Which MSP Conferences Are Worth Attending?

Hi, I'm Megan Killian, and I'm the Chief Consultant here at MKC Agency. I help MSPs scale their revenue from anywhere between $1 to $2.5 million a year into the $5 to $7.5 million a year range. I usually exit when they're worth about $10 million a year in revenue, and I've been to 4 MSP conferences this I live locally here in Orlando, Florida, just outside in Newland, and I hate flying and traveling all over the place. I have 4 kids, so it's just ridiculous for me to try to get all over the place. So I've attended 4 MSP conferences here in Orlando this year: MSP GeekCon, MSP Ultimate Growth, Build It, and IT Nation. And MSP Ultimate Growth and MSP GeekCon were my 2 favorite conferences. Conferences. And like, there's a large margin before you get to Build It and then another large margin before you get to IT Nation. I believe MSP GeekCon was actually the least expensive of all 4 conferences that I attended, and I left with more key takeaways that I could share with my clients they could immediately put to use than I got from Build It and IT Nation combined. IT Nation, I think, was like $800 this year. Build It was like $600 a this year, and they had nothing on MSP GeekCon. Both Build It and IT Nation felt like, quite frankly, like I paid to go get pitched. And I don't want to crap on those conferences because they did have their own unique value and they are worth attending. But MSP GeekCon was an incredible conference for a variety of reasons. The networking was amazing, primarily because no one who was there was there to pitch vendors were not there like, I can't wait to shove my product down somebody's throat. I felt like every single session I went to, the person speaking was an expert on what they were talking about, even though many of them positioned themselves as not being the authority on their subject matter. It was— the sessions were well organized, the speakers were articulate, there were clear clear takeaways, um, and many of them came along with like workbooks or, um, you know, spreadsheets or presentations that you could take back and share. Um, in particular, like Kyle Christensen had a session about understanding the cog that you are inside of an MSP and being more than a cog in the machine, um, and how you can explain to your employees like how they affect revenue and affect the business model. So explaining the MSP business model to individual techs, which I shared with all of my clients, and they all gave me feedback that they loved. It was a smaller conference, so there weren't people everywhere and it was in a smaller space. So I didn't feel like I was running around with my head cut off the whole time. All the events were worth attending and also the food was good, which I mean, you got to admit, like the food impacts the conference. Like long, long story short, for a third or a fourth of what you can pay to go to a larger event. You can attend a much smaller event that— and I'm saying this as a revenue professional— it is a tech-focused event. It was much more focused on the technical side, talked about cybersecurity solutions, compliance, a lot, a lot of sessions that were genuinely for the technician, which if you're an MSP that believes in investing in your people and growing them to make them better, this is the conference for you to send them to. It wasn't just a whole bunch of CEOs patting each other on the back and saying like, we're all so great. Not that that's all that the other conventions are, and I love those CEOs, but this was a lot of technicians, early-stage employees coming to learn about the space, learn how to be better at their job. And MSP Econ delivered on that. The community is incredible. These are some of the most welcoming, genuinely like friendly, empathetic people I've ever had the privilege of networking with. Everyone tags each other in on things that they think they know more about. There's a lot of openness and friendliness and people are providing introductions to one another. In a way that just doesn't happen at other conferences, particularly when you have people who hypothetically should be considered competition for one another. There's no vibe of competition at MSP GeekCon. It is 100% collaboration, improvement, focus on the future. There are so many, like, true leaders at that conference who give credit to everyone else and don't take it for themselves, like Ray Orsini, who just— they talk about how you can support your people, better your people, invest in your people, grow them, and they give the thanks to everyone else rather than congratulating themselves. If you've been to other conferences, you've probably sat in those sessions, the general sessions that are just a sales pitch for whoever is organizing the event and where the things that you've already paid for from the event are gatekept from you in those sessions. Like you have to come attend the session to get the things you paid for with this event. MSP GeekCon is just not— it's not like that. It is really meant to be a resource and a tool for the community, especially technicians all the way from Tier 1 up to your highest level security guys, the guys that are working in the lab to try to make the technology better for the future. Everyone can take value from the conference, including revenue resources like myself. I actually felt like sales was simplified more at MSP GeekCon than any other convention I've been to. Where perhaps it was like overcomplicated and turned into many more steps than it needed to be. Alex Farling gave an incredible talk on the MSP sales process, and I think it was 5 steps. They were super simple. It was very editable. So I just, I cannot recommend this conference enough. If you're putting any budget into attending events, into growth, into learning, it should be spent here.