718 What We Learned: TechCon and Helene

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle  Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast presented by NetAlly, the show for IT professionals and managed service providers where we do our best to try to help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. If you are watching this or even hearing it after the show, this is the Wednesday live show where I try to bring on guests and we have chats about a lot of stuff. We have a busy show this evening, a lot of news to get to.

We're going to be talking about Hurricane Helene and its aftermath. We're going to be talking about TechCon Unplugged. And I actually have some news on the NSITSP, the big old acronym, the National Society of IT Service Providers.

I've got an interesting Florida man story. And next week, I need you guys to prepare for Amazon Prime. So we're going to get to all of that.

And to help me with tonight's show, I'm going to be bringing in Justine Anderson and Jason Miller. So let me bring them up to the stage. Yeah, let's see here.

Where's Justine? There we are. So Jason, Justine, how are we tonight?

[Jason Miller]
Doing great. How about you? All right.

[Uncle Marv]
Doing good. Doing good. All right.

And many of you know Jason Miller from Johnson City, Tennessee, and a three-time People's Champion at TechCon Unplugged. Don't know how that happened.

[Jason Miller]
Hey, that's right. You know, who's going to challenge me next year? It's going to be four times?

[Uncle Marv]
I don't know. I think the channel is going to have to, we're going to have to get behind somebody and see what we can do here. And Justine is from the great state of Florida on the other coast near Tampa and will be somewhere around where we're having the ASCII Edge, this year's ASCII Cup, coming up later at the end of this month.

Justine, how is it over there?

[Justine Anderson]
All is well.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So let me do this because there's no easy way to transition and I want to go ahead and reference this early, but Hurricane Helene, I know that last week I ended up doing an additional show on Friday and one of the things I did was to reference Hurricane Helene. And I normally do that on my own show, but because it wasn't going to hit me, I kind of did what most of us do.

I didn't pay attention. Normally I do, and I probably should have made some comments and probably should have warned some people. I know that the Floridians up at the Big Bend area, which the Big Bend of Florida, as people know Florida is a panhandle.

And basically as you go north of Tampa, there's a lot of open space, shall we say, until you get to like Gainesville is a little far in, and then you've got Tallahassee and Pensacola. But in between all of that, it's just a lot of little towns and stuff. So not a lot for the storms to hit.

And most of those people are actually used to it in the panhandle, but the people north of there, Georgia, Alabama, Carolinas, Tennessee, even Virginia and Kentucky, not really used to hurricanes. And if you've been paying any attention to the news, you have seen the devastation caused, especially in the Western Carolina, Eastern Tennessee area. The amount of rainfall that was dumped in that area.

I mean, we're getting comments about Lake Tahoe, Lake Michigan. It was a lot of rain. And I know that when I did a check earlier, the death toll so far is at least 162 with hundreds of people still missing.

All of the states impacted, Florida, Georgia, both of the Carolinas, Tennessee and Virginia. In Georgia, even, it was as far east as Augusta. And it was very interesting.

So as of tonight, 1.3 million customers are still without power from Florida to Virginia. And it's a lot. So my best wishes to the people that are in those areas.

I did reach out to several people. I've not heard back from all of them. I do have a client that while they have their business here, they actually have a home that they are going to retire to.

They go up in the summers and hang out in the mountains of Asheville. And a lot of places flooded out of Asheville, so I've not heard back from them. My sister-in-law lives in Charlotte.

She right now is in Ohio with Kim visiting their mom. And I haven't heard what's, you know, happened around her place there. So she'll find out.

She flies back either today or tomorrow. So I'm sure I'll hear from it. So Jason, I know that we've heard from you.

You, I believe, posted a public photo or aerial shot of some damage around your area.

[Jason Miller]
Yeah. Yeah. So one of our, one of my networking group guys here, Tricey's Aerial Photography, he has a drone business.

So the day after he took drones out and kind of filmed all the different cities and areas around us and all the devastation. So, you know, just one as a kind of, I guess, more of a public service so everybody could see what's going on, see what's messed up. There's a lot of questions from, you know, people outside the area as well, like what's going on there.

I have family there, whatever. So yeah, it's very, very bad. I mean, you know, people sometimes say you should be prepared for stuff like this, but we live in the mountains, man.

