Thursday thoughts: Conferences
It’s summer conference season for tax and accounting professionals, and I have thoughts.
Before I get into this week’s thoughts, I wanted to let you know that I’m hosting a webinar with cybersecurity and tax expert Brad Messner, EA, on using artificial intelligence (AI) in your tax practice on July 30, 2024, at 3:00 pm Eastern. Brad owns Financial Guardians, an information security education and consulting firm. We’ll discuss regulations relevant to using AI in your tax practice; strategies to manage potential risks associated with using AI; and ideas for secure, effective AI applications in your firm. To register, click the button below:
Now, on with this week’s Thursday thoughts!
I got to attend the National Association of Enrolled Agents (NAEA) annual conference (“Tax Summit”) in Orlando this past weekend. It was my first time attending Tax Summit. And I’ll be at the National Association of Tax Professionals (NATP) annual conference (“Taxposium”) next week.
I’ve now been to some accounting conferences (AICPA Engage, QuickBooks Connect) and some tax conferences (NAEA Tax Summit, Florida Chapter of the NATP, and Idaho Association of Tax Consultants). It’s a small sample, but I’ve definitely picked up on a critical difference:
Tax conferences are all about earning continuing education credits. Everything else—location, amenities, networking, even the speakers teaching the education—is secondary to earning those CE hours. Very little public buildup happens among attendees. Organizers cycle through the same list of familiar speakers. They desperately post and market the events, hoping to get a decent turnout. Whenever I ask the organizers and association officers if they’re happy with the turnout, they usually shrug and softly say “Well, yeah, sure…”
But accounting conferences are all about the networking, location, and FOMO. The continuing education is an added benefit; in fact, I’ve talked to several people who show up to these conferences without registering just for the networking that happens adjacent to the conference. Poolside cabana rentals, vendor-sponsored dinners, and unofficial meetups drive the agenda at these events. They market themselves, with colleagues asking months ahead of time if you’re going and if you know when registration opens again. Waiting lists form. People apply to speak, organize panels, or run workshops, and not every proposal is accepted due to space.
That isn’t to say meeting people and having some fun doesn’t happen at tax conferences. It does. But it seems to happen in a more limited, even one-on-one way and during normal conference hours. Don’t get me wrong: I’m thrilled to meet some people in real life I’ve only known via social media or video calls for the past few years. But that’s true of any in-person event. And we can’t ignore the observation that the median age at a tax conference is at least a decade (maybe two) older than that at accounting conferences.
Some tax conferences seem to do better than most. The California Society of Enrolled Agents (CSEA) Super Seminar and the New York State Society of Enrolled Agents (NYSSEA) annual conference draw relatively decent crowds and assemble interesting groups of speakers and sessions.
But at the end of the day, the critical aspect for tax conference attendees remains the continuing education credits. The decision to register and attend seems to depend on cost per CE hour. And the availability of CE online, from the comfort of your office or home, makes that cost difficult to justify for many, including me.
The focus on earning CE credits can also stifle future participation. Organizers know attendees register primarily for CE, so the education needs to be credible. That means picking from a relatively small (and shrinking, due to aging) list of well-known names. Tax conference sessions exist entirely to offer CE: one speaker (sometimes two or a small panel, but not normally) and a small ballroom of attendees. Maybe you can choose between two or three concurrent sessions. But it’s usually one speaker, for 50 or 100 minutes, then rinse and repeat on another topic.
Before I was an accountant, I was a graduate student and university instructor. I attended academic conferences, usually two or three per year, ranging from state-level with a few hundred attendees, held on a regional university campus, to international with thousands of attendees, held in world capitals such as Montreal and New York City.
These conferences exist for two reasons: presenting research and networking with colleagues, often for job seekers. Academic conferences draw the top minds in the field each year, but they really benefit young, junior scholars the most (if they know how to take advantage of them). They provide a relatively low-stakes way for new graduates and researchers to present research, get feedback, and network with senior colleagues at other institutions.
Panels include three to five scholars, each presenting related but individual work for 10–15 minutes each. A moderator offers some general feedback, and then panelists and attendees (if there were any, most panels usually don’t draw an audience) engage in questions and answers for the remainder of the session. It’s generally collaborative and positive for each scholar, who walks away with some helpful comments, suggestions, and ideas for improvement. Because the papers are usually on a common theme or topic, sometimes joint projects emerge. The result is a boost to each participant’s nascent project (and even career).
Neither the accounting nor tax conference system allows for this kind of development of junior professionals. The unofficial networking agenda of accounting conferences is better, but organizers still give a lot of preference to the well-known speakers who will draw a crowd. And tax conferences don’t even offer as much in the way of unofficial networking. The user experience of a tax or accounting professional conference is to spend lots of money to sit still in a dark, cold hotel ballroom for several days listening to a relatively older—usually white, usually male—speaker share mildly amusing anecdotes and the occasional useful insight, hopefully with a citation to some authoritative source (but usually not).
I have a lot of choices when it comes to CE. Many of them are less expensive, more convenient, and higher quality than what I see at tax conferences. I don’t have to choose based on what my local chapter or national association conference organizers find safe or familiar. So CE doesn’t drive my decision to attend. And as far as collaboration, I can send a direct message via social media to some of the brightest minds in the profession. I don’t need to coordinate schedules with them at the next annual conference.
Our professional conferences, especially those run by tax professional organizations, must evolve beyond three-day seminars. And if they truly want to attract younger members and attendees, they need to recognize I’m not the only one thinking this way.
What are your thoughts on tax and accounting conferences? Do you go just for the CE credits, or do you genuinely enjoy them? If so, what do you enjoy? And what conference(s) do you love that I need to work into my 2025 travel budget?
I want to thank you sincerely for reading this far. This issue is a bit of a ramble, which probably wasn’t easy to wade through. I hope you found something valuable here.
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