I’ve taken this month’s column on tour with me. Check out the view from my hotel window right now (see below). As I keep having to remind my family no, I am not on holiday.
I’m here in San Diego for AccountingWEB’s first-ever US summit, held over three days at the resort island of Paradise Point for our US audience on accountingweb.com. It is not a bad place to be doing the day job and yes, I have definitely had worse days at work than these.
I’m telling you this because I wanted to share a few observations about the accounting community over here in the States and I’d also be interested in hearing your thoughts.
As you’d expect there is a lot that is different to our AccountingWEB LIVE Expo in the UK – the accents, vocab, the audience participation in sessions and networking styles. And of course, the session agenda has to be different when it comes to tax and compliance.
The content agenda for the US summit was not created by the UK editorial team but by our US editor and journalists. This is their show.
But I have been surprised by the commonality with the UK accounting community: the popularity of particular content sessions and topics; the conversations around technology and vendor relationships; and the broader issues being discussed by our delegates at lunch and dinner get-togethers.
Shared interests
When it comes to the content – stripping out tax and compliance – the sessions that are filling the aisles and the conversations that are spilling out from those sessions and into networking spaces are on the same topics you all like to read about online, ask about in AnyAnswers, and learn about at the UK expo and through our webinars.
Let me give you some examples of what’s flying: creating a future-focused firm; enhancing client experience; NFTs and crypto investments; understanding and solving the capacity problem; and fintech trends accountants should pay attention to.
I’m writing this on day two, with another day of content to go but I’m pretty confident the rest of the sessions will play out this way too.
A common language
AWEB has been going for 25 years in the UK and the US site is only a couple of years behind. Yet cross-over between the two has been minimal up until this point. This summit is one of very few examples of the UK and US AWEB teams really collaborating together.
Certainly you, our UK readers and community have not yet felt the benefit of AWEB’s transatlantic relationships and connections. This is something I’ve been thinking about while over here.
So here’s my question: if so many of these issues and conversations are the same for accountants and finance professionals on both sides of the pond – and the solutions to many are probably the same as well – should we be working harder to share insights, information and advice with you from a wider pool of experts?
For certain topics, would the articles still work for you if they had an international lens and were location agnostic?
I think we have an opportunity to bring you more relevant content by sharing some of the articles published by our US editorial team. But I’d also appreciate your thoughts on this and to know which topics you think this could work particularly well for – so please comment below or email/message me directly.
It’s something I’d like AWEB to experiment with on my return – sharing more content between the AWEB sister sites, to see how it is received. So stay tuned folks and have a great day y’all!