Making a channel event hit the target

One of the things the channel missed during the pandemic was the chance to attend events and meet peers and make connections face to face.

The past couple of years has seen calendars filling up and life getting back to normal, but the pressure on the people organising events to ensure they are a valuable use of the channel’s time is stronger than ever.

Distology recently wrapped up its Disruptor Day event held in London for another year, but already thoughts are starting to turn to how the 2025 edition can remain a draw for the distributor’s vendors and resellers.

Bryony Mageean, marketing manager at Distology, said it was a year-long process to get everything lined up, with the channel player currently going through the attendee feedback to see where to make further improvements.

“We finished Disruptor Day last week, so now I’m starting to think about Disruptor Day in May in the Netherlands, InfoSec in June, and then planning for the event next November already,” she said.

Given the pressure on attendees’ time, a great deal of thought is put into the agenda. The latest Disruptor Day saw sessions on the importance of identity, fending off ransomware, and selling security into OT environments.

Distology also puts effort into booking a speaker from outside the industry, with insights that should encourage the audience to think differently. Bringing in third-party experts is a common practice, but ensuring their messages have relevance to a channel audience is not always as straightforward. This year, Distology plumbed for former SAS veteran Colin MacLachlan, who was able to give a different angle to questions on security and resilience.

Sarah Geary, COO at Distology, agreed that the channel enjoyed meeting face to face, but it had to be worth their time: “It’s about being able to bring a consolidated view to our partner landscape, not only of the current vendors we’ve got in our portfolio, but also some new and exciting [ones].

“Everyone’s always trying to remain relevant from a security perspective. It’s evolving at such a rate. With these events, we really try to do something differently.”

She added that the appetite for networking was strong in the channel, but people staging partner events could not take an audience for granted: “Our partners are invited to events every day – they could probably be at an event every day if they wanted to. So, it has to be something that makes it worth their time.

“People buy from people; it is relationship based – but that said, people are getting pickier with their events after Covid, with all [this] time and pressure,” she said.

Staging events is a skill, and making sure people turn up and it goes to plan can cause sleepless nights, but Mageean said she enjoyed the experience and is already looking ahead to the next one.

“My background is predominantly events management, so I thoroughly enjoy planning the day. You can see, from the attendees and from the partners saying, ‘I’d love to hear more about that, and I’d love to follow up with that person’, that it is important for them, which obviously gives us a sense of reward,” she said.