I mean, it's not, it's not a, you don't flood in the mountain, you know what I'm saying? So, but we do this time around. So tons of water, tons of devastation.

I mean, there's all kinds of stuff going on here. So I don't know how much you want me to get into there, but.

[Uncle Marv]
Well let me first ask Justine, because I know that while Florida did not take the brunt of the storm, it was close enough to skirt up the coast. And I did see some damage in those areas. I know that there was some flooding from the bay that went up and almost flooded out a hospital.

What's the, what's the latest from your area, Justine?

[Justine Anderson]
Yeah, I was watching that as well. Fortunately, I live on the east side of town and didn't experience any of that firsthand. But just looking at the news, like everyone else, like downtown Bayshore, you could see the water coming in where the, where the little fence is.

And it's quite high. I don't know. I don't remember how many feet it was, but it was, it was incredible.

But Tampa General, which is one of our larger hospitals here, had a fence that kept the water out and it did an amazing job. So they didn't have to move their patients around or try to close the hospital. That was amazing.

[Uncle Marv]
Very nice. Very nice. We do have a comment here.

Eric Anthony is joining us from the All Things MSP. So I-40, which is a road that I've traveled on many times, crosses North Carolina into Tennessee, will be repaired, will not be repaired until next year. That is a road I traveled.

Most people don't know, but I lived in Carolina, North Carolina for three years. I went to grad school up there, if you want to call it that. That's another story.

But I would travel from Raleigh to the mountains of Asheville and it's about a four hour drive. And yeah, that continues on into Tennessee. I-40 damaged, I-26 damaged, bridge is out.

So it's going to be a long time for recovery there.

[Jason Miller]
Yeah, they're saying I-26 won't be repaired until March of next year. So the water rose over that bridge and took it out. So also the I-40 that goes up to Asheville, North Carolina, the I-26 also goes to Asheville, North Carolina.

So they had a lot of, a lot of damaged bridges to get to Asheville. So they kind of got put on their own little island there for a minute. They finally got a way to get people in and out of there now, but it takes a lot longer to get there now.

So they got hit really hard as well.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. So one of the things that I had a couple of conversations with some people and like you mentioned, Jason, you're in an area where you don't think about hurricanes down here in Florida. We think about them all the time.

In fact, I have already gotten alerts. There's more storms on the way. Many of you know about Kirk, but there is now a stormed number 13 of the season that is coming behind Kirk, and they are wondering if that will come across the Atlantic and Florida.

So already watching that. But one of the things that we ended up talking about as a result of this is disaster recovery in our field is something that we should plan for. But a lot of people don't know how to plan, and if you're in an area where you're not normally hit by a hurricane, how do you plan for a hurricane?

And my question is, you should plan for disaster, period, regardless of what kind it is, regardless of the area, because you just don't know. So I don't know if you guys had a chance to think about that, but any thoughts on how to plan for a disaster?

[Jason Miller]
Well, I think nowadays, of course, some of this opens your eyes a little bit. I mean, here the local news channel goes all flash flood warning, blah, blah, blah. We see that all the time.

It's not uncommon to see that. But with this flash flood warning, literally within Irwin, which is a city right next to us where the bridge got taken out, there was a hospital there, large hospital system. They dispatched ambulances at 938 in the morning to go evacuate patients from that hospital because the water was coming in about 1030 to 11 o'clock.

The water was over the top of the ambulances. About an hour later, there was 45 people on the roof of the hospital trapped. They tried to evacuate by boat, little boats, and they got stuck in the boats as the water was too rapid.

That's how fast it was flowing to even get the boats out. So Black Hawk helicopters had to come in and they were stuck on the roof six or seven hours and they had to airlift all those people off the top of the hospital roof. So it was just so rapid.

I mean, talking about planning, it was just a matter of two hours and it's over the first and second floor of houses. I mean, there was houses washed away. I mean, two and three story houses.

I mean, so much erosion. I mean, on the interstate, it looks like you chopped down a forest and just deposited on the interstate for miles. I mean, it's insanity the way it is here.

You know, I've never had, I'm sure in Hurricane Ellie down there, you've seen some of this craziness, but here it's insanity. You know, it's like you don't see stuff like this. So planning for that disaster, you know, we do disaster recovery plans for our customers, but usually it doesn't include a massive flooding.

