Las Vegas —WBM Office Systems president JoeAnne Hardy understands she has big shoes to fill replacing Don Conaby, the outgoing Venture Tech Network president.
Conaby, the president of Oshawa, Ont.-based solution provider Conpute, was the first VTN Canada president to share the role with his U.S. counterpart, Scott Goemmel of PMV Technologies of Troy, Mich. Both were considered North American co-presidents, according to Kirk Robinson, who heads the VTN worldwide for Ingram Micro.
Under Conaby and Goemmel, VTN completed the integration of the Canadian and U.S. councils, creating a North American structure.
With a North American council, Conaby and Goemmel led the members along with Ingram Micro’s Justin Crotty in developing the Seismic managed services offering with Level Platform Inc. of Ottawa.
Through a newly created initiative called VLAN, however, Hardy will now be able to tap the minds of Conaby and Goemmel along with other past presidents.
Robinson said the VLAN initiative was something that needed to get done.
“It was a sore spot for past VTN leaders because they were left out and now they can take on some of the tasks the council cannot take on,” he said.
Hardy said that core memory of VTN would be lost without an initiative such as VLAN.
“You lose the core history and knowledge of what has been tried and now you have this sage panel of people with experience and passion at your side,” she said.
Conaby said the work load on the VTN president is a heavy one and VLAN helps.
“Past presidents have been very passionate about the VTN community. Every one of them served full terms and the organization is around 10 years old and we still have a very active membership,” Conaby said.
Hardy will be the fifth VTN Canada president.
“For me this is an opportunity to spread some of the passion for VTN out a little further with the charter members,” she said.
One of her top priorities for VTN is to develop a social networking platform for the members.
Under Conaby, VTN Canada established end user tools such as the virtual trade show. Hardy wants to continue that work with the launching of the social networking tool.
“It will get a lot of traction and members will be able to utilize that,” said Hardy.“We have already seen some hilarious things in the general session with some mock pages, but I think it will end up being an important tool that will help us differentiate against other VAR communities out there in the market.”
She also wants to recruit the next great partner to VTN. One that can fill a geographic spot or specific skill set VTN Canada needs.
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