Each year, on the final day of the Scaling New Heights conference, Joe Woodard has announced the date and location of the following year's conference. It has come to be known that the Woodard Group had committed to a multi-year arrangement with the Marriott World Center in Orlando as the conference venue and that it would likely be at that location.
Sure enough, next year's event will be held June 22 through 25, 2025 in Orlando at the World's biggest Marriott facility.
Woodard seems to be themed on the futuristic terminology surrounding the Star Trek television and movie productions. This year's theme was "Boldly Go" taken from the very first motto of the Original Star Trek series... "Boldly Go Where No Man Has Ever Gone Before..."
Perhaps with the overwhelming number of 'first time attendees' at this year's conference, essentially one-third of the total number of Accounting & Bookkeeping professionals attending, Joe sees a 'next generation' of Client Advisors emerging... and so he has transition from 'the original Star Trek' schema to 'Star Trek, the Next Generation' by using one of the common sayings of that Starship Enterprise Captain, Jean-Luc Picard, "Make It So". The phrase represented a sort of 'marching order' typically given to either the Starship's Helmsman, or in some cases to Picard's First Officer when the directive involved something other than a course to pursue.
After discussing significant disruptions and opportunities impacting the professions of accounting and bookkeeping, and setting a new direction, a new course aimed at an increasing goal of providing 'Client Advisory Services', it appears that Woodard is ready to issue next year's attendees marching orders of "Make it so"... in following the course he has envisioned for this next generation of up-n-comers.
But the familiar CAS acronym actually is very convoluted. For many years it has referred to 'Client Accounting Services', but as more and more accountants began to provide 'Advisory' it became 'Client Advisory Services.' Then Accountants began to notice that clients frequently were confused by such an offering, especially when they were looking for their first (or a new) accountant, and so many accounting firms modified the acronym to 'CAAS' standing for Client Accounting and Advisory Services, represent the old with the new.
Automated Intelligence, which may not be nearly as 'intelligent' as some people give it credit for, and may in fact be 'psychotically deceptive', much like HAL 9000 in Arthur Clark's 2001 - A Space Odyssey, may in fact be driving so much of the mundane, tedious tasks associated with bookkeeping, and even sophisticated accounting and analytics. But in this author's humble opinion, our profession will still require "real human beings" to convey 'the numbers,' 'the meaning of the numbers,' and the true "Advisory content" that business owners are seeking in regards to their finances, their taxes, and their business fundamentals. I believe AI is just a tool, like the pencil, slide-rule, columnar pad, the calculator, the mini-computer, spreadsheets, and so many other tools. AI is not a panacea that will replace mankind, unless corporate 'greed' makes it do so.
Maybe 25 years from now, man will once again be 'exploring space' and blazing new frontiers with Quantum Computers responding to 'computer do this, or computer tell me...' as was always the case of the Enterprise's Bridge Computer. And perhaps robots will have evolved to the point that they not only convey us in autonomous vehicles, and perhaps Accountants will be 'great thinkers' like today's Physicists, just crunching different numbers and that all of us old way of doing things personas will never see the evolution, or will be sitting in our rocking chairs going "I remember when...".
But though many will consider me, and what I will continue to write, old guard, old school or "just old," I firmly believe that the fundamental principles of what we do still have not changed, and will no more change than 'the laws of nature or physics'. I also firmly believe that being a professional is just as much about 'understanding' (not just knowing) the fundamentals, as well as knowing the technological advancements that will indeed take us, as accountants, bookkeepers and ProAdvisors into the future "where no one has gone before."
If you are interested in more information about Scaling New Heights 2025 see Woodard's conference website.