By Andy Slawetsky – The Business Technology Association (BTA) held their annual National Conference September 19 – 21 and I stopped in to see What’s Happenin’!. This year, the event was held in NYC at the Stewart Hotel in the middle of Manhattan, quite a different setting from last year’s National Conference in Las Vegas (click here to see photos from last year).
The event began Wednesday afternoon with a warm welcome before moving into a presentation by Matt Smith of HP, one of many great sponsors of this year’s conference
Matt was followed by James Lawrence the day’s keynote speaker, (sponsored by HP). James made history a few years ago by completing 50 Ironman competitions in 50 consecutive days. It was an incredible story and I remember him being interviewed on the morning news shows when he finished his last race.
Another presentation and one team-building experience later and it was time for the Channel’s Choice Awards ceremony. BTA has been asking their dealers to rate their vendors in a variety of categories and topics in order to give recognition to those that rate highest with their members.
Click here to see all my photos and videos from the event
The winners in the four award categories:
- Primary Product Line: KYOCERA Document Solutions America Inc.
- Remanufactured Cartridges Provider: Polek & Polek
- Third-Party Leasing: Canon Financial Services
- Wholesale Distributor: Supplies Network
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Andy with Carly from LD Products
Towards the end of the day, Richard Staubin from event sponsor Xerox provided another presentation before the welcome reception where dealers and vendor sponsors mingled and networked, had some cocktails etc.
The next morning began with breakfast, presentations and a BTA workshop before the Cannata team of Frank, CJ and Scott Cullen took the stage to provide attendees with their Access Japan 2018 overview – a report from their visit to the “big 6” Japanese hardware manufacturers sponsored by GreatAmerica.
Following the Cannatas was a presentation from sponsor Panasonic and another from David Ramos of Visual Edge Technologies.
Lunch came next as did more presentations from sponsors, finally leading into the evening event – a dinner cruise around NYC sponsored by recent Channel’s Choice Award winner Polek & Polek. The cruise was an absolute blast.
The next morning started bright and early with more presentations before finally winding down the day with closing comments and some prize drawings.
BTA events like this are a great resource. With over 50 sponsors in attendance, dealers get a chance to talk to vendors about just about everything they need to run their business. Here’s a partial list of those who were there:
ACDI,BEI, Brother, Clover, Epson, ESP, GreatAmerica, HP, Katun, Kyocera, LD Products, Lexmark, Muratec, OKI, RISO, Toshiba, Xerox and more!
It was a great couple of days in NY with some of the biggest names in the imaging industry. The sessions were great, especially the afternoon panel the second day hosted by Frank Cannata, which had senior production execs from Xerox, Ricoh, Canon, EFI and Konica Minolta.
BTA events like this are a great resource for dealers and it was a pleasure to see so many friends and familiar faces. I look forward to the next one!
