 Welcome back to JSA TV, the newsroom for tech, telecom, and data center professionals, Buffy Herakides, and we are coming to you live from Channel Partners 2023 in Glamorous, Las Vegas. And joining me today is Darcy Nealyn. She is the CEO of IQWired, also part of TCSP, and an advisory board member for Channel Partners. Darcy, welcome to JSA TV. Thank you. Nice to be here. Yes, it's such an honor to have you here today, and you are one of the keynote speakers of this event. You'll be speaking tomorrow about the state of the agent channel. Do you want to tell viewers a little bit more about the keynote discussion that you're planning to have tomorrow? Sure. Yeah, it's a great opportunity to hear from some of the thought leaders in the industry about some of the changes that are happening within the industry. I don't think it probably would come as any surprise to anyone that there are significant changes right now with private equity coming into the channel. It's creating opportunities, but it's also creating a lot of change within our environment. A lot of different players now than there were even five years ago. A lot of money, a lot of difficulty with scaling. Those are some of the conversations that we'll be having tomorrow. Those are definitely important conversations to have because being a part of the channel myself for so many years, it's significantly growing. I mean, we have over 8,000 attendees here today. Right. It's amazing, but that leads us into the TCSP organization and all that you're doing to support this growth. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Sure. Yeah. The TCSP, it stands for the Technology Channel Sales Professional Association. This is a cause that's near and dear to my heart because I've been in the channel for a number of years and we've never had an association before. If you look at every other industry, every other industry has one. I think that it wasn't obvious that we needed one until we had an issue occur with the FCC. They actually passed an order in 2020 banning agents from receiving commissions if they were working with hospitals or mental health providers who participate in the World Health Care Program. That's governed by USAC. Many people might be familiar with E-Rate. Yes. It's the same organization that governs both. We found out, unfortunately, the hard way that we were essentially unprotected and underrepresented, not represented at all really, in Washington. What we did as a group of agents came together and we formed a coalition that then we created an association specifically for agents and to represent our interests in Washington, but also beyond that, looking at ways that we can share best practices, that we can create an ecosystem that works for everyone because, quite frankly, there's a lot of opportunity out there and it's hard to know everything these days. I mean, obviously, the gamut of services is broad and so understanding how to be most effective is our goal with the association as well and to create peer groups so that we can rise as a group of people. Yeah, that's amazing. Thank you for all you're doing to support the channel. Thank you. It's so important in today's evolving world to have an organization like yours to support the channel. So how about a little bit about your advisory role with channel partners? Why don't you talk a little bit about that? Well, yeah. So I am fortunate enough to be one of the advisors for channel partners and it's been a real privilege because we are given an opportunity to kind of help bring ideas to the table in terms of some different things that might work better for the show. One of the things that we've talked about and by the way, channel partners is great about listening to our feedback. So one of the things that we said we really like is we like the Venetian as an example because it's a much better venue. But even just some of the talk tracks that you're seeing here, we're really working with channel partners to make this the best possible conference that there is because, again, I think channel partners is representing our interests in the industry and we want to make sure that we're aligned with them. And so we appreciate the chance to have an organization really take our feedback into consideration. Well, your feedback is doing great things because again, this is the biggest and the best channel partners ever here in Las Vegas. And the venue is amazing. It is. I mean, the Venetian is beautiful. It's a five star hotel. You know, there's everything here that you could possibly need. And as the event continues to grow, I mean, it's important to have some insight from channel leaders like you. So thank you for all that you do. Where can viewers go if they want to learn more? So from a TCSP perspective, they can go to tcsp.org. We actually are having a membership drive right now. So it's a free one, your membership for anyone who signs up. We'd love to have all agents participating because again, their strength in numbers. And this is a time where we all need to come together and make sure that that all boats rise. Yeah, for sure. So membership drive, free membership, free membership, tcsp.org for that information. And thank you so much Darcy for joining us today. It was such an honor to have you here. Thank you for all that you do for all the agents and for this wonderful event here in Las Vegas for channel partners 2023, the biggest channel partners to date. And thank you viewers for tuning in to another fabulous episode of JSA TV. Happy channel networking. Thank you.