April 13th. The Venetian. Las Vegas. Eleven days.
If you’ve been to CP Expo before, you already know the rhythm. You land Sunday, check in, discover the lobby bar has a line 40 people deep, find your people, spend most of Monday networking in a hallway, sit in two sessions on Tuesday that are either genuinely great or deeply sponsored, and fly home Thursday convinced you learned something important but unable to articulate exactly what.
The honest version: CP Expo is one of the few channel events where the hallway is the conference. The sessions are the excuse. The real work happens at dinner.
That said — this year’s keynote lineup is more interesting than usual. Let me tell you what I’m actually watching.
The Amazon Leo thing is legitimately significant
Timo Bauer, who runs Global Commercial Partner Channels for Amazon Leo — Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite initiative — is headlining a fireside chat. The session is framed around satellite connectivity and how next-gen satellite networks are reshaping global communications.
Here’s why this matters: LEO satellite is not a consumer story anymore. It’s a connectivity-layer story for the channel.
MSPs in rural markets, remote industrial sites, maritime, aviation — anywhere fiber isn’t reaching — are starting to look at LEO as a legitimate last-mile option that competes with fixed wireless and sometimes with MPLS. Starlink Business has been carving into that space without much channel participation. Amazon’s Kuiper just started commercial launches. If Leo is building a partner program with deal structure and margin, that’s worth your Tuesday morning.
What I want to hear Bauer say: “Here’s the compensation model.” What he will probably say: “Connectivity is evolving and partners have never been more important.” We’ll see.
Mark Tina is either the most confident channel chief in the industry or the bravest
Verizon’s channel chief is on stage to talk about business convergence. His session title is “Prioritizing Business Convergence For Partner Wins,” which is a polished way of saying: the partners who sell mobility, business internet, and managed services separately are leaving money on the table.
He’s not wrong. The convergence play is real, and Verizon’s centralization of its channel organization — which has been rolling out for the better part of a year — has made the go-to-market cleaner than it used to be. Partners who’ve worked with Verizon know the old model was a maze of separate channel structures. It’s getting better.
But here’s what I’m listening for: any honest accounting of where channel conflict still exists. Verizon has direct sales teams. They have agents. They have MSP partners. Three channels selling to the same customer base isn’t conflict-free just because you renamed the org chart.
If Mark Tina mentions the word “centralization” and then pivots to “partner satisfaction is at an all-time high,” someone in that room should raise their hand and ask a follow-up. Hopefully someone will.
Jay McBain will say something that makes you rethink your 2026 plan
Jay McBain, Chief Analyst at Canalys, has been hammering the ecosystem argument for years. His thesis — that the channel is becoming an ecosystem play where adjacencies and co-sell with hyperscalers matter more than traditional reseller relationships — is mostly right and mostly uncomfortable for partners still running a traditional transactional model.
At CP Expo, he’ll likely tie this to AI agents. The argument he’s been making: AI agents are going to change how software gets purchased, discovered, and implemented. If AI recommendations replace search-based discovery, and AI agents handle routine procurement, the middle of the channel — the VAR who handles standard SKU transactions — gets pressured hard.
Worth listening to. Maybe don’t put it on a slide for your sales team immediately after. Let it sit.
The one session nobody’s talking about
Jim Siders, CEO of Shield, is doing a session called “Shaping the Future of Technology: A Conversation with Shield’s CEO.” I don’t know Jim. Shield is a cybersecurity company. But there’s a pattern at CP Expo where the best session of the conference is the one nobody goes to because it’s in the small room at 8:30 AM Tuesday.
If the session description is vague, that’s often a sign the content is actually interesting. Block the time.
What to skip without guilt
The sponsored sessions where the vendor bought a keynote slot and dressed it up as thought leadership. You know the format. Fifteen minutes of market data, five minutes of product roadmap, one camouflaged pitch. You’ve sat in three of these. You will recognize it before the presenter finishes the first slide.
Also: the expo floor on Thursday afternoon. Unless you have a specific vendor meeting, the energy is gone by 2 PM and you’re just walking around collecting branded stress balls.
The real agenda
The conversations that will matter for your business happen over dinner Monday night, in the hallway between sessions Tuesday morning, and at the bar on Wednesday when everyone’s guard is down enough to be honest.
That’s always been true. Here’s what’s different this year: the channel is under more simultaneous pressure than it’s been in a while. AI anxiety about the sales motion, Cisco 360 contradicting itself on compute deal reg, Oracle shedding 20,000 direct reps, LEO satellite entering the partner ecosystem. The conversations at dinner are going to be better than usual because the uncertainty is higher than usual.
Go find the people building things you haven’t thought of yet. Buy the first round. Ask the dumb question. That’s how these events actually pay off.
I’ll be there. Come find me. I’m usually somewhere between the bar and the most chaotic session on the agenda.
See you at The Venetian. The Channel Partners Conference & Expo runs April 13–16. If you haven’t registered yet, you still can — and you probably should.