Image Gallery: WTG’s Hawaiian Holiday
Agents from all across the country last week headed to Palm Springs, California, for WTG’s Hawaiian Holiday, the master agent’s second-largest private event of the year. It drew more than 200 attendees.
Agents attended various activities, met new people and learned “from the best and brightest on how to grow their business and add more value to their clients,” WTG said.
Pursuing opportunities and profiting from the Internet of Things (IoT) was a major theme of this year’s event.
“Security is huge,” said Vince Bradley, WTG’s CEO. “It is the biggest issue with IoT because when you look at the number of devices that are out there today and these guest users coming into these networks, how are you going to be able to make sure that that one guest user comes in and doesn’t get into the network and infect it?”
Scroll through our gallery below to see highlights of WTG’s Hawaiian Holiday.
During gold sponsor presentations, BLM Technologies’ John Tauer spoke of new opportunities for partners. The company provides end-to-end offerings in payment and transaction, digital signage, onsite repairs, maintenance repair center service, IT outsourcing and project management services.
Don Ochoa of Mach Networks talked about monetizing all aspects of the Internet of Things (IoT). His company recently signed with WTG, and partners with Verizon and AT&T.
Tem Wu, WTG’s director of wireless, gave an overview of this part of the master agent’s business, which includes: wireless carrier device activations and renewals; high-speed internet access; and smartphones and tablets.
Bradley spoke about opportunities for partners with NuAge Energy, an energy master agency and WTG division that offers a portfolio of energy services, including electricity and natural gas procurement for the deregulated markets, LED lighting, water efficiency and distributed generation.
“Over 20 years ago, (the plan) was to be a utilities master agent rather than just a telecom master agent — because I just had that vision of all this coming together, and it’s all utilities,” he said. “The energy is really the key of that trifecta (connectivity, mobility and energy), because if you take those three together, that is IoT, especially when you put the components and sensors in there.”
Attendees socialize during an evening reception on the Sunrise Terrace.
The second day of the event began with a networking breakfast, in which partners moved from table to table speed-dating style and spoke with various providers.
IoT Panel
The many opportunities afford by the Internet of Things (IoT) was the subject of a panel discussion moderated by WTG’s Cory Dzbinski. Panelists included CenturyLink’s Garrett Gee; Windstream’s Curt Allen; Bradley; Managed Solution’s Sean Ferrel; and Verizon’s J.J. Harrison.
“Instead of trying to sell the world, figure out what you know, whether it’s a vertical market, or whether it’s a couple of lines of business,” Allen said. “You have to kind of take this whole big world of things like cloud and IoT, and say, 'This is what I do, I’m the security guy, I’m the logistics guy, I’m the lighting and infrastructure guy.' You can’t be everything.”
During an evening reception in the expo area, Megaport, a supplier, spoke with attendees in hopes that agents would start selling its connectivity services.
Mosaic Networx, a new WTG vendor partner, spoke with agents about the managed SD-WAN it delivers with VeloCloud. Mosaic is a national CLEC in 17 states.
Canada-based iTel Networks, a new WTG partner, said it can provide connectivity services for U.S.-based companies’ Canadian locations.
WTG executives mingled with providers, partners and others during the evening reception.
