Community at the Core: Ken Patterson (EP 924)

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, recording at ASCII Edge. In fact, this is the last ASCII Edge of the 2025 season. We are here at ASCII Cup in Philadelphia, and I am joined by a veteran of our MSP space. 

And I think I last saw you in person when I was at your office when you had just started with Todyl. I'm talking about Ken Patterson, the Director of Community at Todyl. Does that sound about right, Ken? That could be right. 

Although, when we're on the road as much as we are, we could have crossed paths somewhere in between those two times. We could have. That time, but I did definitely see you in the office right when I was coming in. 

I definitely have seen you since then because at that time, which was a year and a half ago, and it was not the last PAX 8 Beyond, but the one before. And I had literally came into the office on a Saturday to sign my agreement to join Todyl and then went to PAX 8 Beyond the next day on a Sunday and started with Todyl day one right at PAX 8 Beyond. Of all places, my old stomping grounds PAX 8. Okay. 

Well, let me ask you, since it's been that long, how have things been there? Things have been great. I guess everybody says that, right? But from a standpoint... It's still the honeymoon phase, right? Yeah, right. A year and a half now, and in tech years, that's what? Five years? Yeah. 

But no, I mean, you've known me long enough to know that I'm kind of a straight shooter, and this has been one of those experiences, like typical. It's not perfect, but there's no company that is. What I do see as a CEO who really cares about the community and about this industry from a security standpoint just as a whole, and it's easy sometimes to sell that, right? You get a room and they say that and you feel like, oh, okay, they really care. 

And then when you start working with some of these folks, it doesn't go that way. You start to realize it's not what they were saying. It's not what they're doing. 

It's what they're saying. It's all talk. In this case, John Nellen's just not that CEO. 

You've met him, you know. He just cares about the industry, cares about MSPs, really wants to help. And from that first conversation I had with him when I said, okay, I'm in. 

Let's do this. To now, it's challenging, but that's what work is, especially in this industry. It's very challenging, but he listens. 

He cares. You bring him some issues or problems that are happening, and he works on them fairly quickly. And on a regular basis, he'll literally come to me and say, hey, Ken, we haven't talked a little while. 

What are we doing that holds you back? I mean, who does that? And then when I say, hey, this might be holding me back, he'll fix it. He'll work towards fixing it. So from that perspective, it's been really fantastic to be able to get into a place where from the top down, they actually care about community, which you know in my heart, that's my big thing. 

It has to be about the community. It has to be about the MSPs. It just doesn't work otherwise.

Yeah. I will say this about the Todyl office. I've been to a few vendor office spaces, and a lot of them have that sterile call center feel. 

That was not the case visiting that office there in Denver. Very nice, laid back office. And I could tell people weren't really faking being happy while I was walking through.

That is true. It is true. I mean, you know, like I say to everybody, anything worth doing is going to be hard. 

And so I always say to the folks, you know, look, you're not going to be 100% happy all the time. But at the core of it, what you're doing is good. You're not selling used cars. 

You're not pushing solutions or products that are just products. At the end of the day, you're protecting people. And I think that resonates. 

They understand that, hey, we're not just trying to sell something here. We're actually delivering a solution that helps people. So that mentality seems to go through the whole entire company.

Now, you're not actually officially here on behalf of Todyl. But I do want to at least describe Todyl for people. You are a leading cloud first cybersecurity platform. 

I was looking at you for your sassy products. You all do some zero trust stuff, manage detection response. What am I missing? What do people need to know about Todyl? Yeah, I mean, the main goal is it's a cybersecurity platform. 

So it's not just one tool. And we didn't bolt a bunch of tools together. It's all Todyl stuff. 

Yes, we use other technology, but it's Todyl stuff that ties it all together. So you're right. We have Sassy, we have MXDR, we have Sim. 

And we also now have GRC, which is getting you that governance risk and compliance piece. So we're basically what we're trying to do is trying to cover the gamut of what MSPs deal with on a day-to-day basis, or business owners that MSPs are helping. And the bottom line is our solution is going to help you prevent, detect, respond, and then comply. 

And that's the compliance piece. That's the GRC piece that comes in. And what makes it interesting is our Sim that's ingesting all this data is not only great for you to report on and make sure there's not an incident happening or things like that. 

But now that data can go right into the GRC module and start checking those boxes for you automatically from a compliance standpoint. Nice. All right. 

Well, folks, I can tell you Todyl was on my short list when I was looking at products. Didn't quite pull the trigger, but it wasn't your fault. I will say that. 

I was trying to find a nice way to segue into one of the reasons that I asked you to be on the show. Alan Weinberger, the founder of ASCII, passed away back in June. I've been asking longtime members of both ASCII and people that have known Alan for their thoughts and perspectives. 

And you being a veteran of our community, it just seemed appropriate to ask you, what are your fondest memories of Alan? What are your biggest takeaways? Yeah, you know, and that's a big question because he was really a big personality in a sense that he wasn't this loud, crazy personality. But what he brought to the table was this level headed, experienced and very knowledgeable. And for me, like, I mean, I go back with them from 95. 