I mean, you can see like one customer flood or maybe a couple. But I mean, this was, you know, cities, multiple cities around us. So I don't know, maybe you all have a better idea of how to plan for total destruction versus a, you know, Hey, I need to have a business back up and running tomorrow.

Not, not, not 40 businesses, you know?

[Uncle Marv]
So yeah, we, uh, when I first moved down, well, I take that back. When I left Carolina to come take my first full-time job down here in Fort Lauderdale, it was the year that Hurricane Andrew hit. And for those that don't know, Hurricane Andrew came through South Florida and at the time was the most devastating storm to come through, partly because we didn't plan for it.

Every forecaster had the storm turning and heading North and missing us. And it didn't do that. It actually came through straight.

It was fast. It was originally ranked as a category four. They later upgraded it to a category five.

And I remember going down and seeing the devastation and you're talking miles and miles of houses just leveled, um, is what it is. And part of that is the reason why we do plan as much as we can for anything. I mean, hurricanes, we have power go out, a strong thunderstorm takes out our power sometimes.

And I just had a conversation last week with the customer who finally it's now like, look, what do we need to do to be able to work if something happens? You know, the building goes whatever. And I said, the only thing we can do is put you in a cloud somewhere.

And he's like, all right, let's figure out how to do it. And it's a law firm. So they're a little tough because they're on terrestrial software.

Their vendor won't support them in the cloud. So I'm going to have to figure out a way to do that with them. But they're, he's at the point where he's like, look, if as long as the business can function and if I can get to anywhere else in the country and work, that's what I want.

So we are on the right path with moving people to the cloud. But it doesn't matter if there's no power where you're at. But if as long as your data is safe somewhere, that's the first line of defense.

Justine, you're down here in Florida. Any, any thoughts on preparations for disaster?

[Justine Anderson]
Nothing different to add. I just agree with what both of you have already said.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Eric also adds another comment. Mother-in-law lives a couple of towns over, says their hospital was destroyed.

Is that Unicoi, Tennessee?

[Jason Miller]
Yeah. Yeah. That's the hospital I was talking about that, you know, they're evacuating people off the roof is Unicoi County Hospital.

So it's not our major hospital here, but, you know, it's one of the outliers. But nonetheless, we still have lots of patients there that in the water was, you know, two stories tall, you know, they said the water was 31 feet. The water rose 31 feet.

You know, some of our bridges are only 21 feet off the water, you know, so it's definitely going over them. So that's a lot of water. Let me tell you.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, well, I wanted to acknowledge that and just talk about it real quick. And if you are a listener of the show and you know of somebody that is affected and you need assistance with helping them, or if you're looking for other people that can help, just reach out to the show here, head over to the website, send me a message and we'll get the word out for you. And like I said, I've got several people I've not heard from.

And we're talking about East Alabama, Western Georgia and in the Carolinas that I'm waiting to hear from. So see how that goes. Let's go ahead and do the commercial break and that'll be our transition.

So let me let me bring up our graphic here. And as I mentioned at the top of the show, the IT Business Podcast is presented by NetAlly, your ally when it comes to fast, reliable network testing and in most cases, as little as 10 seconds can get you a view of your network. It can test your connections and do a lot more.

I am still trying to reach out about the newest to the CyberScope Air, and all I can say is having that in your hand. I have the EtherScope and the CyberScope and being able to not only test network connection, test Wi-Fi, do performance testing. It is absolutely amazing.

Even if it's the LinkSprinter, folks, get that in your hand. And then our partners, Super Ops, the all in one readymade PSA RMM tool to help you supercharge your business and TruGrid, secure RDP, fast, reliable, secure access that bypasses your firewall. So you don't have to change those rules there.

I want to thank them for being sponsors and something that I'm going to start doing more of. I want to recognize some of our listeners that are supporting us, those that are giving at least ten dollars a month to the show, which helps out a lot. So Jason Percival, Jason Miller, Tom Bull and Clark Stockdale.

Thank you very much. Hope to get some more up there soon and hope to get a lot of you supporting by use of Amazon. And I'm going to pimp that a lot more often, especially through the end of the year, because there is a promotion happening for those of us that are Amazon influencers, which I don't know why that's the name.

