Feeling Trapped or All Alone (or Are You Part of a Community)?

We all need community. Through relationships, both business and personal, we receive support and can support one another. Through community we can interact, share and develop valued programs and solutions to our problems. These connections also allow us to make the world a better place. Business owners can often feel isolated when facing threats on their own, wondering many times if they are the only one facing a particular problem. Whether facing the current economic climate, keeping pace with the fast changing IT landscape, or just managing the ever increasing demands on today’s business, owners need community involvement more than ever.

With those challenges in mind, CompTIA’s developed a collection of collaborative groups earlier this year to meet the needs of today’s IT business professional. With seven active communities addressing everything from Healthcare IT to Cloud/SaaS, there is a supportive team for almost everyone! The CompTIA communities are designed to function just like your individual peer groups; people with a common interest coming together to network, learn and address challenges they cannot address on their own. For more information on all of the individual CompTIA communities we’ve developed with the help of channel partners like you, be sure to visit the portal at http://www.comptia.org/communities/home.aspx. You can also browse through our vast array of member resources, many of which were developed by these groups.

Be sure to join us for two of our upcoming face-to-face community meetings. The Managed IT Services Community will be meeting on October 24^th and 25^th in Las Vegas in conjunction with SMB Nation’s Fall conference. During this session, we’ll be discussing development updates on our managed services industry credential and the latest on the impact of cloud computing on managed services delivery. We’ll also be planning initiatives and programs for 2011. The meeting will start at the conclusion of SMB Nation 2010 and you must register separately for our event at http://guest.cvent.com/d/7dq5xk/4W.

The CompTIA IT Services and Support Community also will be meeting this fall; November 3^rd and 4^th in San Francisco, California. The security keynote at this event will be delivered by Chris Whitener, Chief Security Strategist at HP. We’ll also be hearing from experts on the latest in IT service delivery, working on a number of the group’s current initiatives and strategizing on goals and plans for 2011. You can register for this meeting at http://www.comptia.org/events/meetings/usservices.aspx.

It doesn’t end there! Watch for additional collaborative face-to-face community meetings to come later this year and in early 2011. To summarize, community means several things to me:

• We’re not alone


• We matter to others


• We can help others and be helped


• We can make a difference

 Join one of the CompTIA Communities and help us build the industry’s resources (and its future)!