Post 2014 Conference Review and 2014 Conference Preview

Published August 20, 2014

I wanted to personally thank everyone who was able to attend this year’s conference in San Diego. It was wonderful to connect with so many practice management professionals in such an awesome location! Although it has been a milder than usual summer here in Texas, the San Diego weather was a breath of fresh air for me.

I also wanted to share some of the feedback received from the conference attendees. Of those attending who completed post-conference feedback surveys, 88% believe the conference was well worth the time and money invested to attend! The Board of Director conference planning committee works very hard to produce a conference that provides deliverables that have an immediate impact on your firm. Overwhelmingly, attendees site the aspect most liked about our annual conferences as the networking with other practice management professionals – either re-connecting with long time friends or making new connections. Continuing to be one of the consistently highest rated sessions are the break-outs by firm size. During these sessions, there is shared camaraderie and networking with peers who are experiencing the same issues and are leading their firms through new opportunities.

Regarding the other sessions, we work to provide a wide variety of current CPA firm topics that will have broad appeal to conference attendees as a whole balancing best practice sessions with personal development sessions. This year we integrated a new format with a panel discussion and based upon the feedback, the session was very informational and a success. We also beta-tested video streaming on the Wednesday. As a reminder, if you attended the conference, you have access to the video stream through December 31, 2014!  Although other sessions may have been optimal for video streaming, only one-day was possible due to the video-streaming expense and the authorization speakers were willing to agree upon.

I would like to address the facets of the conference that are well, aspects we make the best of and adapt. Every year the feedback surveys include comments regarding either the temperature of the facility or the food/beverages served. Unfortunately, most conference centers do not offer the ability for the conference to adjust the temperatures easily or quickly and as in our own offices, some people tend to be cold-natured or warm-natured. We do want attendees to be comfortable and to that end recommend bringing a sweater or jacket. When it comes to food/beverages, we work hard to maximize your conference fees across the entire conference with the options available through the catering departments at the conference locations. As with the room temperatures, not everyone has the same food and beverage preferences.

Before concluding this article, I do want to address the 2015 conference which will be co-located with PCPS/Prac-Tech/Association for Accounting Marketing and AAA.  We returned just last week from our first planning session with representatives from all groups.  I want to assure you that while this will be a very different conference from what we have experienced previously, there is a lot of synergy and content available to who attend in June 2015.  For the most part, the entire conference is outlined and speakers are now being contacted for availability and topic refinement.  We anticipate the conference content to be available by mid-October 2014 if not sooner.  I do hope you will seriously consider this conference as a one-stop not only for you but for other partners and key operations personnel within your firm.  It truly is a joint effort to ensure that firms have breadth and depth exposure to best practices and resources from a practitioner, practice management, technology and /or marketing perspective; many of us in AAA wear all hats!

As heads up, 2015 conference registration will be handled differently this year and I encourage you seek approval to attend and register as soon as possible this year as deadlines are set to be much earlier than past AAA conferences.

Stay tuned for more developments  . . . .