OnQ

On Day 2: Keynote

Day 2 of SMB Nation 2006 opened with a keynote speech from conference organizer Harry Brelsford on the global reach of Microsoft's Small Business Specialist certification program. Actually, it was more of a group participation effort than a talking slide deck. Bob Hood announced Arlin Sorensen as the SBSer of the Year. Harry summarized the events of the last year for SMB Nation the company including the interviews of members of the worldwide community on SMB Nation TV (and no, he didn't just stand there and play videos, but did have a couple of the interviewees come up and share a little about their activities with the audience). Harry discussed the activities of the SBSC implementations in Italy and Denmark. Jeremy from Auckland, New Zealand, discussed the way MS New Zealand is handling the SBSC memberships by making it more exclusive than general admission. Beatrice came up and discussed some of the lessons they learned in Amsterdam and EMEA in general. The general consensus from the different nations was that the different leads of user groups and other groups are keeping in contact with each other on a daily basis to help grow not only their businesses but their market as well.

Now back to the vendor hall to sell books for a bit while getting ready for the Mac talk...