But if I get to a certain level and I don't remember the number, it's like ten or fifteen thousand in what they call shipped revenue. I'll get a bump in a bonus in what I get. So I'm hoping to get that and use that to fund the Amazon gift cards and other stuff that I do at the end of the year.

Normally, I ask vendors to pitch in and help, but I don't want to do that. If I can get listeners to support by shopping on Amazon. Listen, it's no more work for you.

You're not doing anything extra. All this normal stuff that you're buying through Amazon, you're buying you're just doing through the IT business podcast link. Amazon does the rest to give us money behind the scenes.

So I'm going to pimp that, including next week. There are some Amazon Prime days coming up, and I am working on trying to do an Amazon live show. So wish me luck.

Hope that happens and get you guys to support the show using Amazon. So I mentioned the NSITSP, and that is the National Society of IT Service Providers, a professional organization representing small and medium IT consultants. The organization focuses on several key areas, and here's what they are.

One, they want to help transform the IT industry into a recognized profession. Two, establish high standards and ethics for IT service providers. And three, improve the perception and credibility of the IT profession.

Now, this came up when it was announced years ago that there might be regulation coming down the pike, whether it's from the government, whether it's from local state governments, whether it's insurance companies, where they're going to try to start to define what an IT solution provider is, who a managed service provider is, and what things we have to do in supporting our customers. And a lot of that was pushback from a lot of the ransomware stuff when they started realizing that they had to pay out ransom demands that were much higher than they thought. And they said, you know what, we're going to define the industry.

And a group of providers got together and said, wait a minute, we don't need insurance company trying to define who we are. We can do that ourselves. And so they've put together a group.

And right now, the membership is right around 1,000, just over 1,000 members. And today, I participated in my first meeting with them. I am going to join the National Society of IT Service Providers.

I don't know what exactly that means going forward, but I just wanted to announce that and say that I'm going to join the fight. And I'm hoping that some of you will. I'll be putting more stuff out about that later, things to help us with proposed legislation, industry standards, credibility, all of that.

And let's see. I think I have a link for some stuff that they do. Now, they don't only do that.

They also put together webinars. Next week, there is a webinar. Let's see.

That's led by Carl, I think, Carl Palachuk, called Leading with Ethics. Can I share this? Let me share this.

There it is. Leading with Ethics, differentiate your company in a changing market. So it is next week, October 9th.

I'm going to put the link in to register. And these are the types of things that the organization does. So yes, it's about the legislation.

It's about professional ethics. But they also do webinars that can help us in our business as well. So I'm going to put a link to that so maybe you guys can join that.

If you are a member of the NSITSP, there are some elections that they just concluded, but one of them has a runoff. So apparently, I'm not logged in, or else I'd show you who it is. But there is a runoff election.

So if you are a member, go to your email, check all of that, and get yourselves set to vote for the boards of that. All right. And if you're watching and you're seeing all of the moving around, there are some things that have changed around in Streamyard.

So every time I do a share, I've got to switch us all back. So that'll be something we have to work on there. OK.

So we've got that. We've got that. Oh, I need to say thank you to somebody, because apparently, I did have a referral thing with Synchro.

And I got a notice yesterday that somebody signed up with Synchro and stayed for three months. And so Synchro tipped me off a little percentage there. So don't know who it was.

And that's just a reminder that if you head over to the website and click on the Sponsor tabs, I still have anybody that's been a sponsor or partnered with the show. So Synchro is there. And whether it's Super Ops or Synchro or TruGrid or anything, if you want to go try them out and sign up through my link, maybe I get something.

I didn't know I did. So thank you for that. I don't use Synchro.

Disclaimer. I did check them out, but I didn't switch. I don't use Super Ops, but I like them.

Good company. So it's not that I'm pimping these just to, you know, because I use them and stuff. Whatever works for you in this business is what you need to use.

So I will bring on as many vendors as possible and give you the choice to choose what works for you. I believe 90% of the industry thinks I'm ridiculous with who my vendors are, but they work for me. That's all I care about.

All right. Now, let's see. It has been two weeks since TechCon Unplugged.

