Our top picks for best SLED events

By Jessica Wilhelm, SLED Contracts Specialist

Marketing budgets are always tight, and we never seem to have enough funding or time to be at every event. immixGroup attended 8 major SLED conferences in 2022 and we identified 3 major themes we wanted to share with you to help you plan and prioritize your 2023 conference selections.

Best value for your wallet

Beyond the Beltway, centrally located in Tysons Corner, is especially appealing to the D.C., Maryland and Virginia (DMV) SLED customer base.  It’s a must-attend conference for sales reps and market intelligence analysts. A booth presence is affordable, providing logo recognition and networking opportunities with DMV customers.

Texas DIR Information Security Forum is cost-friendly, offering great value for your dollars! The Platinum sponsorship includes a 10×20 booth and a speaking session. Besides being well-organized, the sessions are packed with relevant content and a lead list is provided at the close of the conference.

Most informational

NASCIO Midyear & NASCIO Annual Conferences are stellar opportunities to listen and learn! You hear directly from CIOs about their priorities, successes and upcoming initiatives. This is an excellent event for manager-level sales individuals and market intelligence analysists to attend. NASCIO is about learning – not selling! If you’re not ready to commit to sponsoring, which can be expensive, consider attending as an individual for a fraction of the cost.

EDUCAUSE is large in scale, geared toward educational institutions and procurement officers.Its break-out sessions provide attendees opportunities to gain insight into the higher ed landscape, hot topics, trends and forecasting for the future. The Vendor Expo portion is more focused on networking with other vendors while the breakout sessions give opportunities to sit with – and learn alongside – higher education officials.   

Networking value

NIGP Annual Conference is attended by folks who are close to or in the procurement cycle. We met individuals who had purchased off our contracts and procurement officials who manage those contracts. Booths at the vendor expo were plentiful and varied — hosted by resellers, manufacturers and cooperatives. NIGP offers ample exposure to procurement officials and end-users, which is of great networking value! 

Texas DIR Vendor Expo combines affordability and excellent government attendance, making the trip to Texas well worth the time and resources. Customers find you on site to discuss upcoming procurement initiatives and DIR contract officials are in attendance, standing by to answer questions. In addition, the CIO, CTO and CPO from DIR/State are on site, making this conference extremely valuable for networking with Texas customers.

To help our partners wrap up the year, immixGroup hosted our signature event, the 7th Government IT Sales Summit in November. This one-day event offered federal and SLED tracks, with well-attended sessions full of relevant content.  The unfiltered breakouts featured current and former esteemed government panelists and market intelligence analysts sharing insights on the current and future landscape in the federal and SLED spaces. 

The closing reception and vendor expo was the perfect place for our channel partners (resellers), vendor sponsors and other guests to make the connections that will hopefully propel their business forward in 2023.

We hope our feedback on these conferences provides valuable insight as you choose your conference priorities in 2023. Please consider joining us for next year’s Government IT Sales Summit.  We hope to see you at a future event!

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