715 Conferences: Big vs. Small

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast. This is the regular Wednesday live show presented by NetAlly and this is the show after a conference which means I have no guest and we're going to chat about the conference and I do have a question that was asked of me just about all weekend from both attendees and vendors that I will attempt to answer in the way that I did while we were at the conference. I'm going to talk about some of the vendors there and I'm actually going to let me give a shout out to Eric Anthony and All Things MSP. 

His show was on just before mine on the YouTube and he and the name escapes me, Schoenfeld, were chatting about real estate in the mind and it's a very good topic and of course I have a story about that because I'm going to be a little frazzled tonight because I didn't get my full time to prep for this show because the last two days I've been dealing with an issue. I will get into that as well and then I've got a mix of Florida man stories. I actually have three separate stories that I want to share with you and one of them is an announcement about the Python contest that I told you I would give you the updates on so all of those a little bit later. 

First thing I want to do though is to say thank you to Paco and Rick and tell them that they put on a fantastic event and it was probably, you know, I'm not going to say in terms of attendance or things like that, but in terms of the community feeling at the event, it was probably one of the best that I've been to out of the five and that includes the three other conferences that preceded the TACCON. The first one obviously that we did as an UnConvention was probably the first time we were able to experience a community feeling together as the podcasters of the group got to meet people that were listeners. We got to meet other IT business owners in the space, but for some reason this past weekend was special and I'm going to rank it up there. 

I do another show and I actually talked about the conference that I attended. It's not really a conference, it's a reunion for a National Junior Achievement Conference that I did attend two years as a delegate and 10 years as staff and I talk about the community feeling that we have in that, you know, I mean it's 30, 40 years later and the staff members at that conference, we got together in early August and it was like we had just left each other. The last time we saw each other was five years ago and we talked about the feeling of community there.

TACCON 2024 was very similar to that, so we'll chat about that, but again thank you to Paco and Rick for putting on the event. I want to give a shout out also to Vanessa who did a lot of work helping to pull that show off. For those that do know, do not know, Vanessa and Paco will be married in probably 21 days, 20 days or so, so she is Paco's right hand. 

She probably spearheaded a lot of stuff that we don't know about, so thank you to Vanessa as well and of course the planning committee. I'm not going to try to mention them all here, but everybody that was involved in putting together the content and helping with logistics, it actually turned out to be a great show and I was glad to be a part of it there. I know that a lot of you are here to hear about the SWAG, both attendees and vendors. 

You saw me wearing the shades earlier. This is a nod to two of the vendors that, you know, MSP Camp, this was their first time doing SWAG and they did this little sunglass holder thing and I told them, I said, well you probably should have done the glasses, but the glasses were provided by Brooke and ScalePad, so just a quick shout out to them for that. No, they're not the winners and neither is Total, who came with this metal flashlight and while we all love flashlights, you know, first thing I got to do is test it and check it and one thing I did tell Total is it needs to be a little brighter. 

It wasn't that bright of a flashlight but thank you to Total for doing that. Another shout out to sponsor of the show and main sponsor of the podcast, Super Ops, and they put together this little screwdriver kit that, again, something we all need and in the utility space, this would be fantastic. It's compact and as you can see, it just has a slide-on cover. 

This can fit inside your go bag, leave it in the trunk of the car so that you always have that there. I am going to wait in just a minute and reveal the winner of the SWAG. First, I want to say that some of you had asked about shirts. 

Now, the conference did not do official shirts this year and every year, I've been making my own shirts and each year, some of you start to ask, you know, hey, how can I get a shirt? And this year was the first year that I made it available to attendees and or vendors. So, I'm putting in the chat that will show up and I know it'll show up in YouTube and the Facebook. I'm not sure if it shows up in LinkedIn because of the way that the chat integration works there but if you're on LinkedIn watching, if you head over to YouTube or the Facebook, you can get the link now or you can wait for the show to come out in the audio form and the link will be in the show notes. 

