The third annual Autotask Community Live conference is set to take place at the InterContinental Hotel in Miami from May 22 to 24, 2011.† According to Autotask’s chief marketing officer Bob Vogel, the conference is “an opportunity for the people, who found each other through our community, to meet up and do their thing.”
Autotask, a business management software developer, has hosted two previous Community Live events for its partners. In an exclusive interview with Channel Pro-SMB, Vogel explained how the conference came to be.
“It’s really an outgrowth of a community that we built directly inside our product,” Vogel explains. “Autotask is unique in that, because it’s hosted, it’s on the screen all the time. … So, inside of the application there is this area that’s called ‘The Community.’ If partners click on it, it connects them to every other Autotask user.”
Vogel says users of the The Community have access to close to 40,000 other service providers through the interface. “It’s an incredibly robust community that is built of forums, discussions, and places where these guys are collaborating with each other and communicating with each other.”
Community Live, therefore, makes perfect sense. The event gives Autotask users that use community online a chance to meet up in person and talk shop. “A lot of these people have built-in relationships,” Vogel says. “It’s an opportunity for them to meet each other, and to begin to network.”
Autotask will, of course, take the opportunity to “go live” with a few announcements of its own. Vogel says his company’s partners will “learn about the things that are coming down the pike,” adding, “we also provide a couple days of more in-depth training on the product.”
More than 500 attendees participated in Autotask’s Community Live event last year, including partners, manufacturers, and other managed services vendors.
