If it’s mid-November, it must be Comdex time! In its second year as a virtual trade show – I gotta admit – it got better. The UI and the platform seem to be tighter and more efficient this year. More importantly – I’m doing all this up o the clouds – helping out in the D&H Distributing booth – from 35,000-feet up! Gotta love GOGO access on Alaska Airlines baby!

Sign up HERE: http://comdexvirtual.com/comdex/

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In short – it was a WTF kind of economic forecast. (Jump to the end of this blog to see the context)

I try to practice what I preach. I typically use these pages to urge you to get involved in your business community: participate in organizations, attend business lunches and grow yourself as a professional. Monday was my day to fit in an “event” at the annual Viking Bank economic lunch in Seattle. Sure – I’m too busy, sure I don’t want to ride the ferry in. Sure I have excuses. But I boarded the 10:25am ferry from bucolic Bainbridge Island to Seattle for a free lunch and to be schooled in economics.

So after eating Caesar salad, well-respected analyst Michael Parks hit it head-on. Talking points of interest to SMB Nation tribal members are:

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SMB Nation is hosting one of their infamous evening BeerFests on Wednesday, November 16th at Bistro Nine in East Greenwich, RI from 4:00pm to 5:45pm. This Beerfest is partnered by D&H Distributing, Tech Collective and Vu Telepresence.
 
The structure of this SMB Nation BeerFest evening is:
• One part community
• One part SMB Nation
• One part VU Telepresence, D&H and Tech Collective
• One part BEER, WINE and FOOD!

Slightly chilled and poured slowly! Please be responsible…

AGENDA:
• 15 minutes of fame with VU Telepresence
• Community open forum discussion
• Qualify to win epic door prizes!

Register here!: https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=158118

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This was a blog searching for a headline – a blog I wanted to write ten days ago about the Zenith Infotech situation. I just didn’t have a headline. Then Herbert Cain, asserting the “I don’t remember defense” against sexual harassment allegations reused a famous line uttered by then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas over the Anita Hill matter: “high-tech lynching.” I knew that I had found my headline because my inner-Harry was telling me that there was a growing “pile it on” mentality developing against Zenith InfoTech in the channel.

I created a scorecard to monitor how many competitors were overtly attacking Zenith and exploiting its vulnerabilities (the latest financial troubles with bondholders in India.) The fact is that I could only find a handful directly attacking and several others attacking in the background. This list below, with links and comments, shows the main Zenith competitors who are “out there.”

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Happy Veteran's Day, Folks! I caught the perfect moment of 11.11.11.11.11 this morning. A big thank you to our veterans on this day!

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How2UnlockiPhones.com, an online company specializing in the “jailbreaking” of iPhones, released new software last week designed to allow any customer to unlock any version of the iPhone. The software works on a gamut of iPhones, from factory-new to phones that have been previously unlocked or damaged by an unlocking process.

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This past Tuesday, San Diego-based company PocketMac Software released news of updates to its already-popular PocketMac software for BlackBerry. PocketMac’s claim to fame has been to simplify the synching process between Mac software and other platforms. They were the first software company to develop software to let Macs and BlackBerrys communicate, and they revolutionized the way BlackBerry users synched e-mail, music, etc. to Macs.

In the past, BlackBerryMac users had to rely on using RIM’s Desktop Manager, but the process was often frustrating and time-consuming. PocketMac Co-Owner Tim Goggin developed this software with his brother Terrence to help keep customers in the BlackBerry court. “There are plenty of Mac-based BlackBerry customers who love their BlackBerry but are seriously let down by the events of late,” he explains. “The RIM outage in which customers were unable to fully use their BlackBerry for days was the straw that broke the camel’s back for a lot of people.”

PocketMac has been working with RIM for

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Yesterday, Washington-based cloud service provider FiberCloud announced a free breakfast seminar taking place November 16th from 8:00am-9:30am in Downtown Seattle. The seminar, titled “Business Recovery in the Cloud,” will feature industry experts from Microsoft and VMC speaking on the following trends in Cloud technology:

•    Saving Money with Cloud Technology
•    Business Strategy
•    Driving Business Growth
•    Steps for Planning and Executing a move to the Cloud

This event will be the FiberCloud’s first ever open to the public event in Seattle. The event will be at the Westin Hotel Seattle, in Cascade Room 1. The address is as follows:

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My chocolate hangover lasted a week after attending the D&H Distributing Mid-Atlantic Fall show in Hershey on November 2nd. The annual event, featuring D&H vendors in a trade show format with supplemental lectures, was robustly attended by over 1,000 resellers (sign-ups were a whopping >20% ahead of last year).

For those not familiar with D&H Distributing, it is one of the big four distributors in North America and is widely regarded as the best fit for the “S” in SMB. It likes to think of itself as “different,” and that includes employees as “owners” of the company plus an above average employment tenure. Somehow the Harrisburg, PA-based distributor gets it employees to “stick around.”  Heaps of those employees, dressed in D&H “RED” where working the show, manning the booths and taking orders.

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Morning, ladies and gents! The Nov/Dec Issue of the SMB Nation magazine went live on our site yesterday afternoon, and it’s chock-full of great content!

The latest issue features a gift guide for your favorite Geek, as well as the following articles:

•    “MVPs Take Their Show on the Road” –Susan Bradley
•    “How You Can Be a Hero to Your Customers” –Ramon Ray
•    “ASCII Success Summit Makes Final Stop for 2011 in                   New Jersey” –Regina Ciardiello
•    “The Cloud Rocket Liftoff- Part 3” –Todd Shelton
•    “Part 3: The Thought Process Behind Vendor-MSP Relationships” –Steve Copeland
•    “The Million Dollar Hurdle –Part 7: ‘The Next Hurdle’” –Matt Makowicz
•    “How you Can Ensure Optimal Disaster Recovery” –Mike DiMeglio
•    “Why I Owe My Success to Steve Jobs and Apple” –Harry Brelsford.

The magazine is available for download on our site at: http://www.smbnation.com/Publications/Magazine/tabid/72/Default.aspx

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