That is a link to a page where you can buy a shirt and there's two versions. I had the original version which is the dry fit performance shirt. Most people like it but because of an unnamed high maintenance person, there actually is now an added soft shirt edition. 

So, there are two shirts available, sizes from medium all the way up to 3x, I believe. So, you can get the 2024 version of the shirt there. I've also got a mug on the site there. 

So, if you want to have a little memorabilia from the show, you can head over to my shop on Ko-fi and purchase yourself an item. The prices include shipping. So, if you're saying, well, that's a lot for a shirt. 

Well, because I've got to ship it. So, the shipping cost is included there. So, that is. 

So, I probably should show it because some of you are probably driving around and not able to see there. So, let me share my screen for those of you that are watching because it looks like we got a good number of people watching. And let me pull this up here and there is the shop there as you can see the shirt. 

I've got the two styles of the shirts and the mug there in the middle and a very easy purchase for you to get your stuff there. And all right. So, I'm going to stop the screen here. 

Let me go ahead and acknowledge people that are in the chat. Eric Anthony, I mentioned him earlier. All Things MSP.

Thanks for joining the live stream tonight. Yes, I was there. Popped in. 

I usually try to pop in as I'm prepping for this show. And Degly. Degly was a big hit at TechCon and great seeing you there as well. 

And I know that there are others watching. As I said, I know it's Wednesday evening. Some of you are probably driving to church or coming home from church or ironing or stuff like that. 

But there we go. Sean Scott, also in the house. Thanks for all your comments there. 

All right. So, let me now announce the winner of Swag. And it was a little difficult this year. 

But the winner this year, actually, because of the number of Swag items they brought, they were all useful items. And the first item, although probably not as useful as we think, of course, the key chain and bottle opener. And I don't know what the other thing is, but it looks like it would open up two different types of bottles or cans or something like that. 

But ESET is your winner. And ESET also had two battery chargers. And one was just another key chain style.

And a very compact with two USB cables that come apart. And at first, I was like, that looks a little clunky and chunky and stuff. But it is something that if you are going to carry this around as a key chain, it's not that big. 

It's about the same size as a key fob for the car. So, I thought, okay, that may work. I thought this was a light. 

And I don't know if it just doesn't turn on or not. I will have to go back and check with ESET. But there's a little thing up front and I can't tell what it does. 

So, that was the first thing I thought, oh, if it's a flashlight too, that would be fantastic. And then, of course, the third item was this regular USB charger that is a decent size. It's the size of most. 

It's 4,000 milliamps, which means it'll last you a long time. But it also is a wireless charger. And it's actually, you've got to have a newer style phone or case that will work with it. 

It's not like your typical charger that will work with most phones and stuff. My phone worked with a lot of wireless charges. It did not work with this. 

So, normally, I would have dinged a vendor for having products that aren't universal. But I think in the overall scheme of swag, ESET came through and had multiple items that were all beneficial there. And good deal. 

So, ESET is the swag winner for TechCon 2024. I should also give another shout out because when I walked into the vendor hall, I almost had a little bit of a panic because I didn't see a bag at the front door. And I kind of fumbled around there. 

So, I want to give a shout out to Inky, who had a bag close by, and to Timus. So, there were two bags there. So, luckily, I didn't have to you know, scramble with how I was going to carry all this stuff around.

Always have to have a vendor that brings bags to the conference. And I'm glad that there's multiples because at the big conferences, I sometimes got to get three or four bags. So, thank you to those people that brought that. 

And speaking of vendors, all of the vendors at the conference, fantastic. Didn't have one incident. Well, let me rephrase that.

There was some karaoke singing that probably was uncalled for. But in terms of being at the conference, all the vendors were fantastic. I can't give shout outs to everybody. 

I'm sure Paco and Rick are going to do that because I have no idea what the contributions were. I saw them and I saw that there was great interaction, great presentations. A couple got a little salesy, somewhat expected, but others were giving some great content, really engaging. 