And both of you were there, and I asked you guys to come on and just give us a little feedback now that you've had a chance to step back, get back into the grind. I used to do this right after the show, but I decided that that was a little too close. We needed to have some separation.

So I really wanted to let it sink in, let you guys get back into your groove, then ask the question. And I'm just going to throw it out here. What is it from the conference that really stood out to you?

And has there been anything that you've actually implemented from TechCon? And I'm going to start with Justine first.

[Justine Anderson]
There was so much, so much good stuff. One thing that stands out to me, I guess I heard it because I needed to hear it. It was J.

Colin Peterson. He was talking about how to hire people. I think his company has helped.

And he talked about why technicians stay and why they leave. And it was just something I wanted to think about, as I will probably have to hire people in the not-so-distant future. There were just so many great things.

But I know that that really stuck with me because, I guess, I needed to hear it now.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Jason, what about you? What stood out for you?

[Jason Miller]
Well, a lot of the things that stood out for me were more stuff centered around processes and things like that. So the Super Ops pre-day summit. I guess it's pre-day summit.

They had a lot of good content there. They really talked about your different processes, stuff like onboarding, stuff like your QBRs, TBRs, whatever you want to call them. As far as some of the stuff with, of course, Matt there with the Office 365 stuff.

So either way, there's a lot of good stuff there. But really took away a lot of stuff about processes and TBRs. Like, we were trying to do a TBR for every client.

And we left the conference going, why are we doing this? This is stupid. This customer's not paying me enough money.

Like, what was her name? Marnie? Marnie?

[Uncle Marv]
What was her name? Marnie Stockman.

[Jason Miller]
Yeah, yeah. She was in there talking about that. She's like, why are you doing, basically saying, you don't do it for all customers.

Some of our small customers don't pay us enough. And by the time I come back, and we're discussing with our other account manager slash customer service guys. And it's like, really, truly, by the time you spend all the time to prep the TBR, do the TBR, have the meeting, come back, do the stuff, 10, 12 hours.

You know what I'm saying? I mean, you've got a lot invested in this stuff. And that client's not paying you enough.

So now, that might have been the cost of half a month or a month of their services. They need to pay for that somehow, if you're going to provide that. So we're getting ready to change up our plans, getting ready to change up some processes, some better onboarding stuff, some better help desk processes there, too.

So I told my guys, get ready. Next year, this next year, it's going to be a lot of change. So it kind of fired me up, I guess, for that.

So I tell our guys in the meeting, and they're kind of looking at me like, oh my gosh, what's this guy going to do? But either way, we're going to make a lot of change.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So I do want to do a quick shout out to some other people that have popped up in the chat here. Corey Clark from Solutions Granted hopping in the show here and was on earlier, representing Tennessee also.

Brian Weiss is in the house, and the one and only from Super Ops pimping out the TechCon Unplugged. So I talked a little bit last week about what stood out for me, and it was really the idea of the smaller conferences really showing community. And listen, I like all the conferences.

I don't want any of the conferences. to be offended when I say this, but TechCon Unplugged has been the conference that I have received the most comments of people that said, this is a conference I love attending. And not because of who the entertainment is, not because of the parties, or the alcohol, or whatever, but the fact that you can sit around and talk to both other IT business owners, other techs, and the vendors, and not feel like you're being rushed, not feel like you got to be scanned in five seconds or less, but you can have meaningful conversations.

And even though I didn't really get to attend any of the breakout sessions, I wasn't probably as attentive as I could have been during the stage presentations, I still had some of those conversations. And the things that started out on stage or in a breakout session continued. And there were a couple of conversations that I had with people on, Jason, you mentioned processes.

People that came up to me and really wanted to know why is it that I stay small? Why am I calling myself a boutique MSP? And we chatted about that.

And there were people that didn't get it, didn't understand it, think I'm doing a wrong thing. And then there are people like, man, I wish I could go back to being small. But having those conversations, we come on a show like this, you do a webinar, you can't really dig deep, but we were able to do that.

And I mean, there was one table I was at, I mean, I'm not going to say there was arguing going on, but the whole idea of defining what an MSP is, is something that is still interesting in our industry. And whether you're an MSP, an MSSP, a TSP or an ASS, whatever, having those conversations is great. Let me ask you guys this, because the topic of education has been a concern of conferences over the last few years.

