Site Visit to the Greenbrier

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Originally uploaded by Ned Campbell

Here is a photo of the north entrance from the Greenbrier, one of the most wonderful hotels in the United States.

I was lucky enough to visit the Greenbrier on a brief site inspection prior to taking the FICPA membership there in June 2009. The hotel is incredible! With a glorious history and the once dark secret of a bunker to house the US government in case of nuclear war with Russia.

The hotel still sticks to the old south traditions with dressing for dinner and the wonderful “sleepy time” signs throughout the hotel from 8pm to 8 am.

ESPN College Football Team

2008 Gators week 1

Ned with Coach Lou Holtz

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Originally uploaded by Ned Campbell

 

I was able to spend a significant amount of time with Coach Lou Holtz at the 2008 FABexpo. Coach Holtz was the keynote speaker for this event and I was able to spend time with him as we took him to the green room to meet with some of our leadership and then to his speech and back to the green room again to take photos. Throughout this process he was great to work with!

However, the more impressive aspect was what coach did that he didn’t have to do…he reached out and touched the life of a young boy. One of the participants had his 9-10 year old son with him and he is a huge Lou Holtz fan. The young man was patient and waited for almost 90 minutes to see if Coach Holtz would autograph the book he was reading. Not only did Coach Holtz give him an autograph, but he also talked with the boy and ultimately took a picture with him. All of these things weren’t required, however Coach did them because he is a wonderful person.

More of us should strive to be more like Coach Holtz and the world would be a better place!

If you were attending a professional education conference is it important that the keynote is a high profile speaker?
( surveys)

After the show

Another show is done!  The FICPA FABexpo is finished for 2008 and none too soon…older staff (like me) were really tired, our legs and feet were shot.

The show went great; all of the speakers were there except for one and he was replaced with another fantastic speaker already on-site.  The comments were great from the participants.  A few negative comments on the new electronic manuals and the parking, but that was to be expected.  This is the first year for electronic manuals and overall the comments have been extremely positive.  The fact is, you can save the e-manual on your computer and you can search the entire text for words of interest.  Far better than the printed manual for most people.  The parking, well there isn’t much to say – it costs $7 (actually $14 per day) but the FICPA pays for 50% of the fee.

Everyone loved Lou Holtz, the keynote speaker.  Coach Holtz talked about winning and having the proper attitude to do so.  He was really great and delivered an inspired speech.  Coach was great and spent time with our volunteer leadership, asking them about the CPA profession. He was really great with the details on our group.  In addition to Coach Holtz and 60 other speakers, we held an A&A track that covered the most recent accounting topics including IFRS and XBRL.  These are two new topics for our membership and will be covered at great length in the coming months and years.

Showtime…

Here it is, the week of Memorial Day again, and I just checked into the Gaylord Palms Resort for the FABexpo.  The Gaylord is great as always, the service superb and the location just what we need.  Of course the entire week is about work and there isn’t any time to go to the pool, bars, restaurants and the other Orlando sites but it is a great place to work.

It is an interesting program.  A total of 22 staff attending the show to manage the CPE, exhibitors, FICPA booth and meetings galore for 800+ CPAs and 300+ exhibitors.  This year Lou Holtz, legendary football coach will be the keynote speaker.  Members and staff can’t wait to hear one of the best motivational speakers of our time address the group on achieving your maximum potential.

Monday, the first night only 5 of the staff are here so we will be ready to unload, setup, and meet with hotel early Tuesday morning (after the wonderful breakfast buffet Villa de Flora).  There is a lot more to tell about this event and if there is time, I will share stories and photos from the site.  Lisa, Mike, Michael, Brenda and me (plus Lisa) were all there to enjoy Sunset Sam’s for dinner on Memorial Day.

The rest of the week will be very busy with start times between 6 and 6:30 a.m. and ending each day after 11 p.m.  Registration should be much easier this year since we changed to electronic manuals and small booklets are distributed on-site instead of over a dozen manuals. It will be interesting to see what our members think of this change.  Many members have indicated that they like the new concept because it will allow them to search the manuals and therefore they will be more useful.  Only time will tell if the general membership takes to this new idea.

IFRS Standards accepted in the US

Today major changes in the accounting world were announced. See this video for more information.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1529569170/bclid1493222124/bctid1553183653

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-19-2008/0004816658&EDATE=

More Lake Tahoe Fun

We finished the team building phase of our meeting on Friday and then had the afternoon and evening on our own.  This was a great opportunity for us to spend time doing what we wanted to do.  The first thing we did was go over to Heavenly Village, buy tickets to ride the gondola up the Heavenly Valley to eat lunch.   It was a great trip to the top, we stopped at the midway point, walked around and looked at the lake and took lots of pictures.

At the top, we ate burgers (expensive but worth it when you consider the view). With a record 300+ inches of snow this year, the skiing was open very late (first weekend in May).

Eating in the snow in late April

After our lunch and the trip back down the mountain, we walked around The Shops at Heavenly then back to the hotel. For dinner that night we went to Kalani’s Restaurant in South Lake Tahoe with my friend Brent.

Saturday was our final day for the event and we spent most of the day in sessions, then the final night dinner was at the Chart House, high on the mountain side. 

Lake Tahoe – Another day of camaraderie

Camaraderie is good, even sometimes when it is forced camaraderie.  Today was our annual team-building exercise and there is always a lot of anxiety associated with touchy feely, forced time with others, in groups not of our own choosing.  Today wasn’t any different, we met early and 44 of us left to become better communicators and a better team.  Of course as we went through the “adventure challenge” we experienced a lot of other emotions too that stem from the team dynamics.  Was our navigator keeping us on track. Did we get the photo records that we had to do…were they creative enough.  Were we listening or were we all marching to the beat of our own drummer?

For the most part we all started off with our own drum beat and tried to meld it to the jungle sounds of our group.  More to come on the team-building later.

The other highlights of the day included lunch and dinner with our friends.  We went with Lisa & Brandon on the gondola to Heavenly Valley to eat lunch.  We stopped at the midway point to look back into the Tahoe basin, walk around, become tempted by the snow nearby and wondering what would come from a snowball lobbed at Lisa.  There isn’t an answer to this one since I controlled myself.  We then went onto the top and had cheeseburgers at the top.  The view and experience was unforgettable (the cheeseburgers for forgettable). 

Tonight Lisa and I went to Kalana’s in Heavenly Village with Brent, my coworker, my mentor and my friend. The meal was outstanding and we all thouroughly enjoyed it.

More to come on this trip in the near future.