And it was one of those conferences where I think people went away happy. So, before I go into the big conference versus small and what I got out of being at the conference with talking with people and trying to answer that question, the first thing I want to say is the reason that I'm a little scattered brained is I came back after TechCon to a cluster. I probably should have started off by saying there may be cursing here because this is starting to get me worked up. 

So, just to give you the backstory because I never give the backstory. I always get halfway through the story and then have to go backwards. I'm going to start at the beginning with this one. 

So, my wife and I purchased our house in 2013 and it actually came with a propane tank in the back of our house that was used for our gas oven and stove. Wife loved it and that was one of the few things that told her we needed to buy this house or that she told me was a reason we needed to buy this house. It was very nice stove, gas stove, propane. 

And up until the year of our COVID, everything was fine. We got our deliveries and during the year of our COVID, of course, things went to hell and we were late getting a delivery. So, we'd have to call and sometimes the truck would come, sometimes it wouldn't.

Now, it was a 30-gallon tank, which for just a gas stove was okay. Most of the years that we were using it, we probably only used about half the tank. So, I wasn't technically worried.

But in 2022, all of a sudden, we had an issue. Now, I'm going to go ahead and say the name of the company, AmeriGas, only because you're going to ask me who it was. So, I'm going to tell you, it's AmeriGas. 

And AmeriGas has a slight monopoly down here. There's a few other companies around here. But in 2022, they showed up and said, we can't fill the tank because it's corroded.

And we told them, I said, well, change it out and we have no problems with that. Well, it took them probably three months to change it out because they kept having stupid, stupid issues. And it got a little bit frustrating. 

And let's just say, I know that Mike Smith worked for AmeriGas years ago and it was probably a fantastic company then. But right now, AmeriGas sucks. I'm going to say it on the air. 

The experience that I've had with them just makes it to the point where I'm like, AmeriGas sucks. So, it took them three months to start to change out our tank. And then they didn't fill it. 

So, they changed out our tank and gave us an almost empty tank. So, we had to call to get it filled. And for some reason, we could not get a delivery. 

So, again, 2022. So, two years of struggling already after the year of our COVID. 2023 comes around and they tell us that, oh, well, we couldn't get behind your house.

The fence was locked. So, it's a damn lie. Our fence is not locked. 

We have a latch and there's a very easy little pull thing to get behind the house. And again, never had an issue before. And I don't believe they showed up. 

I think they lied. And I called them out on it. So, it took us another few months to get them back out again. 

So, 2024 comes around and they tell us that, hey, we're not servicing that size tank anymore. 30 gallons is too small. You have to have a 120-gallon tank. 

Now, for those of you that do not know, a 30-gallon tank is just kind of the tall cylinder tank. Looks like a little mini Tesla missile or Elon missile or whatever they call it. It's not a big deal. 

It's probably four feet high, a little skinny, not a big deal. The 120-gallon tank is what you'd normally see along the side of a business. It's a big old honking tank. 

Sometimes it's actually put underground. And five years ago, when we were considering getting a whole house generator, propane was going to be an option, in which case I would have thought, yes, we'll convert to a 120-gallon tank. The problem is we've got a backyard where you can't just leave a 120-gallon tank out in the open. 

It's going to be an eyesore, and we don't have the type of yard where you can just start digging underneath. Listen, I think the yard should be a lot more open. We've got a pool in the backyard. 

We've got shrubbery and trees, and the wife loves all that stuff. And we already lost enough trees with hurricanes, so she's like, you can't take any more trees down. So we've got issues with that. 

So they're telling us they can't fill the 30-gallon tank. We have to get the 120. So we're like, fine. 

So we set an appointment for them to come do a survey to see if there's a place that we can put this 120-gallon tank. They don't show, which I'm like, all right. So we start shopping around for another propane person.

So while I'm in TechCon or at TechCon in D.C., officially Hanover, Maryland, for those of you that are technical, they show up unannounced, just pop at the door, and yeah, we're here to do this survey, and Kim doesn't know what to do. She can't interrupt me. I'm doing my thing at TechCon. 

So she lets them in. They do the survey, and I come back to an invoice for the survey, and I'm like, well, that's ridiculous. So Monday, I'm in the office, and I get a text. 