We got a ton of them. And let me ask, did the content meet your expectations?

[Justine Anderson]
For me, definitely. I would say it was a, I thought about saying that it's like a fire hose of information, but I think it was more like a buffet, like a really good buffet. You know that everything you try is going to be good.

And then there's more and more, but you can only eat so much. That's how it felt.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay.

[Jason Miller]
Yeah, I believe the content at TechCon, I mean, I went to two other conferences this year. I'm not the Uncle Marv, the great MC of the TechCon and goes to 32,000 conferences a year, but I made it three this year. Out of the three, I believe the content at TechCon was way better.

Last two conferences I went to before this one, and it is just, I mean, the content was okay. But, you know, when you come away from like the Super Ops Summit Day, the people they had there for the sessions, you know, Matt Lee and, you know, everybody else. I mean, the sessions were quality, you know.

I felt like the other conferences, it's just a rush to get in, get out. And like you said, the hallway conversations, the, you know, after party conversations, the hanging out part is a lot too, but, you know, I didn't get as much out of those other conferences and they're much larger. So I don't think it really matters, you know, as to what size the conference is.

I think it matters the content, the people there. And I mean, they have the best MC for sure, you know, so.

[Uncle Marv]
I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Jason Miller]
What? You were the MC, man, you were the MC.

[Uncle Marv]
All I'm going to say is this. I don't think I've ever taken as many musical requests even when I was doing DJ stuff back in the day. That was interesting and quite unique in some of the requests, but I got the Shaboozy in there, didn't I?

[Jason Miller]
Yes, you did. Yeah. Yeah, and you kept Paco and Rick half on time, you know, keeping them rushing and stuff like that.

I mean, we're only 30, 40 minutes late the first day, so we're doing good.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, but that wasn't their fault.

[Jason Miller]
No, no, no, I'm just messing, but yeah. They did a pretty good job, man.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. The hotel, there was some logistics issues with the hotel and the layout of the room and stuff, so that was that, but once we got past that, we actually did a pretty good job, and I think that Paco and Rick did a really good job along with the content committee of doing the schedule, working with the hotel in the logistics in moving us around and all of that. It did flow much better than in years past, even when we were in one room.

So, cool. I'm going to ask the question that people don't like to ask after a conference, but I asked them because I think it needs to be asked. What did you not like about the conference?

[Jason Miller]
You can ask me this before the show so I can think of it.

[Uncle Marv]
I had an outline, didn't you not?

[Jason Miller]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, you got to read these things. I prepped, man. I skimmed, I skimmed, sorry.

What did I not like? I don't know, Justine, let you go first on this one.

[Justine Anderson]
Two things come to mind. The fact that there was so much content, I couldn't go to all of the breakout sessions because I needed something from everything, so I wasn't able to see everything. I heard rumor that they were recorded and we'll have access to it at some point, and the second thing is I didn't get a T-shirt.

I didn't think to order it. I didn't think I had to order it, so I don't have a T-shirt from this year.

[Uncle Marv]
So, okay, so to your point one, yes, there is recorded content and yes, they are working on it. I'll be honest, I don't know how soon it will be out because Paco is getting married this week. Congrats, Paco.

And Rick, I mean, Jason didn't get his belt for two years, so I don't know.

[Jason Miller]
My belt rode around the trunk of his car for like a year, and then I got my 2022 belt back with my name on it now. I'm still waiting on the 2023 and 2024, so if I had to say there's something I didn't like, no, I'm just kidding. Still ain't got both my belts.

The champ's missing two belts, so no, but no, they're great. I ain't even worried about it, but I think if I had to say one thing that I could help improve or something, I was on the content committee, so I can't say nothing's really that bad. I can't decide what goes on in this thing, but not the only guy.

There's a whole group of people, but either way, something I really enjoyed and liked was the Office 365 sessions, and although the sessions were a little bit longer this year, I could sit there and have an eight-hour session with Matt Lee and Office 365 and Nick and them, so that place, it's like you just want to have a whole day-long session about that stuff, so I know it's conference. You can't really not do that, but I don't really know of anything I really didn't like, to be honest. I mean, can't really think of anything off the top of my head.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, Justine, back to your point. So there was no official T-shirt this year. The T-shirt that you saw is still available.