And back in 95, when I was really just trying to be, I mean, it was before MSP, we were just trying to be an IT company and breaking into some of the early managed service stuff towards 98, 99. We started doing the early adoption of ConnectWise and all that stuff way, way back. It was really going to ASCII events that were local and talking to Alan and Jerry about what they were doing and why they were doing it. 

And to be honest, it's probably one of the earliest, one of the earliest inflection points and impressionable moments for me as far as caring about community. Because the one thing that the solid core piece above all of it is that community piece. They were all about taking care of building a community and taking care of that community and bringing people in that could help each other. 

And as you know, now, that's my whole thing is it's our community. You know, how are we helping each other to be better? That rising tides, raise all ships mentality. And I spent quite the amount of time popping into those events when they were in Boston, when I wasn't traveling as much, and we were just building up the first MSP that I was a part of. 

And I learned a lot by going to the events. And initially it was Alan, because I didn't really know anybody at the events. He was the guy running the events. 

And I went to him first and just said, hey, what do I do here? What's the best way for me to maximize this? And he was the one that basically said, look, it doesn't matter if you know any of these people from previous experiences, you need to go talk to them. Everybody's evolving, changing. Make sure you talk to everybody in the time. 

If it's not a fit, you can be polite and move on to the next person. But make sure you're giving everybody in the room your time and have those conversations. And so it was those early impressionable moments for me that really stuck out, especially, you know, you don't think about it, we're in this daily grind. 

And then you hear the news of someone like Alan passing on and you're like, whoa, whoa, and everything stops. Because now you're thinking about, wow, when did it all start? When's the first time I talked to Alan? And then moving forward, those times that we had to be able to just have a quick five minutes, because as it grew, he got much busier, but he always made time for you. Doesn't matter if you're walking down a hallway, you raise a quick hand, you can stop and have a chat with him. 

And I do believe that he's a big reason why Jerry is the way Jerry is too, right? I believe that they did such good things here that people are drawn to it. And like you said, me not being here, me not being here for ASCII, like as a sponsor, didn't mean that I wasn't going to try to get here and support Jerry, support ASCII, and support the Cup. Because I've been friends with them for so long. 

So I'm Boston, so it's very close for me to get to Philly and come out and check this out. And I felt like I owed it to the memory of Alan as much as the friendship we've had with ASCII as a whole. Right. 

Now, I think a lot of people would look at you and say, there's a lot of Alan in you, because you pretty much operate the same way, where people could be engaged in a conversation, see you out of the corner of their eye, and be like, I got to go see Ken. And I'm not making that up, because it's happened to me. And I'm like, wait a minute, we were talking. 

I like to think that that's true. I do believe that. And it's people like Alan that stick with you. 

And the one thing I will say is, it's sad that he's gone. But I think now's the time to reflect on what his beliefs were, what he meant to the community. And more people need to try to be more like that. 

And so for me, anytime someone like you makes a comment like that and says, hey, Ken, you really epitomize what Alan brought to the table, that means a lot to me, because I truly believe he was a community guy. He was doing community before people were talking about it. I raised it to a different level and actually made it titles and turned community into a thing within the vendor side of things, because I truly believe in it. 

And you're right. It's a different mentality when it's not about the product solution or any of that. It's about the people. 

And we have that human element. And if we truly care about people, then they're going to want to find out more about what you do, no matter where you're at. And I think that's the piece that really stuck with me and I've carried forward. 

And like I said, if I can get people like you and people in the industry that say, yeah, you know, Kenny P really brings that to the table, then I've done my job and I'm going to continue to do that job. And hopefully I can continue to carry on what Alan was doing and what he meant to this community, not just ASCII, the whole community. It goes beyond just one thing. 

But ASCII was the beginning of it all, I believe, from a community standpoint. It all started with ASCII and Alan and Jerry. I think you hit it on the head to make the comment that, yeah, I'm not involved in this particular event, but I'm going to be there in support of. 

And I think that's a big sentiment because there were a lot of people at this last cup here today. I think a lot of people were here just for that very reason. Right. 

Yeah, I agree. There's a lot of people just showing up for support. And that means something, right? That means more. 

It's deeper than any of the, you know, product solutions, all the things we talk about. I think it goes deeper. And it's nice to know that the people supporting these solutions and products do care and actually are here for each other first.

All right. So Alan's legacy will obviously be ASCII and much more because Alan was much more than ASCII. I agree. 

He could not keep his mind from trying to do other things and stuff. Where do you see the landscape for our space going? I mean, obviously ASCII will continue on. Everybody will try to carry the torch and stuff. 

But we're in a weird time, you know, with AI and cybersecurity, you know, being weaponized against us in a lot of ways. How do you see things going in the next few years? Yeah, you know, I'd be wrong if I thought that I had any crystal ball that ever came true. But I really believe that it's faster.

You know, everything's happening faster, but it's still there's similar correlations to, you know, remember when cloud came, it was only a few years ago, the word cloud was just this sexy, beautiful thing. And all of a sudden, it was cloud, cloud, cloud. And everybody wanted to talk about it and do it. 