Actually, Kim gets a text. I get an email that they're showing up for delivery the next day, so Tuesday, and I'm like, there's no way that they could show up that fast. I didn't approve the location. 

I don't know where it's going or anything. So I call, and they're like, no, this is for regular propane delivery, and I had to argue with them and say, well, you told me you didn't service that tank. Oh, well, let us check our records. 

So let me just say, to keep this story short, we go through three days because Monday, Tuesday, and today, we're going back and forth because eventually, I got the appointment canceled, but then the next day, it would pop up again for another delivery, and I would call and say, hey, what are you doing? We canceled delivery, and by the way, why are you delivering when you're telling us you're giving us a new tank? So I'm going to pay to fill this tank up. You're going to take it away and give us another tank and charges for that, so that can't work. So today, I'm talking to them, and I'm frustrated.

I'm a little angry, and I'm cursing. The lady today tells me that the reason that the delivery keeps popping up is because when the tank gets below 30 percent, it sends an automated message, and delivery is scheduled, and I call bullshit on that. Now, let me tell you the part of the story I skipped. 

Three weeks ago, we run out of propane because remember, they did not deliver in 2023, and we couldn't get them out. So three weeks ago, we ran out of propane. Now, we can survive. 

We've got air fryers. We've got skillets. We've got a barbecue grill. 

We've got toaster ovens. We can survive, and we're like, okay, a couple weeks, we'll figure it out, blah, blah, blah, but I say to them, if you had a sensor that would tell you when the tank gets below 30 percent, you would have been here months ago. So stop your lying and tell me what the hell is going on. 

I get sent over to a resolution supervisor. Oh, we're sorry, blah, blah, blah. It's going to take a couple of months to get the tank, so we're going to fill out this one up in the meantime. 

I'm like, well, you don't tell me that. You don't communicate, and your automated system sucks. So short story, I'm canceling AmeriGas, and we found another company. 

We're going to get that delivered on Friday, but the point of my story for us in this community is if you are going to set up automation on your system, if you are going to have an outsourced help desk, if you are going to try to put all of these things in place to make life easier, it should be easier. One of the biggest gripes that we are hearing from customers is they hate that stupid automated call-in where they can't get to a representative. That's the first thing. 

The second thing is the chatbots that we're putting in. Now, listen, I know we've got vendors that are putting out products to help us communicate with clients better. I know that they're putting out things where we can communicate in Slack, in Teams, and texting, and we're trying to do this AI automation to make life easier.

But I'll tell you this, these last three days, it has made life a freaking hell. Yeah, almost got me. And this whole thing with, I canceled an appointment and then have it automatically pop back up the next day, it's just stupid. 

Stupid as hell. So for vendors and for other MSPs, if you're doing this, make sure your systems work. Make sure that your people that are answering the phone, whether it's your frontline people, your engineers, help desk, make sure they are able to get to answers. 

And here's why. I spent probably one hour each day dealing with this issue. And that's just stupid. 

And if we're doing that to our customers, we are part of the problem. We're supposed to be the techies to make life easier. So the reason I say this is because I can tell they had tech automation in place. 

They had texting stuff to us. They have where you can go on the website and go into a little chat box. The chat box gave me no answer. 

Basically, it kept going into a loop where it would send me to a page. Hey, here's a possible resolution. I don't need to go to a page more than twice if it's not going to help me. 

So stop putting me in this automation loop. We need to make sure we're not doing that to our customers. That's why we don't have any automation. 

I don't do it. Either I answer the phone or Kim answers the phone. And the advantage of being a boutique MSP is we know all our customers. 

Our customers know us. It's not always going to be the case. Start to get a little bigger. 

You're not going to know everybody. You've got level one, level two techs that help answer the phone, take care of tickets. It's going to get tough. 

But I will say this. If you are putting in that automation, if you were doing that AI to make life easier, make sure it makes life easier. All right. 

Got that off my chest. Let's get back to the show. So the one thing I could prepare for was one of the questions that kept coming up to me at the conference. 