If you go to my website and click on the Ko-Fi button, there, they're still up. So there's T-shirts and a mug available. It's the unofficial TechCon shirt.

Okay, let's see here. Time here, oh, let's see. Juan did throw something in here with Mr. Fernandez. From a vendor perspective, it was awesome as well, and then Brian writes, small equals nimble. Something needed with AI emerging will be harder for larger organizations to implement AI being tied to systems with tech debt that are too hard to move away from. Okay.

[Jason Miller]
You know, going back to Juan there about the vendor perspective, that's one thing that TechCon does well. A lot of these other conferences or vendors push vendor, all their agenda and stuff on you on the stage instead of bringing you valuable content. So, and two, you aren't scanned at every booth.

They actually talk to you and seem like they care a little more. So I'd like to see the bigger conferences, challenge the vendors to do stuff like that, the bigger conferences. But a lot of those conferences, it seems like they're really pushing their stuff.

I know what they pay at these bigger conferences, they really need to push their stuff for the sales. I get it, but sometimes helping out with that content, and just having your name out there helps out a lot too. So I think that really, the way they do that, the vendors, they give you a lot of education, not just pushy sales.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, I wonder how vendors will rebound from this year. This year, the unofficial number of conferences has been over 500, which I believe is double from last year. And I think that there is a lot of vendor fatigue among the vendors.

So with them trying to, it's weird because I'm sure, especially the larger vendors, they probably get hit every week to sponsor a conference. And I will say this, in their defense, they spend a lot of money, a lot of money.

[Jason Miller]
Oh yeah, I know they do.

[Uncle Marv]
So having to see that return by getting us to sign up for their product, raise prices, contracts, all of that stuff, get stingy with the swag. I mean, a lot goes into what they have to spend for these conferences. And that doesn't include their travel.

A lot of times they have to pay for their own travel. So that's the one thing I'll say in their defense. What I might suggest, if I was allowed to do so by a vendor, is we not, go to every conference.

You don't have to spend that much. Save us a little money on the back end. Support the smaller events.

I don't know. That's all I can say to that. So, all right, well, guys, thank you very much for your input there.

Anything that falls outside of what I asked that you remember from TechCon that you want to chat about, besides the dealers at the casino? Dealers.

[Jason Miller]
I don't know about that. That was fun. Yeah.

[Justine Anderson]
I really enjoyed the Vegas night. It's not something I would normally do, but I learned how to do it. I learned how to play roulette.

That was a lot of fun. I thought that was a great way to end it. That was, yeah, I really liked it.

[Jason Miller]
Let's see, you know, Kevin's still in my belt. He said it was unattended, but he stole my belt. And, you know, my championship belt.

And I'm playing roulette over there, and basically ended up, I don't know, something like 20-ish pitchers of all kinds of TechCon members with some obscenities and some other cool poses and stuff with my belt. So, you know, it was all good fun. You know, I have to take down Kevin next year.

I think he's trying to challenge me here, but, you know, he's a great guy. So I do the same thing. But anyways.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. I will not address that.

[Jason Miller]
You were part of it. We all were.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. So I do want to do one thing for somebody who was very active in TechCon. And she obviously is not here to defend herself, but I'm not going to worry about that.

She's actually in the real Vegas right now. But something that I have not acknowledged a lot, but a lot of people send in Florida man stories or stories that they would like to challenge Florida man. And I kind of haven't really acknowledged it much.

Sometimes the stories that they send are like years old. And I want stories that are relevant and recent. And I always try to find Florida man stories that happened in the last 72 hours.

So normally if I get a story that's from two months or two years ago, I'm not going to do that. But our good friend and the 2024 darling of the channel, Diana Giles sent in a story to me over the weekend. And it was in reference to an Oklahoma man, 28 year old Cody Adams found himself in a difficult situation as he faced charges for unauthorized use of a vehicle and bringing contraband into jail.

Now you may say bringing it into, he was scheduled to appear in court, but he was unable to secure transportation to his hearing. So what did he do? At a gas station, he made the questionable decision to steal an unattended LifeNet emergency services pickup truck in order to get to the courthouse.

