intuit 250
INTUIT QUICKBOOKS TO HOST MAJOR EVENT - FALL of 2014 - SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
Apparently the rumors are true. Today, we confirmed that on October 22-23, 2014 in San Jose, California, Intuit QuickBooks will host, for the first time ever, a major event that brings together the key constituents of the their ecosystem: accounting professionals, developers and small businesses. Intuit depends heavily on active, empowered involvement of all three members of its ecosystem.
While Intuit stands to benefit greatly from the facilitated interaction between the three groups, the real winners of a show like this will be the attendees as Intuit will be providing educational content that equips all three groups to be more successful and better serve their customers. In my opinion, Accounting Professionals will be a key component of the event, in that they are equipped to support Intuit’s small business customers with both technology consulting and accounting services, and they are often a powerful channel for software developers to reach small business owners.
Intuit is promising to announce the name and venue, as well as a detailed agenda, very soon. Shortly thereafter registration will be opened to participants.
I recently had the opportunity to ask Joe Woodard, host of Scaling New Heights, an Intuit-centric training event for QuickBooks ProAdvisors, what he thought about an Intuit-hosted event like this. Joe told me, “I am very excited about this Intuit QuickBooks event in the fall of 2014. Intuit has a powerful and highly engaged ecosystem of small business owners, accounting professionals and software developers. It will be great to see all of these groups under the same roof – and at a corporate event hosted by the leader in this space, Intuit.”
At the same time, I asked Joe if he was in any way concerned that the new Intuit event might slow the growth of his own June conference. Joe responded that, “Scaling New Heights continues to thrive, in large part due to Intuit’s continuing partnership with us. Scaling New Heights will again be ‘conducted in cooperation with Intuit,’ and their participation in and support of our June 15 thru 18, 2014 conference in San Antonio is stronger than ever. Intuit will again send executives, including President and CEO Brad Smith, to serve as the keynote speakers.
In total, over 100 people from Intuit will be present at Scaling New Heights, including dozens of executives, directors, and product managers. As for the continued growth of Scaling New Heights, the ProAdvisor Program has tens of thousands of members, and we believe the market is large enough for both Scaling New Heights and the fall 2014 Intuit QuickBooks event to thrive.”
Both Scaling New Heights and the Intuit QuickBooks event in the fall will both focus on in-depth technical education and practice development training. Both will be world class events designed to empower advisors with the skills, knowledge and resources to better serve small business clients. As soon as Intuit publishes more information about their event, Intuitive Accountant will compare and contrast the two events, and while it is safe to assume there will be distinctions between the two events, each event will have plenty to offer to our readership. I will be highlighting aspects of both Scaling New Heights and the new Intuit event in future articles.
Murph