The Alamo
I have been referring to this year’s conference as Scaling New Heights – “Texas Style” (actually ever since Joe announced this year's location last year at Disney World). When Vice President Lyndon Johnson announced that Houston would be the home of America's Space Program (later named the "Johnson Space Center"), he introduced American’s first astronauts as shining examples of “Texas Style” (which had always meant the best). Later Author Tom Wolfe would re-coin the heroism and bravery the Mercury 7 Astronauts showed in the title of his book, which later became a major motion picture, “The Right Stuff”.
Well because San Antonio is the host city of this year’s Scaling New Heights conference, I thought I would mention another example of heroism and bravery by opening this article with the words of William Travis as a demonstration of what makes up the true ‘Texas Style”, “One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name.”
William Travis was a lawyer, who at the age of 26 was also a lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army. He is famous for not only fighting to the death at ‘The Alamo’, but for his letter “Victory or Death” which he dispatched shortly before Santa Anna completed his siege of the Alamo Mission, February 23 through March 6 of 1836. Travis, along with all the rest of his fellow Texan defenders were killed during the many skirmishes that took place over those eventful 13 days.
While the letter Travis wrote was too late to rally aid for the Alamo, it did serve to motivate support throughout American for the cause of Texan independence. Those in attendance at Scaling New Heights who visit the Alamo will find a plaque of Travis letter located directly in front of this historic site, a shining example of “Texas Style”, or as Tom Wolfe put it, “The Right Stuff.”
So with our history lesson behind us, it is time for my ‘Wednesday’ picks for your Scaling New Heights conference attendance, because like every other day of the conference it is a day full of 'the right stuff' for ProAdvisors. You will find me in one of the Power Breakfast sessions that morning, and most probably it will be the session on Adding Value to Law Firms and Professional Services by LexisNexis. This session will feature some of the products that our own contributing author, Caren Schwartz has written about. But you many find any of the other seven breakfast sessions more suited to your tastes (as breakfast should be).
Wednesday’s General Session will include announcement of the location for Scaling New Heights 2015 (it is always a big secret until Joe finally spills the beans). The Exhibit Hall will open after the General Session, if you haven’t made it by, please stop in at the Intuitive Accountant booth and say hello, I look forward to seeing you.
There are a variety of certification preparation and other training opportunities for the afternoon sessions. Some of my favorites center on QuickBooks reporting using both in product and external products such as the QuickBooks Enterprise ODBC (Custom Reporting) tool, and QQube. For those with a really technical side, and supporting larger clients, you may find that the two sessions dealing with E-commerce and EDI are of special interest.
But new for this year is a very interesting 2-part course titled MBA Crash Course: Propelling Yourself into the Role of Strategic Advisor. Increasingly ProAdvisors are becoming reliable resources to business owners concerning multiple aspects of their operating requirements and not simply their accounting needs. A ProAdvisor’s arsenal must now include everything from e-commerce to manufacturing, as well as human resource and time management. You are certain to find this new course a shot-in-the-arm to bolster your offerings.
There is also a ‘hands on workshop’ that covers the creation of Training Videos. The days of black-n-white handouts and a few power-points are behind us…with modern learning methods and video capabilities successful training is more like a modern motion picture or interactive computer game. So if you are really into training and want to start producing your own high-quality training materials this is the place to be.
It’s hard to imagine that Wednesday at 6pm is the conclusion of the conference, I am sure you will find how quickly it will have all come to an end….but it’s only 4 months until Intuit’s QuickBooks Connect comes along.