Play-Doh, Clams, CoMITs, management plans and liberal arts

Ok, summer is over. The Browns have actually won a game, and the Indians are headed to post-season. As someone who grew up in the 60’s-80’s in Cleveland that still is absolutely “Twilight Zone” worthy (like one of the Play-Doh Day submissions here).My wife Julie and I (ok, mostly Julie) had our 16th annual clam bake on Saturday with about 40 or so friends and family attending. Had a fantastic day from a weather perspective.I just posted Simplex-IT’s Q3 Report Card and our goals for Q4. Overall, I’m happy with the progress we’re making. I think we’re positioning 2019 to be the most successful year for Simplex-IT. We’ve got a great team, and we’re coming up with new ways to improve it all the time. That said, 2018 looks to be finishing up nicely. Kevin (Tech Director) and I have been getting project requests from existing customers. Seriously, if you’re looking for us to do some work for you during 2018 get your request in sooner rather than later! And John (New Business) and I have been equally busy working on completely new customers (and have some new folks joining us already).On Friday I had the pleasure of speaking to over 100 other MSPs (Managed Service Providers, the "name" of our industry) via the web. I was talking about our unique approach to providing our services to organizations with existing IT departments (we call it CoMITs or "Co-Managed IT services"). We're generating a lot of interest and excitement with this offering. More on this to come! Thanks to Robin and Jeff and all the folks at Technology Marketing Toolkit for inviting me to speak and putting it together.We’re not quite ready to announce it, but I suspect we’ll be adding one more position to the Simplex-IT world before the end of the year. Plus jackets. Plus quarterly formal training for our existing customers.Boy did we have fun with “National Play-Doh Day”. As you know, we’re not big on the sending out Christmas or Holiday cards. It’s not that we don’t care, we just think that most of us (ok, not me personally<sniff>) are already getting a lot of cards or cookies or the like from other companies during the holiday season. So we look for holidays that are a bit…different. And yup, we succeeded on that one. Congrats to Sara over at SearchMasters for her epic creations, and I know she’ll enjoy her Atari game console!Keep your eyes peeled for “Dark Web Day”. Ok, this one we made up ourselves. But keep your eyes peeled for it all the same.We’re going to have yet another seminar here in Stow this month. Microsoft is making some…well, peculiar (even for Microsoft) changes to their licensing and support models for Microsoft Office in 2019. We’ll be discussing that in our own inimitable style. More on that by clicking here.And we’re going to try something different. We’re going to be creating some short videos dealing with various IT topics of interest. We’re considering doing that as opposed to monthly webinars. We want to continue to share knowledge (that’s our brand, after all). I think that might be a more efficient model. Patti did our first one of these on the differences between Project Standard and Project Online. I’d love to hear any feedback you might have on that.Spent the morning that day at Hiram College, my alma mater. I’ve been a member of the Alumni Board for several years. I’ve watched the school slooooowly work on recovering from some…well, really bad management from prior administrations. Part from necessity they are well on their way to what truly seems to be a complete redesign of the liberal arts concept. Check out http://Hiram.edu for more information (although a lot of it will probably not be public for a couple of months yet). Those of you who know me know that I’m fascinated by the transformation of information sharing on all levels, including education. Hiram (IMHO) is coming up with a fascinating program that combines the 20th and 21st century with far more than lip service.Ok, still waiting for the first sighting of Christmas ads. It’s already October, after all!