Evening
As this year’s Open Day doubled up as our 20th birthday, we wanted to celebrate with the people who've helped and supported us along the way - our exhibitors, our staff and, most importantly, our customers, many of whom have been with us since the beginning in 1998.
Bridging the gap between the exhibition closing and the free bar opening was the now-annual Q & A session with our MD, Paul Cubbage. The free bar opened immediately after at 6pm and ran throughout the night.
The evening included a 3-course dinner, the return of the ShopTalk National IT Reseller Awards, free casino, magic mirror and – for most the highlight of the night – an ‘interactive musical quiz’ hosted by the uniquely entertaining Chrissy Bray.
As Chrissy’s website says “this is like nothing you’ve seen before” as we all stepped out of our comfort zones and loved every minute of it. Chrissy's unique personality managed to get “even the quiet ones – especially the quiet ones” out of their shells for a bit of karaoke, air guitar, paper plane flying and dancing. Plus some dad-dancing from our MD Paul and the first public airing of Sales Manager Sonya’s now legendary singing* (thanks Chrissy!).
It was a night to remember and a fitting end to a fantastic day.
* yes, it is that bad
National IT Reseller Awards
The ShopTalk National IT Reseller Awards returned for our 20th Anniversary this year. As in previous years, the Awards are designed to be of value, whether you nominate yourself for one, or vote. Why? It's a chance to share good ideas, best practice and what's worked for some resllers that might work for others. But it's also a chance to highlight activities that haven't worked and how they might with a bit if finetuning.
Target had NO influence on who nominated, who voted, how they voted or the outcome of the voting - so the winners were those whose nominations were deemed best by the only people who could vote - Target customers.
And this year the standard of entries was higher than ever. There was a noticable improvement in quality of activity too, from BullGuard livery on a works van, to public gaming tournaments and whole new websites, the standards set were exceptional.
But there were winners. Some were close wins, some were much more decisive but every single one of them were deserved. How do we know? Our customers said so.
Photos of the winners are available here, in the Awards photo gallery.
Here's the full list of winners in each category - huge congratulations to all of them, comiserations to those who didn't but, most of all, thank you to everyone for taking part:
Best Business Idea - GHI Computers
Best Event or Activity - DTec Computers
Best External Signage - 121 Computers
Best Internal Retail Display - DTec Computers
Best Marketing - FYL Direct
Best Shop Window - Martin Group Services
Best Use of Social Media - DTec Computers
Best Website - FYL Direct