SMBiT Professionals rebrands national conference, introduces 'Next Level' theme

SMBiT Professionals is gearing up for its annual conference, held this year from 23 to 24 July, rebranding their event to ‘Next Level’ to reflect the industry organisation’s “rapidly expanding” membership base and new chapters, including one in New Zealand.

Vivien Dehammer, who took over as executive officer in November of last year, said that for years, SMBiT has been thinking about a conference rebrand, with the new theme encompassing the organisation’s desire for their members to grow their businesses to the ‘next level’.

“We’ve always had the theme of ‘grow your business’, so we were looking at the conference, and how can we market it a little bit different,” she explained.

“Taking your business to the next level means many things - how do you interact with yourself in a better way? How do you become a better leader? Obviously there's technical things like AI and cyber security too.

“Our members are all different sizes – there’s two to five person businesses and there's members who have 15 to 30 staff, so we need to balance how we help the bigger members to look at their leadership and strategy and help some of the smaller members work out ‘this is what I'm learning from sales, this is what I'm learning from marketing, this is how I can build my team’.”

With a new venue for this year’s event – the Western Sydney Convention Centre in Penrith – Dehamer said that SMBiT is “going to step it up from last year”.

“The venue itself is a bigger venue, so it'll be a much better venue - the sponsor exhibition area is bigger and it's going to be easier for members to mingle with the sponsors,” she told techpartner.news.

“We're planning the night before the conference to have some preconference welcome drinks, which we haven't done before. That's a good opportunity for everybody to be in the room [together], network, get to know the new members, get to know the people that have never come along to the conference before and also meet the new sponsors that will be sponsoring the event.”

The day prior to the event kicking off, Next Level 2026 will feature hands-on technical and business workshops on 22 July, and while Dehamer admitted that SMBiT is “still working on what that content is going to be”, possible themes being bandied about internally include cyber security, leadership and/or strategy.

Looking at the broader market, Dehamer said that the conversations she’s had with partners reveal that technology service providers are feeling “quite positive” about the year ahead.

“They're having to look at the structures of their business and work out how they need to change in order to remain viable and in order to take their business to the next level, but the feedback I've heard [from the market] is all really positive,” she said.

“Cyber security is a big [issue] at the moment and being in a position that if you have some kind of breach, that you know what you can do and how you can handle it. Certainly for some of the smaller businesses, I think that's a big they're learning in the next 12 months.”