SMB Nation just wrapped up its fall 2011 conference in Las Vegas with a focus on emerging technologies, and once again it was a great event.

Team SMB Nation promised 27 sessions, 38 speakers, 5 parties, and who knows how many hangovers---and they delivered!

Now in its ninth year, the event has grown as a neutral third-party convention of SMB resellers and managed service providers in the channel. Each year, SMB Nation provides training for its attendees, with a heavy focus on technology rather than sales. Harry Brelsford, founder of SMB Nation, estimates that only a third of the conference content is based on sales and business growth.

Dozens of vendors from stalwarts like Cisco and Microsoft to emerging vendors such as Vocalocity displayed their solutions for hundreds of attendees. Sessions ranged from rock-solid traditional IT offerings like Microsoft SBS to telephony to (of course) cloud.

Using surveys distributed prior to the event, Brelsford ensures that the session content is what resellers and MSPs want, rather than what SMB Nation thinks they need to know. Interestingly, this year, a majority of the attendees indicated that they wanted to learn about traditional on-premises IT, not just the hot-button topic of the cloud, which has saturated most recent industry events.

Also notable from the show was the awarding of the 2011 ASCII Cup to Intronis. And, former Autotask founder and CEO Bob Godgart cruised the show talking about his new social networking venture ChannelEyes. Read more about that here.

Read More In: News Industry Event News Peer Advice ASCII Resource Center Intronis Resource Center