Live from QuickBooks Connect Toronto 2019 Day 1

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Hey, Murph! Regards from QuickBooks Connect Toronto, my home turf.

I’m rooming with Heather Satterley and Laurie O’Neil, and we’ve been having a blast, before, during and after conference hours. Last night, we had dinner at the CN Tower, where we had to overcome our collective fear of heights to walk on the glass floor.

Today marked Day One of the conference. If technology allowed for it, I would definitely clone myself so I could be in several places at once. But given that they haven’t perfected it on humans yet, I can only report on one thing at a time…so here goes:

The day started at 7:30 with a super breakfast (I’m getting a special meal, and they gave me the equivalent of 3 meals), so I’m hitting the gym as soon as I get back home.

At 8:30, I had my first Braindate, in which I was asked to solve a husband-and-wife team’s multi-currency woes. I have two more Braindates scheduled for tomorrow, and I cannot wait; it feels so good to help other accounting professionals be their QuickBooks best!

By 9:00 a.m., we welcomed Scott Zandbergen, Intuit Canada’s ProAdvisor Community Advocate, to the Main Stage. He introduced Ariege Misherghi, Accountant Segment Leader for Intuit QuickBooks. She revved us up with the new Business Performance feature in QBOA’s Overview tab, showing us more ways we can bring value to our clients. Then she showed us how the Optimization Centre will allow us to gauge how well we’re currently making use of automation in a client file. This will point us down the path of greater efficiency and accuracy, and do even more for our clients in less time.

These features definitely generated a lot of buzz. Keeners among us were given a link to sign up for early access to the Optimization Centre, Bookkeeping Review, and Business Performance Overview.

Then Ariege announced that QuickBooks Live, already a thing in the US, is coming to Canada. More buzz.

Futurist Michael McQueen was next up, telling us “what’s next” and that we should “think revolution, not evolution.” We were given many quotes, but the one that resonated with me the most was from Oren Harari: “The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles.” I recommend that anyone who wants to know more of Michael’s insights should visit www.MichaelMcQueen.net.

The Exhibition Hall featured great apps, and I visited with as many as I could without the benefit of cloning. But then it was time for breakout sessions, so I ran to the first one on my agenda, which was Guy Pearson (of Practice Ignition fame) covering “The Secret to Scaling: How to Build & Implement a Fixed Fee Pricing Plan.” That one was packed. I sat on the floor. I’m not kidding. Totally worth the sore tush.

After lunch, I watched Andrew Wall moderate a panel consisting of Sean Duffy, Carrie Mulrooney, and Dianna Thorne for “Managing a 100% Remote Team.” Each panelist had their own success story for finding, vetting, and curating a remote team, and it was fascinating to hear them relate their experiences.

Then I attended Ingrid Himmelman’s “Managing Change – Helping Clients Transition to the Cloud,” where we went through the basics of creating a cloud migration plan for a client.

Before taking the group TWN photo, some of us got to “Swing into the Future.”

After the reception that ended Day One, Misty Megia joined us for dinner tonight at the hotel. I am very much looking forward to her session on Day Three, “Theater Skills for the Business World.”

I couldn’t make it to the TSheets party after dinner as I had to come back to our room and rehearse for my presentation tomorrow, “Discovering Business Insights Using QuickBooks Online,” aimed at end users. And then, I promised I’d write someone this letter.

Having a great time, Murph. Wish you (all of you) were here. Truly.

Esther

Our thanks (here at Insightful Accountant) go out to our good friend Marnie Stretch who is also attending QuickBooks Connect Canada for some of the photos we used in this story.