Fall harvest is the time when you reap what you sow. Farmers have spent all year tending to their crops and now’s the time when they are ripe and ready to be gathered. It’s a time to be grateful for what we have. Here at CompTIA, we are thankful to have an amazing, bright and engaged membership that works with us on a daily basis to nurture our initiatives and plant the seeds of the future.
We’re growing. In 2016, we’ve engaged more than 90,000 individuals (up from 60,000 in 2015). These people are attracted to CompTIA’s resources and tools – something that our 2,000-plus premier-member organizations regularly take advantage of.
We’re expanding our reach. With 1,000-plus onsite attendees and nearly 3,100 live-streamers participating via ChannelCon online – we were able to bring exclusive ChannelCon content to more than 4,100 IT pros and vendor companies. This year’s ChannelCon featured NFL great Peyton Manning! Mark your calendars for our 2017 conference; July 31 to August 2 in Austin, Texas!
We’re making tech her story. More than 5.1 million people worked in core technology jobs in the U.S. at the end of 2015, but just 25 percent of those jobs were held by women. CompTIA is calling on Rosie the Riveter – the cultural icon associated with the women who joined the workforce during World War II – to inspire young woman to consider technology as a career.
We’re training people for IT careers. CompTIA’s philanthropic arm, Creating IT Futures Foundation (CITFF), piloted two new career training courses this year while building on its flagship IT Ready program for underemployed adults and its strong work-based learning programs for high schoolers. To pave a path for future software developers, Creating IT Futures partnered with Techtonic in Boulder, Colorado, to launch DevPrep, a pre-apprentice boot camp for coders. To help new IT pros, who may have the tech skills needed for their jobs but not the soft skills in communication and conflict resolution, Creating IT Futures debuted PrepareU, a series of interactive classroom lessons.
We’re advancing the public sector. Membership in CompTIA’s three public sector councils has grown 29 percent from 63 to 81 members to-date. Our public sector councils are continuing to expand their engagement and influence with their constituencies, whether it’s helping state and local governments understand how to best leverage technology to better serve their citizens or promoting innovation within the commercial, civil and national security aspects of the space industry.
We’re making a difference in Washington, D.C. We hosted nearly 120 members last February at our annual DC Fly-In. The DC Fly-In provides not only a showcase for the CompTIA public policy team’s legislative efforts each year, but it affords tech stakeholders the opportunity to gain the attention of Washington’s movers and shakers. Registration is open for our 2017 event!
We’re leveraging our collective expertise. When you have 2,000-plus IT experts at your fingertips, you pay it forward! We launched AskIT – a free service that helps individuals with things like Internet connectivity, computer speed and a whole lot more.
We’re evolving our communities. Our 10 member communities have been busy creating a variety of initiatives to further our members’ career development and business acumen.
- Our Australia/New Zealand Community is rolling out Dream IT locally and providing legal templates and resources for ready consumption in their region.
- Our Advancing Women In Technology Community reached over 10,000 people with its Dream IT message, conducted a major makeover of the Career Resource Center (CRC) and is hosting a program to help people learn effective and current resume practices.
- Our Canadian IT Business Community created tools to educate members on the principles of focusing on the customer experience, developed a self-assessment tool to help small- to medium-sized businesses identify their current and future cloud needs, and provided regional education on customer buying behaviors.
- Our Cloud Community produced a set of Cloud Community Perspectives infographics, enabled cloud solutions providers to improve profitability with a series of cloud go-to-market tools and created a Cloud Partner Ecosystem Chart that provides profiles for eight different types of cloud players in the IT space.
- Our Future Leaders Community generated a series of mentorship videos that highlight the dynamics of successful mentor/mentee relationships, created an individual development plan to assist employees in career and personal development and put together an infographic summarizing the results of the personality testing conducted at ChannelCon.
- Our IT Support and Services (ITSS) Community created a compensation chart highlighting earning potential and entry qualifications of all phases of an IT career lifecycle, established the ITSS LinkedIn group as the place to go for services-related information and developed an infographic to identify the stakeholders within warranty repair.
- Our IT Security Community designed a series of short videos intended to help members start the dialogue about security with end-clients and created a simple guide that walks a solution provider through the steps to test their client’s perimeter.
- Our Managed Print Services Community wrote a case study on remote monitoring that provides guidance as to why an MPS provider should deploy this tool, established a series of FAQs on assessment, implementation and measurement, and developed a resource that channel print resellers use as a template for creating efficient collateral.
- Our Managed Services Community created an interactive tool that brings together resources in all seven phases of a client’s lifecycle, developed virtual hallway chats as a means for MSPs to have peer-to-peer conversations, and began a three-part Next Gen marketing webinar series.
- Our UK Channel Community localized CompTIA security resources to help UK managed service providers add cybersecurity as an offering and further expanded Dream IT resources to the region.
We’re challenging our advisory councils. Our four advisory councils – the Vendor Advisory Council, the Distributor Advisory Council, the Partner Advisory Council and the End User Commission – focused much of this year on peer-to-peer engagement and developing thought leadership content such as our Quick Takes on RFPs and an ongoing four-part hybrid VAR video series. Additionally, in 2016, our councils developed a Business Model Calculator and a Telecom Assessment Tool.
While we’re taking a moment to enjoy the fruits of our labor, there’s no rest for the weary! The New Year will be here before we know it and you know we have plans to go bigger and get even better! We can’t do it without you. Stay tuned and stay involved.
