Houston we have a PROBLEM with the SMB MSP ecosystem.
Last week at NASA Houston the full AI paradigm shift in the MSP community was laid out at the Thread AI Service Unleashed Conference like NASA did eons ago when folks said it couldn’t be done. Thread is arbitraging the opportunity to lean forward into the future for MSPs like NASA did for space travel. FYI - everyone enjoyed the format as a sub-100 attendee gathering that was intellectually intimate. At the same time,
a couple of my colleagues were attending the Cisco event with 22,000+ attendees. That would be contra to what Thread did and in speaking attendees at the Thread event, that was a big Texas-size NO!
In short, Thread is doing it all day every day to get MSPs bounce from malcontent luddites to astronauts and this event was one giant step for MSP mankind to make AI happen.
There is a split underway in our tech community but it’s always been that way and always will (e.g. Mac vs. PC ala the 1984 Super Bowl ad). It’s about leading the parade or following. Be the counterculture (like Thread) or the establishment. The choice is yours to make. Thread showed at the event they are leading the parade.
Here are some conference highlights (note when I review an-d event, this is note a comprehensive tome but a glance and maybe it creates a wee bit of FOMO to motivate you to participate next time).
Death to the tickets - the basic “mission statement” is to make the ticket management workflow much more efficient.
No 12-step play book - thank you baby Jesus there wasn’t a single on-stage huckster promoting a kit to make you an MSP AI millionaire in 90-days. There are plenty of those gathering promoted in our industry (don’t get me wrong - some of them are my friends and I defined their right to free speech)
Eat your own dog food. Many attendees used the event to get hands-on experience and complete individual and group exercises. Nothing like active learning for MSPs to learn the new world of AI stuff. The Certificate of Completion was a nice gamification touch and I just need to trot down to Dollar General to frame it and hang it.
Two agenda highlights (I will not list the entire agenda sign up for the demo at www.getthread.com to properly deep dive into this)
- Magic Levels
- Known as “service magic,” we were exposed to three layers of increasing features, functionality and complexity. This is a progressive ladder you can ascend to drive AI-based efficiency.
- Voice Integration. Got a sneak peek (or better yet, a sneak listen) to responsive voice-driven AI functionality that is a work-in-progress and starting to be rolled out to the MSP partners.
Summary
The vibe was cool counter-culture. Basically everyone liken it. I liken is perfect event for MSPs with more questions than answers. Bottom line: we don’t know what we don’t know.
PS - we even learned a new ten dollar word(s) called "Service Intelligence" and more on that another day in another way.