Recently, I had the opportunity to attend my first tech industry conference in Frisco Texas, N-Able's Empower 2024. This post will be about my takeaways from the trip and the event, a summary of the event, what I learned, and what I would do differently. This will be a bit of a longer one, so lets dive in!

Planning the Trip:

This was a trip that was planned well in advance so a member of my team could attend this important industry event. Only, that person wasn't me, it was one of my colleagues. While I spend plenty of time working in our RMM N-Central, the person ultimately in charge of our implementation is my colleague who we'll call B. For this reason, B was the person who would be flying down from the Northeast US to Texas for the conference. At least, that was the plan.

I got a call around 2pm on Saturday March 23rd from my boss. He let me know that, due to some personal circumstances, B was no longer able to attend the conference. As the other person on the team who works inside N-Central, I was given the option to step in for B and fly down last minute and attend the event. I had to ponder the craziness of the situation and make sure I didn't have any personal plans that would interfere so I let my boss know I'd call him back. After a short bit of deliberation and a pep-talk with myself about how it was in fact a bit crazy, but could be a lot of fun, I made my decision. I called my boss back and with three simple words, a wild adventure was kicked off. "Let's do it".

Over the next few hours, I received numerous emails and text messages regarding flights, the hotel, and the event itself all being moved into my name. I had approximately 22 hours to pack and prepare as I would be flying from Boston to Dallas the following afternoon. Aside from clothes, my work laptop and phone charger, by far the most important thing when I travel is my Kindle. I wasn't reading anything at the moment, so I spent some time that evening and settled on a few books I could choose from at 30,000ft.

The Event:

Day 1

After a 5 hour flight delay, and 45 minute drive to the hotel on Sunday the event was due to start in just a few hours. I got what sleep I was able to, but quite quickly it was time to put on my game face and start day 1. After a short bit of time working with the registration team for the event, they were able to successfully finalize the registration change and get a badge printed for me. After that I was off the the races with the first event of the morning, a networking breakfast. Despite a lack of available tables, breakfast was decent and there was plenty of networking going on.

Day 1 consisted mainly of a few main-stage events and a few breakout sessions for each of the event's "tracks". These tracks were N-Able's way of breaking up the business people and the technical people into their own unique sessions with similar skill sets and reasonable crowd sizes. For me, since the original attendee, B, was scheduled to be on the "technician track", that's what I inherited (and what I would have attended by choice anyways). The technician track session for day 1 was essentially a demo of N-Able's new N-Central certification for Patch Management. We were given a detailed presentation on how Patch Management worked in N-Central and were then allowed to take a short test to formalize our new certification. Prior to this event, I hadn't worked much with Patch Management in N-Central, so it speaks to the quality of the presentation that I was able to get up to speed and pass the certification test. Later in the day on the main stage, the CEO of N-Able gave a short but somewhat business-jargon-heavy speech and formally kicked off Empower 2024. While there was an opening event party later that evening, I choose to go out for Texas BBQ with some friends I'd met at the event instead.

Day 2

Day 2 had a bit less structure than day 1, at least on my specific schedule, but it kicked off the same way with a networking breakfast. After breakfast, there was a main stage session that had a distinctly sales-pitch kind of vibe that was probably the least engaging session of the whole event. It ran quite long and I dipped out before it ended to attend my next technician track session. I later learned I'd missed some import information about N-Central's new REST APIs. Due to this presentation running long, the API update was delivered while attendees on the technician track were heading to a session, so unfortunately the people most likely to be interested in that information were the ones missing it.

I also learned on day 2 that there was an entire expo hall that I'd somehow missed on day 1. After speaking with some of the other attendees, it turned out I wasn't the only person who had missed the expo hall on the previous day. I spent a considerable amount of time on day 2 going through the expo hall and checking out each of the booths. I made a conceded effort throughout the afternoon to have a discussion with each of the vendors in attendance. Some of the conversations I had were quite valuable and have even resulted in me and my team to taking a renewed interest in products we'd previously decided weren't right for us.

While I attended fewer formal sessions on day 2, that didn't mean I wasn't getting value out of the day. I had tons of great conversations with both my fellow attendees and the vendors at the event. Being on the technical side of things, I don't interact with the business side of things in depth most of the time so while I really enjoyed getting to talk to both my fellow nerds, I also really enjoyed my conversations with some of the more business-focused attendees. At the end of day 2 was an offsite party hosted by an external group, but once again I choose to skip that and instead went out to a local burger place.

Day 3

For me, day 3 was probably the most eclectic of the event, most likely due to the fact that I had to dip out early to get to the airport. I choose to skip breakfast and the morning main stage session in order to get some extra sleep as I knew I'd have a long day of events and travel ahead of me.

The main two sessions I attended were both on the technician track, a presentation on N-Central's new Analytics feature and a security tabletop exercise session. The former was interesting and it was clear that the crowd had lots of input and interest in the new feature. However, the latter was easily my favorite session of the event. The security tabletop exercise was highly informative and highlighted some key points for improvement in my own team's processes. We were given some great resources to get us started with our teams back home, and then ran through 2 tabletop scenarios. The scenarios felt realistic and I was elected by my table to serve as our groups incident commander. Hearing the different approaches to the scenarios from both the people on my team and around the room was interesting. We all had a good laugh when someone suggested "Sell the client KnowBe4" as a next step after a business email compromise. Earning a challenge coin from N-Able for being the incident commander was definitely a nice bonus too!

