Going Past the Expiration Date

As someone who once covered sports for a brief time, I’ve seen what happens when athletes stay in the game far longer than they should. And in sports such as boxing, the consequences of remaining past your expiration date are far dire than say in baseball or basketball. 

As you can imagine, I see it quite often in our line of work – people who have stayed too long and are left floundering for a succession plan or those who buck the Einstein theory of repeatedly doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results.

Today’s missive – the last one before we say goodbye to what has been an all-too-accelerated summer - sort of touches on the concept of knowing when to pack it in.

Although the subject matter focuses on a different kind of succession - that of continuing professional education and more specifically – live conferences. For more than 15 years, two state accounting society shows in particular – one on each coast – have featured ad nauseum the same speakers droning on the same subject matter, staged in what are arguably the two worst venues in those major cities. One in particular had both attendees and exhibitors joking that it was one step above a homeless shelter. The left coast location was so close to the airport runways that you could have easily boarded your plane 5 minutes before it took off. 

If you happened to save a 2003 conference program from either you would have been hard pressed to distinguish it from those of 2017.

If you happened to work for a vendor as I do and wanted a speaking slot, it was understood  by the conference management company who staged both events it was strictly a “pay to play” arrangement. But for a $5,000 exhibit booth and a chance to interact with $80K a year practitioners interested only in filling their bags with free pens and refrigerator magnets, then the microphone and stage was yours to command. It hardly came as a surprise that attendance over the last few years more resembled a haunted house than anything else.

But going forward, some badly needed new blood will assume the reins and hopefully restore the events to their former luster. New and infinitely more professional venues will house the conferences in 2018 and the conference program manager asked not for exhibitor fees with an outstretched palm, but rather solicited my feedback on the CPE agenda.

Not that other major conferences held during the year suffer at least partially from the same epidemic – that of mind-numbing predictability featuring the same cast of characters year after year.

But one step at a time. For now here’s to a welcome change next year.