Small business IT providers will learn about everything from building wealth to relieving stress at the eighth SMBiT Professionals National Conference in Melbourne on October 27 and 28, 2023.
The event, which will take place at the Pullman on the Park, Melbourne, has expanded to also include elective workshops on October 26.
It aims to stand out from typical technology conferences by tackling business, technical and wellbeing topics.
“The personal aspect of [business] is something that I feel is being neglected in a lot of business conferences,” SMBiT Professionals CEO Wayne Small said.
“So many business owners identify with their business. I know, I've been there, I've done that, sold my business, and then what? What do I do now?”
“So many people talk about, for instance, selling the business, but they don't talk about what's next. What do you do after you sell the business? And so we've got sessions on things like that.”
With this in mind, the SMBiT Professionals National Conference will feature such sessions as “Want to retire? You've got options”, which takes into account that “retirement” for self-employed people might mean “a different mix of working, consulting, and spending more time on hobbies and family adventures”.
On the business front, growth remains the top topic of discussion among SMBiT Professionals members, Small said.
Members want to know “how to go about finding new customers and how to go about growing the business with existing customers.
They’ll get help with this at the SMBiT Professionals National Conference from Ryan Spillane, James Davis and Ben Town, who will discuss what attendees can do to improve business growth and “transform it for the future”.
The event will also cover types of outsourcing and what could be right for attendees’ business models, ways to make Microsoft 365 work harder for clients, generative AI and cybersecurity, and “the seven stages of building wealth in your IT business”, among other topics.
Paula Januszkiewicz will give the keynote talk, titled “Hacker’s Perspective on New Risks: Revising the Cybersecurity Priorities for 2023”.
She is a Microsoft Enterprise Security MVP and founder of Polish-headquartered cybersecurity firm CQURE and has spoken at numerous events, including RSA, Black Hat and Microsoft Ignite.
Januszkiewicz will demonstrate “how hackers and cybercriminals identify and exploit threats using the most up-to-date techniques, so that you are able to observe them on your monitoring system and prevent them in the future.”
Adding to the scope of the event will be other sessions tackling personal topics, including one titled “Completeness in a chaotic world”, which will explore “key factors that influence our health behaviour” and taking steps to “overcome these challenges and live healthier, more fulfilling lives”.
Attendees will even learn basic exercises designed to help when they’re under pressure.
“We don’t share enough”
Small sees a need for more interaction between Australian small business IT professionals.
“We don't share enough and therefore because of that, people don't know that they're there are groups that are helping you grow your business like this."
"That's one of the challenges we're trying to overcome as an association.”
More than 160 businesses and about 500 people are SMBiT Professionals members, and the number of members is growing, Small said.
The association’s members meet monthly in cities around Australia and online.
Small noted the importance of small to medium businesses to Australia’s economy.
“If we in SMB can help other SMB businesses then the bigger picture is that's helping our country grow,” he said.
He hopes SMBiT Professionals National Conference attendees will “walk away feeling empowered because they're going to build a lot of new relationships with people that they may or may not know, they're going to take away a tonne of knowledge that they can use, and via our chapter meetings they have the ability to follow-up with people.”
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