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.