It’s a bit dramatic I know but most of today I’ve been following events at MD Biz Expo, Maryland’s CPA coming together to share in a two day conference. It’s being held in Baltimore. There has been much goodness to observe. Other than the solid line up of speakers, organizers Bill Sheridan and Tom Hood of CPA Success have done a great job assembling multi-media content. They include video, Twitter and Flickr photo uploads. They’ve not quite gone the full hog with live streaming video. A lost opportunity?
The conference was packed the first morning. That will have pleased the 70 exhibitors they managed to bring on board. Given the economy that has to qualify as a great result. As always though it is down to content and the quality of speakers. One aspect that was interesting: the swearing in ceremony for newly qualified CPAs. As a Brit, this is something that seems strange.
The Twitter stream was full of congratulation to those who were being honoured. It was oddly satisfying to know that their success was being celebrated. Where do we see that in the UK except at prize giving or some such?
If this group in the US is representative of the whole of the US, then there are BIG changes afoot which Brits should take seriously. There are sessions on marketing and…though I hate the word…social media. Many of the sessions have an upbeat tone, which sure as heck beats the doom and gloom we tend to see.
More than that there is a sense that innovation is finally being recognized as job number two. (Job number one is to look after clients.) Services are being commoditized, new styles of firm are emerging. Why should those in the UK care?
We live in a flat world. Outsourcing to India, Malta, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Brazil and back to the UK….the list goes on. Does anyone seriously doubt it won’t be long before we see the emergence of international virtual teams where expertise is cherry picked? Think about this way:
We now have the tools to collaborate meaningfully across geographical boundaries. Example: this evening I agreed to co-write a paper with others who are located in the UK, Belgium and the US. Google Docs makes that a snap for us.
Given that much of our lives are spent shoveling paper around, isn’t it about time we took a closer look at Google Docs and Zoho Spreadsheet? If we can do that with a mouseclick, then what more could we do if we thought more widely? It would be so easy. I suspect our American friends are on the cusp of doing something special.
If you’d like to know more – the show is still going on. Get a Twitter account and follow @MDBIZExpo – who knows might learn something. It starts around 8am ET which is 1pm UK. Just in time to do some recreational Twittering over lunch? Use Seesmic Desktop 0.3 to run a Twitter search on ‘@mdbizexpo’ so you can ambiently follow what is going on – as I am doing (see image above.)
My only regret is that I wasn’t able to get there. Next year. Instead, I’m in London and Barcelona the rest of this week. London for a cloud computing briefing and Barcelona for Mobile 2.0 Europe. Given that we are starting to see some real innovations in mobile technology, M2EU is a must attend.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Using Twitter to Sell (myventurepad.com)
- New! Free! XBRL tool for accountants (derek.abdinor.co.za)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=a15a66d2-b924-44c0-a274-c880cd5ddf9a)
