Breakaway 2010 Is Upon Us!

From CompTIA CEO, Todd Thibodeaux

If it's early August it must be time for Breakaway.  Hard to believe it's my third already!  We have some really terrific stuff planned for all the attendees and exhibitors.  We're really looking forward to seeing everyone there.  This year's event is quite possibly the most ambitious channel event ever put on.  The range of exhibits, attendees, sessions, events within events and summits will provide something for everyone.  And as is my privilege, I get to provide an update on where CompTIA is working to serve our members and the industry.  Here are some of the highlights.

At last year's events we talked a lot about the power of online communities.  But over the course of the last year, we've found a lot more value in emphasizing face-to-face by participating in just about every major vendor, distributor and industry event we could find.  The payoff has been substantial with a doubling of our membership in the last year.

During the last 12 months, we've also engaged the inaugural leadership for our six member communities.  To date, we have more than 400 individuals actively engaged in defining how CompTIA can help the industry move to where it needs to be.  The Communities are developing organizational credentials, foundational soft-skills education programs, defining the boundaries of professionalism, helping us define who we are and how we bring new members on-board, creating common terms and definitions, developing research, leading our PAC and more!

This year's event will be about Healthcare IT and we hope the program we put on will be just the first of many high quality foundational educational offerings we'll produce.  Our Board of Directors recognized the important role CompTIA can play in creating a higher level of knowledge and professionalism in the channel and this past April authorized an investment over the next three years of nearly $1 million to develop programs.  It's all about increasing the level of professionalism in the channel and not allowing your company to be defined by the lowest common denominator.  I want to see very CompTIA member as "best in class".

We're also proud to talk about our work during the last year with the Chicago Academy for Advanced Technology, or CAAT for short.  CAAT is a new technology focused magnet school for children in the Chicago public school system.  The inaugural class of 150 students finished their first year in June punctuated by a visit from Steve Ballmer.  What interested us the most was the way this new public / private charter high school, developed in cooperation with the Chicago Public School system, uses technology to immerse the students in an engaging and motivating way, but they needed our help.  So on behalf of the CompTIA Educational Foundation we provided the school a grant of $150,000 to use as a challenge to the broader tech community in Chicago and nationally.

I'll also talk about a few of the big goals we're focusing on including 5,000 - 500 - 5.  The goal means getting to 5,000 member companies, who all know they are members, resulting in 500 "Intensely Engaged" executives over a five-year period.  We're well on our way to that number and I can stand here and tell you with certainty everyone we say is a member knows for certain they are a member.  In context, a number approaching 5,000 would put us in the top 20% of all non-profit trade associations in terms of total members.  The number would also yield a strong representative mix of solution providers large and small, distributors and all the key vendors.  It's also a number that would allow us to build the kind of depth of participation we want from every company who joins.

We look forward to seeing you there.