And it came from attendees and sometimes new attendees. We had a lot of new attendees to TechCon. And we had some vendors, new vendors. 

We had some vendors that had left the space. I'm sorry. I'm looking at the chat, and I see a couple of comments. 

Let's see here. Let me get my... Degly has said, we need to make sure the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. Internal communication is so critical. 

Yes, it is. That was a frustration I was having with there. And in fact, I hope you feel better. 

Yes, I do. I just needed to get that out. But I know if I have to go through this again tomorrow, I am really going to lose it on AmeriGas and can't sue them, but we'll do something. 

Going back to the conference, it was very interesting because I don't know how I got to be the one to answer this question, but I was getting the same question from attendees and vendors. And the question was, do you like the smaller conferences versus the bigger ones? Other variations of that question is, which conference do you think is better, big or small? And depending on the person that asked it, of course, it's a different answer because from an attendee perspective, there's a couple of ways to go with that. Of course, the bigger conferences, you get to see more vendors. 

You get to participate in a lot more sessions or discussions. You get to have the benefits of bigger stage shows. And in our industry, of course, now it's getting big to have a big old party at the end or an entertainer at the end. 

And a lot of people look forward to that so much so that sometimes the party is much more enjoyable than the event itself. Now, I go to both large and small conferences. So as an attendee, from my perspective, I think most of you know this, I actually prefer smaller conferences. 

And I'm not to say that big conferences are bad. I like big conferences too, but I like small conferences better because you get more chance to interact with both speakers and vendors and other attendees. From a vendor perspective, it's also an interesting question to ask and to get answered because I think what I think is happening, vendors are starting to have to look at their expenses. 

The number of conferences has probably tripled since we started coming back after the year of our COVID. I don't remember there being this 500 plus events. And I don't know if that number is correct. 

That is the number that is floating around. It is north of 500 events. Folks, there are not 500 days in a year. 

There is no freaking way we can get to all those conferences. Even if we do one a week, that's 50 events. So it's a lot. 

And I know that vendors are trying to get to as many events as possible because they need to see as many people as possible. They want to be where the MSPs are. They want to be where the companies are that they can sell their product to. 

So on one hand, I know that they love the big conferences. When you've got 1,500 to 3,000 people, that is a place where the return on investment has got to be a big benefit. Now, it also costs a lot of money to get those booths, especially if you want a premier booth because if you're in a vendor space where there are 100 plus vendors, you don't want to be stuck in the back corner. 

So a lot of people spend a lot of money to do those booths to be in the line of sight when you first walk into the room. On the other hand, vendors are like, man, we can't keep spending this much money. So they have looked to some of these smaller conferences. 

And of course, the problem with the smaller conferences, not a lot of people there. And you have to look at how much is being spent as to how much is being returned. From an attendee perspective, you don't have as many sessions. 

I know that during the run-up to TechCon, one of the things was, can we get more sessions in? But you're looking at the number of people there and it's like, you can't do too many sessions because you can't have a session with one or two people in it. And then you've got to worry about a number of speakers you've got to have. But I can tell you this, from a smaller perspective, TechCon, I think, really opened up the eyes of a lot of people. 

And I'm going to say it this way. One of the things that I think is really unique when it comes to the tech community, when it comes to conferences, is the thing that we've been talking about for the last couple of years called community. Of all the conferences that I have been to, not including my junior achievement ones, on the tech side, TechCon is probably the best community out there. 

Now, don't come at me with some of these other communities because I don't know. From my perspective, from my experience, TechCon is it. It is, percentage wise, and I'm saying it this way on purpose, there are other communities that are just as big, bigger, and active. 

Not to say that they are failing in any way. But the TechCon community is probably, in my estimation, the most engaged community out there. It is a tight-knit group. 

Everybody knows each other. Everybody, for the most part, likes each other. But everybody respects each other. 

And that is something that can't be duplicated at some of these other events. There are people that I know that I love hanging out with, that I love to see. But there is no group closer as a whole than the TechCon group.

