---
title: SpiceWorld
description: "An annual run of sessions at Spiceworks' user conference — product showcases, roadmaps, and community talks across Austin and London, 2009 to 2016."
publishDate: 2012-05-24
canonical: https://www.mandalivia.com/talks/spiceworld/
---

SpiceWorld was Spiceworks' annual user conference, held in Austin from 2008 and later in London. Tabrez Syed presented across its early years — as Director of Products, then Vice President of Products — usually several sessions per conference: product showcases, roadmaps, and community talks.

## 2009 — Austin

The presenter page listed the lineup as "Spiceworks co-founders and technical experts," naming among them "Tabrez Syed, Dir. of Products (& first employee!)." Individual sessions weren't attributed in the published agenda. A video interview shot at the conference by Varvid survives, embedded below.

- [Presenter roster](https://web.archive.org/web/20091027052545/http://www.spiceworld2009.com/austin/?p=presenters) — spiceworld2009.com, archived · [On-site interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQsd4HOsjVA) — Varvid, YouTube

## 2010 — Austin, October 20–22

Three sessions. The published agenda left presenter slots blank; attribution comes from the decks themselves, published on Spiceworks' SlideShare account.

- **Say Hello to Spiceworks 5.0: New Feature Showcase**, with Francis Sullivan and Greg Kattawar — [deck](https://www.slideshare.net/spiceworks/spiceworks-50-new-feature-showcase) (title slide: "Presented By Francis, Greg & Tabrez")
- **The Next Frontier of Spiceworks' Product Roadmap**, with Greg Kattawar — [deck](https://www.slideshare.net/spiceworks/spiceworks-product-roadmap)
- **Power Breakfast: Turbo-Charge Your IT Career with the Spiceworks Community**, with Nic Tolstoshev — [deck](https://www.slideshare.net/spiceworks/spiceworks-community-tabrez-nic)
- [Conference agenda](https://web.archive.org/web/20110130161245/http://www.spiceworks.com/spiceworld/2010/agenda/) — spiceworks.com, archived

## 2011 — Austin, October 20–21

Four sessions, each archived agenda page listing "Speaker: Tabrez Syed, VP of Products, Spiceworks."

- **Spiceworks' Product Roadmap — A Glimpse of the Future**, with Greg Kattawar, Francis Sullivan, and David Babbitt — [session page](https://web.archive.org/web/20111024184420/http://www.spiceworks.com/spiceworld/2011/agenda/session/?session=product-roadmap)
- **New Feature Showcase**, with the same lineup — [session page](https://web.archive.org/web/20111024184415/http://www.spiceworks.com/spiceworld/2011/agenda/session/?session=new-features)
- **Win Friends & Influence People in the Spiceworks Community**, with Nic Tolstoshev — [session page](https://web.archive.org/web/20111024184440/http://www.spiceworks.com/spiceworld/2011/agenda/session/?session=win-friends)
- **Taking User Management from Unruly… to User-friendly!**, with Jeff Keen — [session page](https://web.archive.org/web/20110930021446/http://www.spiceworks.com/spiceworld/2011/agenda/session/?session=user-management)

## 2012 — London, May 24–25

Two solo sessions.

- **Score Points with Management while Saving Them £s** (14:30–15:30) — [session page](https://web.archive.org/web/20120408041517/http://www.spiceworks.com/spiceworld/2012/london/it_pros/agenda/session/?session=score-points)
- **User Management Got You Down? Spiceworks Help Desk to the Rescue!** (11:15–12:15) — [session page](https://web.archive.org/web/20120408041842/http://www.spiceworks.com/spiceworld/2012/london/it_pros/agenda/session/?session=user-manage)

## Later years

At SpiceWorld 2013 and 2016 the record shows him fronting product announcements from the conference rather than listed sessions — quoted by [eWeek](https://www.eweek.com/networking/new-spiceworks-tools-provide-ways-to-discover-iot-security-threats/) and [BizTech](https://biztechmagazine.com/article/2016/11/spiceworld-2016-amid-growing-complexity-it-pros-get-tools-simplify-tech) in 2016. Gaps in the record are archive gaps, not a complete history: the 2008 agenda published no speaker names at all, and the 2012 Austin session pages were never captured by the Wayback Machine.

Off the conference stage, the Spiceworks years also left a run of recorded interviews — [RedMonk on Spiceworks 4.0](/talks/redmonk-spiceworks-4/), [AMD on workflow management](/talks/amd-spiceworks-workflow/), [the Daily Blob](/talks/daily-blob-spiceworks/), and Spiceworks' own [20th-anniversary podcast](/talks/honoring-the-spark/) — each kept as its own page.