And then upon arriving at the courthouse, he was arrested by an Oklahoma highway patrol trooper as he attempted to enter. So he did make it to court, but he got an additional charge for vehicle larceny related to the stolen truck. And it was issued a $10,000 bond for the latest offense.

And you ask what his original charge was that he was going to court for? Carjacking. Yeah.

So that was her story that she submitted. And my Florida man story that I picked out was 33 year old Felipe Jesus Gutierrez of Winter Haven made headlines for his unusual criminal specialty. And this was, it was reported yesterday, but apparently on September 29th, Gutierrez was arrested at the Superway Food Mart in Polk County, Florida, after attempting to steal a jar of pickles.

And upon his arrest, he shouted out, oh, I'm going to jail as a pickle thief. And apparently it went viral. So why was he named the pickle thief?

Well, obviously he was attempting to steal pickles, but obviously that couldn't have been what he was doing. But apparently the Superway Food Mart has been a frequent target for him. Store employees reported that he is a habitual shoplifter.

And there are times where obviously he doesn't pay, but there are rare occasions when he does pay. But what he does is he throws an incorrect amount of money on the counter before leaving. So basically they had had enough.

And when he came in this time, they called the police and he was arrested. And because of all of the prior attempts and apparently prior convictions, he was upgraded to a felony petty theft charge. So the pickle man.

So you might say, who was a winner between Florida man and Oklahoma man? And I'm going to say neither, because today an Oklahoma woman put her ring into the hat or her hat into the ring. So also on September 29th, let's see.

This incident unfolded at RL Jones Airport, also known as Tulsa Riverside Airport, when a woman drove her SUV onto the airport's taxiway. She was later identified as Bonnie Campbell. She obstructed the runway, preventing planes from landing and causing significant disruption to air traffic.

Air traffic control promptly reported the situation to local authorities leading to her arrest and for driving under the influence in a highly restricted area. So she was arrested for felony aggravated DUI. So here's why.

Her blood alcohol content level was 0.34, four times the legal limit. She was driving on an airport taxiway, endangering air traffic. And apparently this was her second DUI offense.

So the winner tonight is going to go to Oklahoma woman. And I will have links to all those stories because I'm sure you're going to want to find out how in the world did she get her SUV into an airport and onto a runway. So on behalf of Lady Giles, a very successful submission to Challenge Florida Man.

Wow. Tulsa, Oklahoma. They were also famous on Live PD, by the way.

A man by the name of Sticks was made famous out of Tulsa on that show. All right, guys, I think that's going to do it for tonight. Thank you for hanging out.

No problem, no problem.

[Justine Anderson]
Thanks, it was fun.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. The one and only How About Them Dealers at Casino Night. So, all right, that's going to do it for our show tonight.

I want to thank Jason and Justine for coming in and hanging out with us tonight. Let's see. Jason mentioned I attend a lot of conferences and that is going to continue.

At the end of this month, I will be attending ASCII EDGE, which is also going to be the last event of the year called the ASCII Cup. That will be in Tampa, Florida. I've got links to that in the show notes.

The week after that, I will be in Orlando at IT Nation. Connect, and we will be covering the winner of the Pitch It contest and then attending the rest of that conference. And then the week after that, DattoCon down here in Miami, Florida.

So back-to-back-to-back conferences. And just as Jason Miller's getting caught up on his episodes, we will drop probably 20 or 30 more for him to get even further behind.

[Jason Miller]
This guy, this guy. Can't keep up.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, you're fine. You listen at three times speed or whatever.

[Jason Miller]
It's 2X, but yeah, I mean, you sound kind of funny to that, you know. Now talk about stuff.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, on behalf of the IEB, it's a pleasure to...

[Jason Miller]
That's great. That's awesome.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, that's going to do it, folks. Anytime you want to find out anything about the show, just head over to the website, itbusinesspodcast.com. There you can listen to past episodes, whatever speed you like.

You can find them in your favorite pod catcher, take them with you wherever you go. Shop on Amazon, support me on Ko-Fi, do all of those things. That's going to do it for tonight.

We'll be back again next week with another show. And thanks for watching. And until next time, I'll see you next time.

See ya, Holla!