The usual way an MSP sends a team to ChannelCon EMEA is to book the hotel, print the badges and let everyone sit in the same row of the Daniel Priestley keynote taking the same notes. We call it the Shared Row, and it's the surest way to pay for a team and bring home one person's conference. The agenda for London on 9 and 10 November is built for splitting up, with tracks that genuinely suit a sales lead, a technical lead and whoever runs the business when the owner isn't in it. So here is the one session each of them should own, and what the rest of their days should look like around it.
The sales lead: Patrick Burgess at 09:30 on the Monday
The session not to miss is "Pressure-Test Your Growth: An MSP Go-to-Market Workshop", which Patrick Burgess runs at 09:30 on 9 November before the exhibition hall has properly woken up. It's a workshop rather than a talk, which means your sales lead turns up with your actual pipeline, your actual pricing and the market you actually sell into, and sits in a room where somebody who isn't on your payroll gets to push back on all of it. Most MSP go-to-market plans have never been tested by anyone outside the building, and the first chance to change that on this agenda arrives before the first coffee break. Book it, and tell them to bring the numbers.
Pressure-Test Your Growth: An MSP Go-to-Market Workshop
09:30 to 11:00 · Plaza Suites 1 - 3 - Level -1
Patrick Burgess
The rest of the Monday is where the corridor earns its keep. If it's their first ChannelCon, the First-Time Attendee Mixer at 11:15 is the best hour of the event for meeting other MSPs who are also wondering where the room is, and then the GTIA Welcome Keynote with Dan Wensley at 13:00 and Daniel Priestley at 13:45 are the sessions the whole team should sit through together. At 15:30 send them to the panel "What Your AI Strategy Is Missing" with Sophie Bert, Jack Cooke, Harriet Robbins and Jenna Vreugdenhil, because the question every prospect is asking right now is the AI one, and a sales lead who can answer it in plain English wins the meeting. Then it's the reception at 17:15, the dinner at 18:15 and the after party at 20:00, which is an evening of exactly the conversations they came for.
Day two for sales is the AI day done properly. James Stanger's "A Practical AI Marketing Primer for MSPs" at 10:15 and Mit Patel's "Turning AI From a Buzzword Into Revenue" at 13:30 are the pair to attend with a notebook open, because between them they cover how you market with it and how you charge for it. Dr. Elke Geraerts runs the hands-on workshop "The Human Side of AI" at 14:30, and Graham Norton closes at 16:00. And one thing the printed schedule buries: Dan Scott's workshop "Drive Sales by Building Relationships and Trust" runs at 09:00 on 11 November, the morning after the closing reception. If your sales lead's train home is booked for the Tuesday night, change it.
The tech lead: the ICO fireside chat at 16:30 on the Monday
Pick "AI, Cyber Risk, and the Regulator's View: A Fireside Chat with the ICO" with Heather Toomey and Tim West at 16:30 on 9 November, and make it the fixed point in your tech lead's agenda. Vendors will explain what their tooling does all day in the exhibition hall, and they'll do it enthusiastically. The regulator's own account of how it is thinking about AI and cyber risk is the thing you can't pick up at a stand, and it's what your clients' contracts, your insurance renewals and your next incident write-up will be judged against. An hour in a room with the ICO is worth more to an MSP than a day of demos.
AI, Cyber Risk, and the Regulator's View: A Fireside Chat with the ICO
16:30 to 17:15 · Plaza Suites 1 - 3 - Level -1
Heather Toomey, Tim West
The Monday morning is a cybersecurity double bill that starts early. Chris Johnson's workshop "ITSP Cybersecurity Maturity Doesn't Just Happen" is at 08:30, which means your tech lead is in a seat while the sales lead is still finding the venue, and Andrew Mitchell and Lisa Person follow at 10:15 with "Turning Intelligence into Action" on getting real value from the GTIA Cybersecurity Resource Hub and ISAO. If you're a GTIA member and nobody in your business has ever opened the resource hub, that second workshop is the one to sit at the front of. After the shared keynotes at 13:00 and 13:45, Paul Peters speaks at 15:30 on ITSPs in the push for cyber resilience for small and medium businesses, which is the client segment most of us actually serve, and then it's straight into the ICO chat and out to the reception.
