Thankful to Everyone Who Helped Us Finish One Great Chapter—and Start Writing the Next

As we wrap up another momentous year for the CompTIA Community, I want to give a very heartfelt thank you to everyone who helped us have an amazing 2024.

I'm eager to see what 2025 brings, but to be honest I think it could be hard to top this year when we received the Community of the Year IT Nation Torch Award, had record growth for our flagship events, and more engaged members than ever-many of whom helped us produce some amazing content.

That said, I'd like to take this opportunity to highlight some of our accomplishments and thank all our members and team that continues to collaborate on advancing the IT channel and our community.

A Library of Guidebooks to Help Your Business

I always like to say that our community is "by members, for members" and that point has never been truer after seeing all the great content produced by our Industry Advisory Councils, interest groups and more. In 2024, our members worked together to help us produce an MSP Guidebook to create a culture of efficiency, a Tech Vendor Guidebook for creating an optimized channel program and a Cybersecurity Guidebook for MSPs to stay ahead of the latest threats. Plus, we have an updated Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Guidebook coming soon. Thank you to all our members who volunteered so diligently to produce these great resources for our members.

More Education Resources for Members

Speaking of great resources, our own member education team also published the Skills Assessment and Development Playbook for MSPs, which addresses the challenges of training and upskilling your staff while getting the most out of your training budget. Our member education team continues to build and update an amazing portfolio of courses for MSPs/solution providers, vendors and distributors, including our popular Managing the Technology Channel, which helps prepare channel account managers to improve their company's value proposition to partners.

Regional Groups, Global View

I had the great opportunity to visit and connect with our members in four continents this year-North America, Europe, Australia/New Zealand and the ASEAN region.

It's always wonderful to meet our members and see the impact our community has and the passion our members have for this industry. Our global community now includes six regional groups around the world, with plans to expand even further. So, danke schön, hartelijk dank, maraming salamat po and thank you in many more languages that now make up our membership.

Recognition for Our Most Engaged Volunteers

Our annual Spotlight Awards recognize our most engaged members-individuals and organizations-around the world. Congratulations to all the winners and finalists and thank you for all you do for us and the industry. Also, remember that nominations are now open for our 2025 North America Awards, which will be presented at CCF in Chicago in March.

I also want to thank our 2023-24 Member of the Year, John Harden of Auvik Networks. John has been a tireless supporter of our community for many years and is always willing to do anything and everything to help others advance their careers and businesses. He joins a growing list of luminaries who make up our previous Members of the Year. Thank you to all our leaders and award winners for all you do.

Cybersecurity Programs to Keep the Industry Safe

Keeping our members-and their customers-safe has long been a priority for our community. We are proud to work with our members to accomplish that-namely with the CompTIA Cybersecurity Trustmark and CompTIA Community Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (ISAO). Thank you to the CompTIA Community ISAO Executive Steering Committee and Industry Partner members for their continued commitment and to all the organizations that have achieved or are working toward the Cybersecurity Trustmark. The world is a safer place because of all of you.

High-Level Thought Leadership and Commitment

Our Industry Advisory Councils continue to shine a light on innovative technologies and trends that IT channel companies should be aware of. Meanwhile, our Member Champions (prior volunteer member leaders whose terms have expired, yet want to remain engaged at a high level) have a mission to advance the technology industry and its workforce. Both groups have helped all of us learn more about important solutions and trends and how to implement them into real-world solutions.

Philanthropic Efforts

Each year, we set aside $10,000 USD for each regional group, industry advisory council and other member groups to provide a financial contribution to tech-related charities, or in certain cases a charity that has a mission that touches or impacts the region making the donation. This year, we proudly donated $150,000 to several worthy organizations.

We also partner each year with ChannelPro Network to award the Cecilia Galvin Scholarship, in memory of Cecilia Galvin, a true pioneer who shattered more than her share of glass ceilings and has been an inspiration to so many in our industry.

And our philanthropic efforts will only expand next year! Stay tuned for more information on that in the coming months.

Our Team

Finally, I would be very remiss not to thank the incredible team that I get to work with each and every day. We are few but mighty. Every single person works diligently to help our members and to enable our global community to be the best in the industry.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving Day in the United States this week, please take a moment to reflect on all that we've accomplished together this year and think about all we will do in 2025. Thank you again for all that you do for this industry, your customers and our global community.

If you have not engaged with the CompTIA Community in 2024, I hope what you have read here will encourage you to in 2025. We are far better together than we are on our own. This is why we say, "Together, We ARE the CompTIA Community."

MJ Shoer is the chief community officer at CompTIA.

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