Now, this has taken some years in the making. This was a group that started out pod nuts. This is a group, ITO Compass, UnConvention. 

It has been evolving over the years. But the faces and companies that you see coming to TechCon are people that we have seen year after year, people that we see in the channel, in the Facebook, in the LinkedIn, that are not just cordial to each other. But if you've got a problem, if you've got a question, you need some help, this group, somebody will step up and help you.

Yes, that happens all over the place. There are other groups that do that. I'm sure a lot of people say that. 

But I'm saying as a whole, as a collective, I don't think you're going to find a better group than those at TechCon. Probably, the culmination of that was Saturday night. Even though we did a casino night, I found it quite interesting that for a party atmosphere, most of the time people go off and find their little groups and do their stuff. 

But I would say for everybody that did not have to leave because of flights or other opportunities, everybody wanted to stay. Everybody wanted to hang out. Everybody wanted to party. 

And it wasn't to see some big entertainment. Again, I'm not trying to slap down the big conferences that do that. But I'm saying that you don't need to have some big name entertainer if the people really want to hang out. 

And that's what happened Saturday night. It was of all the TechCon that we had done, that was probably the one night out of all. I'm saying this as best as I can say it. 

Out of all the TechCon that we have done that night, Saturday night, me trying to figure out how to be freaking play music for everybody to dance and to keep Tom Bull's robe on and to keep... I had to find a Bad Bunny song. I mean, there was just some things that happened there that just made that night absolutely fantastic. The chat room is going berserk. 

I have no idea. Let me go back and see. Depends on what you need to get out of the conference. 

Okay. For the size, our small party last week was awesome. I want to be where the people are. 

Imagine that. You know what? I'm not putting these up on the screen here. So let me do that. 

I want to be where the people are. Imagine that in my best little mermaid voice. No, Matt Solomon in the house. 

Hello, Matt. Big events have gotten so expensive. So more vendors are doing their own mini roadshows, making it harder for MSPs to decide. 

I think there needs to be a pivot to specialized event versus general ones. Yeah, Matt, that actually did come into play when we talked about the number of events out there. Listen, I can't fault the vendors for doing a little bit of a shift where they were trying to do more personalized partner events. 

And in that sense, you do want to create smaller events just for partners. More roadshows, of course, to do that. If you're going to go from one big conference to five roadshows, well, there's your multiplier there. 

Roadshows have their place. The midsize conferences have their place. Yeah, I don't know what the pivot is, but I can tell you this. 

We can't be having 500 conferences every year. Let's see what else has happened here. Frank, I really enjoyed the smaller size of this one.

It felt easier to engage with others and have more meaningful conversations. Yes, that's another thing that other conferences do this. I don't want to talk just about the big, big, but the conferences like the ASCII events, the Channel Pro events, I know that there are others out there where you're probably in between one to 300 people where you can almost duplicate that small conference feeling because you can see people, you're going to see the same people.

In a sense, you could either decide to sit at the same table for one or two days. The sessions are such that they're not overwhelming. You're not having to get from one session to another with two minutes in between. 

You've got time where you can chat with somebody for five or 10 minutes. You know that you can set aside time later that evening because everything is right there in the event. All of that can be had. 

Now, the big events, of course, you can go off and do that, but you're getting away from the event to do so. You can't do that in the general session. You have to find a little corner to do that. 

It may be hard to keep up with people in a larger event. That's how I think of it there. Let's see, Deadly, the opportunity to come together and have meaningful conversations is one of the key values of TechCon Unplugged. 

Yes, it is. Yeah, Cristobal in the house. Hey there, sir. 

Let's see. I think that's, there we go. Yeah, so that's kind of how I was answering that question. 

Of course, I'm not trying to tell you one is better than the other. I did give you my opinion as to what I enjoy. I enjoy being able to engage with people, which is what I think happened more at TechCon than at other shows.

I have a little different perspective because I worked TechCon. I was the emcee, so I was up on stage. A lot of times, I was trying to keep things moving in between, but there was still enough time for me to hang out. 

