Informa should already know this since they purchased UBM (a VAR based event company), but apparently they don’t.
The Channel is an Umbrella composed several discrete partner types: Agents, VARs, MSPs, ISVs, Masters and VADs. Different business models for each, although from 10K feet they may look similar to some folks. The channel is also pretty old.
Shows (expos, conferences) are trying to be all things to all channel partners – and in the process are nothing to anyone. They are a meeting place.
It is the conference owner that has created the suitcase effect, whereby people don’t register for the conference but instead go to parties and have meetings. See any coffee shop near an expo.
Traditionally, CP Expo in Vegas has been an AGENT show. There was even a session reminding people of the roots. It has been the only Agent show. Now Masters have their own shows AND the Vegas show has morphed, trying to be more than it was and encompass the whole umbrella.
Informa wants to start making real money from the shows they acquired in the IT/telecom space. It should be interesting to see if it works since VARs, Agents and MSPs don’t typically have to pay for a show. In fact, for the various VAR shows – Ingram Micro, Tech Data, old UBM – the VAR was provided hotel rooms for free and in some cases a gift card to cover travel expenses. No cover charge to go to the show. Basically free except for the time spent. How will Informa break that mold? No idea.
The Vegas show is like ESPN – with a sponsor logo on every single thing, including the sessions. This is a huge turn-off because the jaded immediately expect an agenda.
Keynotes suck. I have sat through many that read me slides, were commercials for their business, or were unprepared. Then the last few years, the message has been repeated over and over that my business was dead. I stopped attending keynotes. It turns out that keynote speakers would rather blather than be helpful. It is like Tony Robbins, telling you to change, be better – but you have to buy his books or take a seminar to learn the How. And the How is the most important part.
And in case you think I am speaking from the cheap seats here, let me say that I have had a hand in several expos. I also ran an event per month for several years in Tampa Bay for start-ups, techies and freelancers. BarCamp Tampa Bay that I co-founded grew to 1250 registered attendees. IGNITE Tampa which I also co-founded went from sold out at 120 people in year 1 to 900 attendees in year 3. So I kinda know something about tech event planning.
Informa is also trying to make the Vegas show an MSP show. I don’t know how they sold that bill of goods to the vendors, but there were a few vendors that weren’t happy when talking to Agents.
Agents want to just sell and get paid. The provider handles the rest. Agents don’t handle monitoring or install etc.
MSPs want to do the billing, install, maintaining. They want white-label and monitoring and reporting. It’s what they do.
I can see how the MSP model is attractive for cloud services, but most providers are not set up to do white-label. Heck, some are barely set up to do both direct sales and channel sales. Please note that MSPs may not be able to handle data migration, software integration and devops work. These are things that a cloud migration project may require.
Who goes to what shows?
MSPs rely on a PSA to run their business. They usually attend that show – Datto, ConnectWise or Kaseya being the Big 3.
Then there are the vendor shows – HP, Dell, Cisco, etc. For VARs, the vendor is the largest part of their business.
There are the VAD shows – Tech Data, Ingram, et al. Since these are free to attend and are usually at a nice venue, you can see the appeal.
CompTIA has ChannelCon. HTG and Robin Robins have events. Microsoft has events.
TMC (which owns ITEXPO) is now doing MSP Expo shows.
The Channel Co has a bunch events too. (They were UBM’s biggest competitor.)
The Alliance started up Tech+Connect event 2 years ago. And this year there is a Channel Palooza.
You have to be careful of taking your audience (tribe) for granted. Or not provided what they actually seek – like education, best practices, etc. Bigger is hardly ever better.
Informa will have a channel show in the UK in December, after the much smaller East Coast show in DC.
InterOp is owned by Informa and they are re-branding it as “The Unbiased IT Conference”.
Amazon, Salesforce, IBM, twilio, Google I/O and so many more have partner events. These are usually bigger, more fun and more focused.
There are a ton of events every year, just check out the Event Calendar by MOJO.
At some point you have to ask yourself as an event owner: Who is my tribe? What do they need? How do I deliver that in an awesome way? Customer Experience is important, since the partner is giving up time, money and attention to be there. People that waste time and attention usually get ignored.