Do you hate to sell? Sales skills are not optional when you work for yourself-they are absolutely necessary to your success! If you've got a mission to share, but struggle with sales and marketing, Soft Selling skills will help bring your gifts to
the world. Takeaways include:

• Why we "hate" selling-and how to turn that around
• Why prospects don't buy—and what to do about that
• How to double your sales immediately with one simple technique
• The greatest mistake in selling that is costing you clients and hurting your reputation

This will be a two part presentation:

Part 1.
Datto presents a brief on their hybrid cloud and local device backup solution. A Datto SE will be available to answer some questions.

Datto protects essential business data for tens of thousands of the world’s fastest growing companies. Their Total Data Protection platform delivers uninterrupted access to data on site, in transit and in the cloud. Through Datto’s network of partners, they provide companies with products and services designed to continually keep business running.

Part 2.
Following the Datto presentation, we will discuss several other popular backup systems including as SecondCopy, SpiderOak, iDrive, Macrium Reflect,
Synology, Carbonite, and more.
 

Small businesses are often more vulnerable to fraud and embezzlement than larger companies. Come and learn what professionals working with small businesses should know about fraud and embezzlement in small companies, including:

• How to prevent fraud
• How to Detect fraud
• What to do when you suspect it
• Ways to measure it

• Overview of switches/networking devices that offer tcpdump/pcap.
• How a span port works
• Viewing and troubleshooting via Wireshark.
• If time allows, advanced topics such as how to view SSL payloads in Wireshark.

Discussion Format: Roundtable of the full membership

Wireless networks in the business environment can be problematic. We will be discussing some advanced networking technologies and assessing which one is best for which scenario.

We will discuss the following issues:

What technologies do you use and what are the benefits?

• Open Mesh
• Mobile Beacon
• Powerline adapters
• Other?

What products do you use and what are the costs?

• Ubiquity
• Ruckus
• Invictus
• Linksys
• Trendnet
• Netgear
• TP-Link
• Other?

Windows Server 2012 simplified and enhanced a feature of its Remote Desktop Services called RemoteApp. It allows users to run specific programs remotely in such a way that they appear they are running on the user's local computer. One use case for RemoteApp is making it possible to run a legacy Windows application on iPads or Android tablets. Microsoft Azure RemoteApp is the cloud-based version of this service--in other words, it allows users to run Windows applications from the cloud.

Tonight's presentation will give you an overview of several of the Azure services available, then focus on RemoteApp in particular and show how it can simplify distributing applications to any device. We will explain how RemoteApp is different from running applications through Remote Desktop (or other virtual desktop interfaces such as LogMeIn or TeamViewer). An overview of how an application is prepared for RemoteApp will be shown. Then we'll run a few apps setup for demonstration, list pros and cons, explore pricing, and discuss the market potential of this service.
 

This is an opportunity for members and guests to share how they resolved a large technical challenge in the last year. An additional challenge will be to present your story in three minutes or less. The goal is to offer useful and novel solutions to problems other consultants could apply to their own work.

Local network security specialist Eric Hardin will shine the light into the darkness of keeping the bad guys out and the network running securely.

Outline:

• Threat Landscape
• Practical Network Security
• Network Troubleshooting
• Security Training

Matthew Dwyer and Christian Martin will discuss some advantages and disadvantages of going with Google Work and Office 365. Rather than a battle of which is better, this will be a discussion of situations where each will excel. They will discuss key features, cost, and the system requirements of each. They will also discuss issues you may run into when migrating clients to and from each of these services.

In November we started a discussion of resources we use. We focused on what products and services we re-sell, where we get them and how that works for us. This month we will continue that discussion but focus on those resources that help us run our business and provide our services.

1. Website Resources: What Websites do you use in your business and how: For example, http://Speedtest.net to test Internet speed, or Passmark CPU tests to establish a baseline for CPU speed. MXToolbox.com for blacklists mxlookup etc.

2. Training Resources: What resources do you use to keep current and get training? These should include: websites, podcasts, schools, video casts, online training, webinars, etc.

3. Business Resources: Finances, Client tracking and billing

4. Software we use: Password safes, text editors, FTP, Email, PDF etc.

5. Dealing with Windows 10: How do you protect privacy? How do you prepare clients for upgrades?

6. Other: What did we miss?

Please try and make a list of your useful resources and bring it to the meeting. We'd like to get everyone involved.