There was still enough time to sit with people in between sessions, at lunch, in the vendor hall, after hours, so it didn't feel like I was working the whole time. There are conferences that I go to where I'm there as a podcaster, and once I've done my podcast, I'm standing around thinking, oh, what do I do now? Because I don't know who everybody is, and I got to start texting. I got to start figuring out, and if you're on the other side of the hotel, and it's going to be a 10-minute walk for me, I'm like, I ain't going. 

I'll meet up with you later. But the bigger conferences, you get a lot more people to hang out with. You get a lot more vendors to see. 

I will say this. If you're somebody that is just starting, and you need to engage with vendors to figure out what products you're going to use, what stack you're going to build your stuff around, obviously, the larger conferences is going to be the place to go. That's where you're going to see all the big players, and if you need to figure out an RMM, a PSA, if you need to look at a help desk tool, if you need to figure out cybersecurity stuff, the bigger conferences is where you're going to see all of the vendors there, and you hopefully will get a chance to chat with them there. 

You'll definitely get your badge scanned and have them call you afterwards, and then you're going to be into that hell of a time where you're trying to chat with vendors, set up demos, and stuff like that. But again, that's a great thing. If you need to get up to speed on the products in the channel, the larger conferences are going to do that. 

It's not going to happen to the smaller conferences. I think we had 16 vendors at TechCon, and not all the big players, but enough that you got a flavor. We had two help desk vendors there. 

We had Super Ops there for your RMM PSA. We had Total there. We had ESET there for your MDR stuff, but enough to get you started. 

But more importantly, you've got people that have used all the products that if you want to get a real good feeling of what has worked for us, enough time to chat with people on that. So, that's it. It was just interesting that I got that question, and I probably had to answer that 10 to 15 times, which is why I thought, you know what? Let me take everything that I discussed with people and put that into the show. 

Instead of doing a conference recap with a bunch of people on here, I thought this would be a time to do that. And of course, if you've got some comments, we got some in the chat there. If you want to send a comment afterwards telling me I'm right or wrong, maybe there's some other points. 

If you're listening after the fact in an audio show or replaying this video, throw a comment in there or send it to me by going to itbusinesspodcast.com and throwing that in there. So, before I go over the floor-to-man stories, let me go ahead and talk about the sponsors real quick. Of course, thank you again to everyone that was there at TechCon, and of course, you know, having sponsors there has really made it affordable for a lot of people to go. 

The ticket price wasn't outrageous, and it was fantastic there. Sponsors of this show, NetAlly is the presenting sponsor, and of course, you've heard me talk about them. If you need a handheld portable network testing device to validate, you know, network connectivity, internet connectivity, if you need to do performance testing across cables, it'll even do a basic cable test. 

It won't verify, well, it will verify cable, but it won't certify a cable, but you can at least know, hey, does this cable work? It'll do that for you. So, NetAlly, the sponsor there. SuperOps, haven't drank much from the cup tonight, but they are the mug sponsor and also sponsor of the floor-to-man segment, the unified PSA RMM tool designed for emerging and fast-growing MSPs. 

TruGrid, secure remote access that will, you know, not have to make you reconfigure your firewall. So, secure remote access, it'll do that VPN proxy with multi-factor authentication. Great for people and very easy to set up. 

Those are the big three. I've actually got an announcement coming up for a new vendor that you'll see shortly, but what you could do is head over to itbusinesspodcast.com, click on the sponsor tab, all of the current and even past sponsors are there that you can click and visit and sign up for them, whether you get a free trial. I do not get a kickback from any of these. 

I don't think I do. I get the affiliate link. Let's see, Streamyard, which none of you have done, and Synchro is still on there. 

I think I got a referral credit for Synchro, but most of the others, they just support the show, and I asked for you to support them, and that is great. All right. Florida man. 

So, the first thing I want to do is give an update. A couple of weeks ago, we had the 2024 Florida Python Challenge, and for those of you that do not know, did not hear the show, pythons have gotten to be absolutely ridiculous in our Everglades, and I'm only a few miles from the edge of the Everglades. We are just right north of Alligator Alley, the road that goes between east and west Florida through the Everglades.

