Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Good morning from CES

Arrived last night with a few thousand other IT folks - airport busy in Las Vegas. Got to the hotel and connected with Karl Palachuk from California and Dave Sobel from the DC area and we had dinner together. Karl is a very active partner in the SMB community. He has a great resource you may not know about yet - an online bookstore targeting partners just like us. Check out the resources he has available at http://www.greatlittlebook.com. The Peer Power book is one of the resources he offers. Over dinner Karl connected to his SBS user group back in California using the technology - VOIP and a video camera. We visited with the group who was meeting and watched the wonders of a Sprint card, notebook, small camera and some software connect us across the air to a group of folks meeting many miles away. Amazing stuff, and it worked quite well. Are you connected? If you are not in a peer group, user group, IAMCP chapter or some way to stay connected - you need to get involved. Community is where it happens!

1 comment:

Stuart R. Crawford said...

Arlin, great insight on the importance of community. Many IT professionals are not part of the community, electing to go at it themselves which is a recipe for disaster. Our HTG peer group for example is one resource that I tap into on a daily basis.

As a Microsoft Small Business Specialist PAL and Small Business Server MVP it is important for everyone in our community to participate at some degree.

Put away your fears of competition in the local marketplace, share openly, create bonds with your peers (especially locally) and thrust forward to grow.

In some areas, especially mine with over 1 million people..I rarely run across the guys that I openly share with, trust and grow our community.

I ask you today, if you are not part of the community and this comment causes your stomach to get all knotted up, do some self examination around your beliefs on why you do not actively participate.

My best to you for a successful day.

Stuart Crawford
Calgary, AB
http://www.stuartcrawford.com