We've been doing it for 20 years, basically, right? I mean, we just had different names until it became cloud. And then all of a sudden, cloud wasn't sexy anymore. It's cybersecurity. 

And now it's AI. And so while I believe in every iteration, the new thing that happens or pops up is super strong, it's going to cause a ripple and it's going to cause us to do, you know, great things and faster in a faster way. I still think there's similarities to these other periods of time where we just got the next thing that was just a sexier term or something cool. 

AI is a bit different because AI comes into play. And it's the first time in history, where we're not the ones the IT providers and the MSPs and the vendors, we weren't the ones to start to put it out there first. It was the end users.

Yes. Started using it first. So they were bought into it before we even could jump on and say, hey, by the way, you guys are doing this wrong. 

Be careful. Like there's a lot of things you have to think about when you're, you know, coming into AI. And that's the unknown. 

That's a little scary. It's like, how far are you willing to go? People are putting their faces in there. They're putting their information in there. 

And that freedom to do that and make a cool video is awesome. But where is that data? Well, not only where is that data, but who has access to it? And what can they do with it? Right. When it's your information in your face? Well, look, look at just look at the actors and actresses whose names and faces have been used in AI videos that wasn't really them and the things that they're saying and doing. 

So it's going to be all about identity and data next year. Absolutely. It's going to be about how we protecting it. 

Where is it? What are we doing with it? And it's still all going to be heavily talked about. The cybersecurity is going to be a major part of that. What are we doing to protect identity and data? So it's just going to keep taking it to the next level. 

So it's going to be interesting to see how fast, you know, we're going to be six months into next year talking about something completely different based on what we know from our industry, because how fast this is moving. And I'm almost afraid to see what the next AI thing is that's coming out. I mean, who knew that iRobot would be coming truer, you know, becoming true much faster with the way things are happening with robotics, AI, and the controls. 

It's yeah. So I mean, I think now is a much harder time to make predictions other than the guarantee is there's always going to be a need for smart people that whether you want to call it MSP, IT service provider, IT consulting, I do believe that we have to take it for the folks that want to do this, because don't get me wrong, you know, this, there's plenty of room for people who want to do break fix. So I'm not putting that down. 

I would never do that. Keep doing break fix if you're doing it, because I know a lot of people that don't want to do it. But the folks that are up at the higher level of managed services and really getting involved, that shift to being more consultative, consultative is going to happen. 

And you have to stay ahead of that curve, make sure that you have the ability to consult and be more of that prescriptive advisor, as opposed to, we're going to react to stuff that breaks. Yeah, there will be a major shift, I think, within the within two years, yes, that we are going to have to redefine our space and how we interact with our clients. And part of the reason is you mentioned it earlier, the end user is getting technology well before us, and sometimes the same time as us. 

And they're, they're able to figure it out. Sometimes without our help, we've got to, we've got to deal with that. Just think about this. 

If COVID didn't happen, we'd still be fighting these end users on remote work, security, remote security, such as what SASE does for people protecting them at home and all that. Before COVID, we were jamming cloud down their throats and talking about how they could do things remotely, and they can do things more secure this way. And then all of a sudden, COVID hits. 

And now they want to know how they can use Zoom, how they can use Teams, all these solutions that they didn't really care about. And now they don't want to go back to work. Absolutely. 

They want to stay at home. And there was this massive rush to get everybody working from home. And then I realized I was watching it through halfway through the COVID epidemic. 

I was paying attention to the shift. And it was massive rush to get everybody remote. And then all of a sudden, everybody was like, oh, man, I just spent all this time getting these guys remote. 

I got to go back and secure that and figure out how to get them back to the security level we had when they were in the office. So that whole entire shift happened. Now they're all bought into it. 

And just when you think you get comfortable and you got them going into something that works, AI comes along and starts to change the game again. And I think everybody just has to listen. You can hate it all you want.

And I think if you're in this industry, you have to learn it. You have to understand it so you can talk about it. Absolutely. 

And protect it. Yeah. Well, I'm going to stop us from going down this road any further. 

We will go down that road. So are you staying for the cup tonight? I will be here for the cup. Yep. 

When I say I support it, I'm here to support it all the way through. OK, now support can come in a few different forms and fashion. Will that come with a costume? I do not have a costume. 

But you know, you never know. I'm Kenny P. I could show up with some crazy thing. Who knows? All right. 

Well, thank you very much for stopping by. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on Alan. And I'm sure that the AFSCME staff will appreciate it.

I'm assuming you've had a chance to chat with Lauren. She's here. I have not. 

OK. Yes. Lovely lady. 

Just like Alan. Yeah. Knew who I was. 

Just chattered away. But all right, folks, we're going to go ahead and end off here. I will see you later. 

And this is probably going to do it for my podcast here at ASCII Edge. So these will be out the week after, probably while I'm at IT Nation. You know that we are in season. 

So thank you all for tuning in. We'll see you all later. And until then, holla!