The Everglades is huge down here, folks, and we are getting more animals in the Everglades that should not be there, and the pythons is one of them. So, people that are bringing in animals from other places and dumping them here. So, the pythons have gotten so out of control that every year, the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission puts on this python challenge where for 10 days, you can go out and hunt pythons, and they actually give a $10,000 grand prize to the winner, and so I told you I would announce that. 

Now, there was no new record for the size of python that was captured, but Ronald Krieger came away as the winner. He captured 20 Burmese pythons and secured the top spot. Second place actually was a female, Donna Khalil. 

She captured 19 pythons and walked away with $2,500. Let's see, where did they put the total there? So, this year, we had 857 participants from 33 states and Canada joining the hunt. So, for those of you up in Canada, if you want to come down and participate in the python challenge, you're welcome. 

So, they removed a 195 invasive Burmese pythons, and they actually removed a whole bunch of other stuff as well, but the largest python captured this year was only 9 feet and 11 inches, and I say only because the record is over 20 feet. So, this year was only 9 feet 11, and your winner, Ronald Krieger, who took 20 pythons in 10 days. So, good effort there. 

So, in another bizarre incident in Florida, doing a traffic stop in Clay County, Florida, law enforcement officers made an unusual discovery when they found a live squirrel tucked inside the shirt of 23-year-old Derek James Foreman. So, the incident occurred as they pulled over Foreman's vehicle, leading to the surprising encounter that caught the attention of media because, of course, the body cams were flowing, and I don't think it's technically illegal that he had the squirrel in his shirt, but another driver claimed that the squirrel in her shirt caused his erratic driving. So, that along with the fact that he was charged with DUI. 

So, he was driving drunk with a squirrel in his shirt and driving erratically. So, I will have the stories to that. For those of you that want to know what happened to the squirrel, it was unharmed and promptly released back into the authorities. 

And the third story is that during a routine inspection of an abandoned Buick parked in a residential area, Florida law enforcement officers made an unexpected discovery of a mummified alligator head. The reptile skull was not a fresh specimen, but had been dried out and preserved, resembling a museum artifact, rather than a recent find. Let me see here. 

They don't know how long it was in the vehicle, and it was basically, let's see, I don't have the full story here, but yes, it was, I do know that the car was reported abandoned. It had been there a few days, and they were called out to investigate, thinking that it was a stolen vehicle. So, it didn't actually even say whether it was stolen or not, but the fact that they found this mummified alligator head inside. 

So, I will have the links to those three stories, the Python Challenge winner, the squirrel in the man's shirt, and the alligator head found in the Buick. Okay. All right, folks, that is going to do it for this week's show. 

Of course, I did plan on having more for you. I planned on having a video with pictures of the conference and music and some more comments and stuff, but that will probably come later. We'll still work on that. 

I don't know who is scheduled for next week, but we will be here live for, I think it's the next six weeks before my next event. I will not be going anywhere until the end of October when I will be attending the ASCII Cup in St. Pete, and I have to find a glove or something. The, oh, I'm not supposed, I don't know if I'm supposed to say. 

I'll wait until they announce it. I shouldn't have said that, but October 23rd and 24th is the ASCII Cup in St. Pete. I think there's another one before then, St. Louis or something, so I'm probably ahead of the time.

So there's another ASCII event this month, September, and then October is the ASCII Cup I will be at, and then I will be also at IT Nation Connect in Orlando, and then DattoCon in Miami. I think one other event I will let you know as I finalize my schedule, but that's going to do it. We'll be back with more episodes. 

I've got some audio shows coming up as well as the live shows, but the live shows will be six weeks straight, and I hope you will tune in and listen for that. That's going to do it for tonight, folks. Thank you all for coming in.

Thank you, everyone, for the comments in the chat. I appreciate it. Look forward to next week. 

So that's going to do it, folks. We'll see you soon, and until next time, Holla!