Susanne Dansey’s Blog

As a member of this community, you should hopefully be able to understand why we are involved and the potential it holds for you and other peers.

But have you actually sat and thought about what you want from it? It maybe that you want to share experiences and your knowledge with others to help them improve their business model. It may be that you are a small business without the resources or the inclination to grow and you can use peers to partner with. It maybe that you view it as an opportunity to sell your products or services to other members. It may not be any of these but there is a reason or two as to why you read this post and spend time during your day absorbing the postings that others make on various forums.

If all of us joined the community only to profit from, then very soon we would see the community fail. But this isn’t going to happen. There are plenty of us already involved who know why we get excited at the prospect of our ‘club’. Just ask your group leader and you’ll see why.

The essence of the community is built on trust, empathy, good business sense, and an understanding that by changing the way we work will allow us to achieve something different from what we are used to.

Many times I have been asked ‘why bother?’, ‘why should I share?’. Well believe it or not, you don’t know everything! However, imagine not needing to know everything because the guy down the road knows something you don’t and vice versa. Wouldn’t it be easier to partner for the times you need to so that a) your customer gets the answer they were looking for quickly, b) you don’t have to sit reading books and techical forums to learn what to do, and c) you can bill your customer quickly and know that the job was done well? Billing quickly means more time to spend growing your business and spending time looking after your personal life and your family.

There are many good places to find out more about what opportunities the community offers you and if you have a look to the right of this page you will see an extensive list of all the groups that are currently available for you to pop along too.

If you are in the UK then I suggest you check out David Overton’s site which is very much a site which demonstrates who he is and communicates his passion for your community outside of Microsoft.

One site you should certainly visit no matter where you live is the home of the Magical M&Ms where you will gain a comprehensive insight into SMB matter both of a technical and business level.

I always keep my links up to date so I will always add ones that are appropriate over on the right.

If you don’t have time to scan the forums, why not download some podcasts onto your MP3 player or laptop? Try the SBS Show and even the official Inside SBS podcasts. I download these regularly and listen to them whilst I’m travelling which is sometimes a better way to learn.

Don’t feel you have to sign up for everything. Make use of the RSS feeds if they are available and don’t worry about trying to read everything all the time.

Just make sure you realise the community is a lot to do with sharing. You will only get out of it what you put in and no matter what partner programme is flavour of the month that the community is still standing strong representing the needs of you and your peers.