Day two, the tech lead's list runs on risk rather than product. Sharren Kennedy on "Cyber Insurance in the World of Emerging AI and Cyber Threats" at 10:15 belongs alongside the ICO session in their notes, because insurer and regulator are the parties who decide how expensive an incident becomes. Hena Kless at 11:15 asks "Who Can Read Your Customers' Messages?" and covers secure communication, E2E encryption and cryptographic risk for ITSPs, which is a question your clients haven't asked yet and will. Rod Baptie's talk on AI costs, compute and competitive advantage at 14:30 appears on both the tech and the leadership lists, so decide in advance which of them attends and which works the hall. Graham Norton at 16:00 and the closing reception at 17:00 bring everyone back into the same room.
The second in command: the Resilience Stress Test at 16:30 on the Monday
The one session for whoever runs the business when you're not in it is "The Resilience Stress Test: Build the Playbook Before You Need It", a workshop at 16:30 on 9 November with Greg Jones, Rebecca Quinlan and Aaron Watts. Your second in command is the person who'll be holding the phone when something goes badly wrong and you're on a flight, and a playbook they helped build in a room full of other operators is worth a great deal more than one they were handed in a PDF. It runs at the same time as the tech lead's ICO chat, which is the point of bringing them both: you come home with the regulator's view and the playbook on the same evening.
Workshop: The Resilience Stress Test: Build the Playbook Before You Need It
16:30 to 17:15 · Westminster Ballroom 1 & 2 - Level -3
Greg Jones, Rebecca Quinlan, Aaron Watts
Monday morning for them is the Business Genius Café, a drop-in from 10:00 with a bench of advisers that includes Alex Whittles, Phyl Morgan, Justine Adams, Simon Berger, Lauren Fowles, Elliet Hall-Jones, Chloe Mann and Norbert Neudeck. A drop-in rewards preparation (and punishes wandering in with a coffee and no question), so the brief is to arrive with the operational problem you've been circling for months and put it to someone who has no reason to flatter you. They join the keynotes at 13:00 and 13:45, sit with the sales lead on the AI strategy panel at 15:30, and then peel off to the Resilience workshop while the sales lead heads for the exhibition hall.
An hour in a room with the ICO is worth more to an MSP than a day of demos.
Tuesday is the strategy day, and it starts at 09:00 with the Channel Visionaries Power Panel, where Carolyn April, Scott Barlow, Jo Holliday, Peter Melby and Rob Rae are exactly the people your second in command should hear argue with each other at least once a year. Carolyn April returns at 11:15 with State of the Channel 2026, the research session, and the set of numbers worth carrying into your next planning meeting. Dr. Elke Geraerts at 13:30 on building authentic intelligence in the age of AI and Rod Baptie at 14:30 on AI costs and compute fill the afternoon before Graham Norton at 16:00. If the tech lead takes Baptie, your second in command gets an extra hour in the hall before the closing reception at 17:00.
Together, apart, together
The pattern across both days is simple once you lay the agendas side by side. The keynotes and the socials are where the team sits as a team, and the hour either side of them is where they should be in different rooms, collecting different things.
Sit together
- GTIA Welcome Keynote with Dan Wensley, 13:00 on 9 November
- Daniel Priestley Business Keynote, 13:45 on 9 November
- Graham Norton Closing Keynote, 16:00 on 10 November
- Closing Reception, 17:00 on 10 November
Split up
- 15:30 on 9 November: sales and your second in command at the AI strategy panel, tech with Paul Peters
- 16:30 on 9 November: tech at the ICO fireside chat, your second in command at the Resilience Stress Test
- 10:15 on 10 November: sales with James Stanger, tech with Sharren Kennedy
- 14:30 on 10 November: tech or your second in command with Rod Baptie, the other working the hall
The uncomfortable part is that splitting up means nobody gets to hide behind a colleague at lunch, and the quietest person on your team will have to introduce themselves to strangers. That's also the entire reason the trip pays. The owner three seats over who has already fixed your ticketing bottleneck is far more likely to talk to one person than to a huddle of colleagues from the same MSP.
What to do this week
The Shared Row happens by default, so the fix has to happen before anyone packs a bag. We've checked the dates and times above with the organiser, and the full guide lays out the whole agenda by person so each of your team can see their own two days on one page.
If the debrief is in the diary before the event, the notes get taken differently, because everyone knows they'll have to stand up and say what they're going to do with them.
The full guide has the agenda split by who should go, the parties, the hotels and the map.
Open the guide →