked about the Vendor Solutions Pavilion, and the evening Parties. Glowing Ladies on Stilts, Martini’s and Rock Stars were just three notables there!

This is my first ConnectWise Summit but now I know why all my colleagues calls this a “must attend” event.

See you next year!

Follow Richard on Twitter – www.twitter.com/tubblog

Tubblog – www.tubblog.co.uk