Image Gallery: MicroCorp’s 14th Annual One on One
Not even Hurricane Irma could stop MicroCorp from taking attendees “Into the Cloud” for the 14th Annual One on One event, Sept. 10-11, at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta.
Opening night of the event was staged in downtown Atlanta at event venue, Ventanas. Attendees enjoyed a complete panoramic view of the city. Attendees also enjoyed live music, bourbon tasting and a night of networking with their peers and providers.
MicroCorp calls One on One one of the industry’s essential events for thought leadership, inspiration, and learning. This year’s event lived up to its billing by providing rich and relevant content, meaningful networking, expert mentoring and product knowledge. Channel partners were able to personalize their event by selecting their individual provider meetings as well as partner roundtable sessions.
With the message of staying relevant and surrounding yourself with an ecosystem of domain experts, MicroCorp partners walked away armed with fresh industry knowledge to take to their customers. Attendees were also given a glimpse of MicroCorp’s Solution Alliance to be launched during its Fastball appearance at Channel Partners Evolution.
Scroll through the gallery below for cool pics and a recap. We bet you’ll see someone you know.
Photos courtesy MicroCorp
MicroCorp's “In the cloud” theme not only reflected the event's content — they gave it a literal bent as well by offering attendees helicopter rides over Atlanta. With all eyes toward the southeastern skies, the impending storm didn’t stop channel partners from enjoying this once in a lifetime thrill. With the sunset displaying tones of MicroCorp’s purple and blue, the night could not have been more perfect.
FastStart celebrates MicroCorp partners who kicked their sales into high gear, with the prize culminating at One on One. MicroCorp partners can become a FastStart achiever through their aggregate MicroCorp sales or by focusing their sales toward one of the sponsoring providers. FastStart achievers win full airfare, upgraded hotel, transfers to One on One, as well as additional prizes awarded at the event.
Kicking off the business session of One on One was MicroCorp CEO Karin Fields. Focusing on the importance of remaining relevant. Fields provided a MicroCorp state of the union, sharing results on the company's consistent growth in overall sales, cloud sales, new partner sales, and, importantly, significant provider sales growth.
Fields reinforced the company hashtag, “betterwhentogether, to highlight the tight MicroCorp community of partners, employees and providers.
MicroCorp sessions created dialogue between speakers and attendees. Day one kicked off with two high-impact sessions — “The Anatomy of a Wildly Successful Lead Gen Campaign” and “Partners at Their Peak.” High-energy guest speaker Angela Leavitt of Mojo Marketing provided key steps for channel partners to build a winning lead-gen plan.
The power-packed session was followed by world-class partners providing insight on how they built – and continue to build – highly successful agencies and milestones they faced in building their niche. Attendees were able to ask questions of the experts to help gain ideas to advance their own agencies.
With MicroCorp a Level 3 Communications MVP and at diamond level with CenturyLink, it was only fitting to bring the named leader of these combined companies to the stage. Lisa Miller, presently serving as CenturyLink's senior vice president, wholesale, indirect, content, inside & APAC sales, shared her personal outlook on “Technology Innovation and the Impact on the Channel & Our Customers.”
Miller highlighted the new-technology shift and how as consumers of technology, we are all becoming early adopters — and the speed at which we adopt new technology is happening at a more rapid pace. This background became the premise of her primary message about adapting to disruptive technology — Blockchain.
“Let’s ensure we all leave this room speaking about it … Blockchain. That’s right, Blockchain. It will make you question everything you think you know about the network and IT stack,“ said Miller.
She offered insight for channel partners on their role in innovation and guiding their customers.
“The future involves more integrated, certified solutions developed and sold in an ecosystem of alliance partners," Miller shared.
Technology became a spectator sport as MicroCorp's platinum sponsors went head-to-head on some the hottest topics in IT and cloud. Platinum sponsors included 8x8, BCN, CenturyLink, Comcast, Effortless, Level 3 Communications, Momentum, Spectrum-Navisite, Star2Star and Verizon.
Sponsors were paired up, given the same question and 60 seconds to provide their insight. Channel partners received a variety of views and useful soundbites in the areas of SD-WAN, security and UC.
Threaded throughout MicroCorp One on One event content was the concept of building an "ecosystem" of experts. Channel-partner attendees were able to hear from Todd Smith of Open Spectrum about the benefits and live case studies of partners who have utilized Open Spectrum as their own compute division to build wider and deeper opportunities within a single customer. Smith and other members of Open Spectrum also serve as trainers in MicroCorp’s Ultimate Partners Training. Graduates of this training and their accomplishments were highlighted.
With the help of international performers, Industrial Rhythm, top sales achievers were drummed to the stage by the performers and audience to receive their award. MicroCorp recognized its top 10 sellers as well as top billing agent, GCN. Awards were also given for highest sales achievement in key product categories. In all, more than 30 awards for partner sales performance were given.
MicroCorp brought to the stage top-performing providers, awarding Lou Marcotte of Level 3 Communications the award of National Channel Manager of the Year. Marcotte previously won the honor in 2015. Other providers receiving awards for sales and support included CenturyLink, ACC, Windstream and Rackspace.
MicroCorp has direct agreements with more than 70 providers, of which 47 were sponsors of the annual event. Recipients of awards were voted on by MicroCorp partners.
Just one of hundreds of pictures of channel partners, providers and MicroCorp employees arm in arm to enjoy the annual event.