Unfortunately, I did have to leave for the airport before the final main stage session. Realistically though, I was feeling pretty worn down by this point in the event and was unlikely to have gotten much out of it had I been able to stay. I'd spent the previous two days networking with people from around the world and by 2pm on day 3 I was definitely tired. Thankfully, I was able to get back to DFW airport without difficulty and even got through security in under 20 minutes! I had a nice flight back and finished the book I'd started on the way to Texas before touching down in Boston at 1am. I believe this was the first time I both started and finished a book in its entirety either in an airport terminal or at 30,000ft. (The book was Upgrade, by Blake Crouch and it was an enjoyable read from an author I'm fond of).

Takeaways:

What Worked

On a personal level, I think I did a good job at putting aside my introverted nature for a few days. I networked my butt off, had a great time doing it, and made countless new connections because of it. I talked with fellow MSP's about their unique approaches and those discussions gave more more ideas and insights than I could count. For me, these conversations were the best part of the event by far. I can't remember who it was on the day 1 main stage, but they suggested treating the conference as a "contact sport" and I think taking that suggestion to heart allowed me to get the most out of the event. I'm also really glad I choose to venture off with my small group to sample some of the local food. Good BBQ is hard to find in New England and the place we visited, Hutchins, was well worth the line wrapped around the outside of the building.

In terms of formal sessions, the highlight was unquestionably the day 3 security tabletop exercise on the technician track. I found that session to be really engaging and it highlighted some things that I'll be working on improving with my own team over the coming months. It can be hard making the time for something like a security exercise, and being able to stress test our collective knowledge in a safe and controlled setting was really valuable. Even the breakout sessions that I didn't enjoy as much were still interactive and not overly lecture heavy which I appreciated as someone with ADHD. (I'm sure I wasn't the only one who felt this way).

I also enjoyed the roadmap session for N-Central as that is the main product from N-Able that my team is using. To be perfectly candid, N-Able's track record for delivering things on the roadmap isn't perfect. But in my personal opinion, as someone in a technical role, they've been stepping up their game significantly in the last year. I'm really looking forward to what's coming in the next year.

Finally, the event's venue at the Omni PGA Frisco was really lovely. The meeting spaces were plenty spacious and the hotel room accommodations were thoroughly luxurious. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the catering throughout the event and the sweet treats during the coffee breaks were particularly delightful. Every single Omni staff member I spoke to was pleasant and friendly and overall this made a big impression on me. While this was a fully paid-for business trip, I would likely revisit the resort on my own accord if I'm ever back in the area and had a bit extra to spend on some upscale accommodations.

What Could've Been Better

On a personal note, I think one thing I would improve upon the next time that I attend a conference like this would be to come a bit more prepared. While I had less than 24h notice that I would even be attending, I don't think I would have thought to bring along some, retrospectively basic, things anyways. A good example is business cards, I don't think I would have previously thought to bring some along even if I knew ahead of time I would be attending the event. Having now attended my first conference, as low tech as they may be, I would have liked to have had business cards on hand to give to people I had good conversations with. I also would have liked to have a bit more company clothing available to me for the event. I saw lots of people wearing company branded t-shirts and sweaters and while everyone was dressed respectably, I did find my eye being drawn to people with company branded clothing a bit more.

Additionally, for my next business trip, I would want to try to get there either a day earlier than I did or stay one day later. Even if that extra day is at my own personal cost financially and/or through using PTO, I think it would be something I'd want to do. By no means was this a vacation, but if I'm in the area anyways, I might as well make the most of it. This trip was my first time in Texas and while I'm glad I was able to enjoy some local food, I did have to miss some events in order to do that. Although, as much as I would have loved to have attended those events, I was feeling socially drained by the end of both days anyways and breaking off into a smaller group was nice. Ideally, I would have liked to have had an extra day in the area to do some exploring and sightseeing in addition to attending all the scheduled events.

For the event itself, overall I was pleased with the setup and planning of the sessions that were available. Of course, this is without the context of previous Empower events or really any other industry conferences generally. With that being said, I did feel that there were some areas for improvement. I felt the restriction of only being able to attend sessions on the technician track was understandable but unfortunate. A lot of the main stage sessions went on just a bit too long and occasionally veered into feeling like a sales pitch which I wasn't a huge fan of. Particularly with Cloud Commander which is a new tool for N-Able. I can appreciate wanting to let your core user base know about a new product, but it should have been its own session on the main stage, not lumped in with a roadmap session on existing tools. In addition, this was the main stage session that ran long and caused some people to either miss their breakout sessions or leave early which was sub optimal.

Other areas for improvement, as silly as it sounds, would have been for more tables to be available during breakfast and lunch. There seemed to be an underestimation of the number of tables that would be needed and I found myself searching for a place to eat more than once. While this did encourage me to venture outside my comfort zones and pick a random table, at some points there were simply not any spots/chairs available at all. This particular problem did seem to improve after day 1 but still wasn't perfect by the end of the event. This could be viewed as N-Able suffering from the success of attendance to their own event.

Finally, I would have liked to have more scheduled time to walk around the expo hall. I'm not sure if it was poorly advertised on day 1 or if I missed something but the only formal time set aside to check out the booths was at the end of day 2. I choose to spend most of my lunch time on day 2 in the expo hall and that turned out to be a good idea because by scheduled expo hall exploration time came around the vendors were clearly a bit low on energy. This coincided with a "pub crawl" around the expo hall which seemed fun but as someone who doesn't drink, I would have liked to have had a mocktail option available instead of just soda or water.

Recap

I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to fly down to Texas to attend N-Able's Empower 2024. While not perfect, I was pleased with the content and quality of the event itself and found the conversations I had with other MSPs and the connections I formed to be invaluable. Finding out I'd be attending less than 24 hours before flying down and less than 48 hours before the event began certainly made it one hell of a wild ride from start to finish. I'll definitely be signing up to attend future events from N-Able and in other industry conferences in general.