Verus Technologies

Reed’s Law is the assertion of David P. Reed that the utility of large networks, particularly social networks, can scale exponentially with the size of the network.  Jeremy Epstein of Never Stop Marketing.com gave a presentation to the IT Marketing community this morning on Reed’s Law.  He gave some pointers on how to get the community to drive your company’s marketing.  1. Identify your raving fans 2. Cultivate them and 3. Activate them.  He gave an example of his client Daniel Pink, the author of The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need.  Mr. Pink had “Bunko Breakfast” at Starbucks before his book signings.  People began to talk about them and ask when the next “Bunko Breakfast” was going to be in their town.  Jeremy and Daniel sent the fans care packages of 6 books and topics to discuss.  The fans took it from there.  The book sales were much higher than they would have been without these “Bunko Breakfasts”, for sure.   Verus Technologies may apply some of what I learned in the seminar this morning.  We would like to have gatherings once a quarter for our clients and vendors to mingle and network.  More to come on that…

Via the AutoTask User Community Website:

We’re pleased to announce the 2010 Autotask UnITy Awards, honoring a select group of Autotask users who have contributed their time, energy, knowledge and insights to help their peers in the Autotask CommunITy. The awards were presented by Autotask CEO Bob Godgart and Director of Community Development Mark Crall at the Autotask CommunITy Live! 2010 event.

Alex Elliott took down the coveted Community MVP Award for 2010. The company he works for employs more than 2000 people, with 300+ Autotask users. Alex is the Autotask champion at his company, and so he is the go-to person for all of those people who need help with Autotask. Yet, somehow, Alex finds the time to be one of the Community’s most consistent contributors, regularly providing helpful suggestions and answers to others

Lee Evans, last year’s Community MVP, won another award this year as the Top Contributor for 2010. Lee squeezed past David Wolfram (2009 Top Contributor) to win the award. But more impressive than the sheer number of posts that Lee makes is the quality of his posts. Lee is always ready to jump in to welcome new members to the Community, point out common threads and provide helpful links, and in many ways help keep the Community organized.

Travis Austin is another repeat award winner, earning the 2010 Most Innovative member. Travis is continually building new Autotask integrations and applications — some for free and some for a fee — and making them available to other Autotask users. Travis is also all over the Community’s forums offering up help and advice to others who want to tap into the Autotask API. (If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the Travis video currently posted on the Autotask home page.

Other award winners include:

Most Helpful Member: Trey Thompson
Most Thoughtful Member: Brian Kerhin
Best Member Blog: Stuart Selbst
In addition to the UnITy awards, several Autotask customers were awarded 2010 Autotask MVP Awards. These awards are given to Autotask customers who have been particularly helpful to Autotask Corporation, and provide us with help, advice, referrals, testimonials and support. This year’s Autotask MVP award-winners are: James Wirth, Steve Speier, Osama Faris.

Autotask also honored two VARStreet customers for their help to us through the acquisition process. Our VARStreet MVP Awards went to Emtec, Inc. and Pomeroy IT Solutions.

Lastly, we awarded two companies for their success as the top Taskfire partners. Our 2010 Taskfire MVP Awards went to AtNetPlus and NSPI.

Congratulations to all these award-winners who have gone above and beyond with their time and talent in order to strengthen and enhance the Autotask experience.

I’ve been using Free Conference Call for a while now.  They’ve release a new free service, Free Conference Call HD.  You still get free conference calls in HD Voice quality for up to 1000 participants.  In addition, you now get a web interface (and iPhone App!) to control the conferences.  The interface allows you to name participants, mute individual callers or the whole call, record calls, run reports and much more.

They don’t sell your information, use it for marketing or bother you in any way.  The only email I’ve received from them was to let me know about their new HD service.

So how do they make money?  This product is their “Lost Leader”.  This is a common business practice, especially on the Internet with Cloud Services.  Offer your smallest product for free, get people hooked, then let them subscribe to their premium services (like 800 numbers).

However, for most of us in the small business sector, the free service will be perfect.

Take a look!