From Honky Tonks to Tech: Nashville Xerocon 2024 Recap
Heather Smith
?? 2024 Accounting Thought Leader of the Year ??Accountant ??Storyteller??Author*10 ??Columnist*2??Accounting Apps Podcast + Newsletter + Community??Speaker ??Panel Moderator??DEI Ally ??ACCA Global Council Nominee * 5
It’s been a minute, but I felt I should share with you something about Nashville Xerocon, as I always do a conference write-up & podcast, and it would be remiss of me not to stamp this moment in time.
Here goes…
This was my fourth international Xerocon, and the fourth Xerocon that I’ve spoken at, which I was extremely grateful about. In 2024, Xero hosted two conferences: London and Nashville. My wallet only stretched to Nashville.
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London Xerocon 2024
I did not attend the 2024 London Xerocon, though funnily enough lots of people, even those who went, thought I was there. I am omnipresent!
A number of people told me they were disappointed with the 2024 London Xerocon, mainly around something that I have commented on before, the wrap party. They also mentioned they found it salesy - I’m not sure what that relates to though! The UK chose to have the wrap party on Day 1. This means people tend to leave Day 1 conference early, and arrive late for Day 2. Having a late night wrap party midway through an event is energy draining. It also means there is significantly less time for the exhibitors to connect with the attendees. A number of exhibitors and attendees expressed to me their disappointment with London Xerocon. Which is a real shame. I had a brilliant time at 2022 London Xerocon.
You may recall in 2022 I attended 3 Xerocons: London, New Orleans and Sydney. I wanted to make it clear that in 2024, I only put on my Xero blue cowboy hat and attended Nashville Xerocon.
Nashville Xerocon 2024
I am glad I chose to attend Nashville Xerocon, it was a once in a lifetime experience. It was never a destination on my bucket list, I’ll probably not go again. However when I attend an overseas conference I make the most of it. I arrived a few days early and took the opportunity to be a tourist in the town. The weather was warm, and sweaty. I visited the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Frist Art Museum, German Town, and walked up and down Broadway Street, which? was filled with lots of live music venues, owned by music stars, like Jon Bon Jovi, Miranda Lambert and Kid Rock.?
The Nashville bars on Broadway Street are known as ‘honky tonks’ which is both a bar that provides country music, and a style of music. I had no idea that ‘honky tonk’ referred to bars. The Rolling Stones song “Honky Tonk Women” perhaps led me astray! That song is about a free-spirited woman who frequents honky tonk bars.
The central district of Nashville was quite neatly laid out, so we were able to easily navigate from our hotels, to the conference venue to the surrounding parties and activities.?
Nashville is also famous for its Southern style cooking, think smokey BBQ’s & Briskets & Green Beans, Brussel Sprouts, and Tex Mex. They have this meal called chicken waffle, which is like Kentucky Fried Chicken on a waffle, with syrup, which scares me on so many levels! Nashville is also home to and famous for “Hot Chicken” . You coat raw chicken in intense cayenne pepper heat rub, then soak it in buttermilk and pickle juice and then you fry it. I don’t take hot foods - but it does sound quite exciting doesn’t it?!
As you can probably guess, the theme of the Xerocon Nashville conference was all things country. YeeHaa!! We were immersed in all things country during our time there. It felt like the whole city was in perpetual honky tonk party mode. Nashville party buses, filled with people singing and drinking, started at 10am in the morning and went all day down the streets. People arrived at the conference in country boots, and country style clothes. There were line dancing sessions on the floor throughout the day. We were given Gaudi cyan blue cowboy hats to bedazzle, and a cute denim jeans bag as a gift. As we walked around the streets of Nashville, it was easy to see other attendees, the lanyards or the giant blue Xero hats stood out! This meant we could connect and start conversations with people we might not have otherwise met.
The conference was held at the Music City Center. The venue had quite a simple layout to navigate. Xerocon Nashville is much smaller than Xerocons held in Australia. If you think back to the 2012 size era, there were around 1000 people in attendance, with 70 from Australia, and a good few from the UK. It was a great opportunity to meet accountants from other countries. I knew so many people which was both a good thing and a bad thing. I felt I only got a ‘selfie second’ with a few hundred people.?
There is a benefit from going to intimate or smaller conferences.
Day 1 of the conference opened with Dave’s Highway, a country music band singing Jolene, and country music dancing. Day 2 opened with Scotty Scarano ?????? doing a rap about Xero, which was quite brilliant.
Watch the rap here via Natalie Lennon Tik Tok account.
I encourage you to connect with both of them in relevant places.
Product Announcements
?As you’d expect the Xero leaders all spoke. The CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy put the investor one page on the screen highlighting the key strategic initiative 3 by 3
3 core markets - US, UK & AU. Notably US first and AU last!
3 Core functionalities - accounting, payroll & payments (getting paid and paying your vendors)
Many of the product announcements were US centric, and the US people were excited that they could see definite commitment to their needs from Xero.?
Initially, back in the day, when Xero emerged it said everyone is going to get the same solution, and you all need to adapt to this modern bookkeeping methodology. With a new leadership, and there are a lot of new leaders in place, they are not shackled to that philosophy.
There is a term glocalisation: which refers to adapting global products, services, or ideas? to fit local cultures, preferences, and needs. So a company modifies their global strategies to resonate with specific regional markets. Of course Xero has to offer localised compliance, and payroll. But it appears that it is going deeper with some of its core functionality.
An example of this is changing the way bank reconciliations will work. In the US, you will now be able to reconcile to a bank statement period.? You’ll be able to specify a date range and set an opening and closing balance from your bank statement.
Apparently the lack of reconciling to an opening and closing balance of a bank statement has been the number one objection from US accountants for the past 14 years?! Source Blake Oliver, CPA & David Leary on The Accounting Podcast->
This means if a US Xero user is reconciling client books across multiple different? software solutions, they don’t have to get their head around doing it in a different way.? And in case I’ve not made it clear enough, the Xero way will now be similar to all the other popular US accounting software methodologies. This bank reconciliation feature will now be offered in the US, but controversially not in other jurisdictions.
Many of the true blue Xero users don't want this functionality offered in Australia, citing that it will make us go backwards. But I note in the forums a number of people commented that they would not use Xero without this functionality. Maybe, like in the US, when the decisions are being made, the non-users should be consulted. Maybe it should be a setting option offered globally?
Other announcements included? Xero Inventory Plus, with Integrations with Amazon and Shopify making it easier to manage inventory across multiple channels. Again this is just for the US. My inventory expert friends have beta tested this and they rave about it!
They talked about enhanced payments features that are in beta - so worth reading the media releases that I will pop in the show notes.
https://www.xero.com/au/media-releases/xero-accelerates-us-product-development/ . Here in Australia, in terms of enhanced payments, we do now have access to Tap to Pay on android devices
I enabled Tap to Pay on my Android device (Google Pixel)
This allows me to accept contactless payments.
I created an 'test' invoice for 50 cents (minimum amount required), processed payment, and with a processing fee of 1.75% it ended up being charged 51 cents.
The total time to set up and process a payment was less time than it takes to boil the kettle.?
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What did you think of the new Xero product announcements? Let me know in the comments or send me a message on social media.
Lets talk about Apps & Exhibitors
Now, let's shift gears to talk about the innovation I saw from the exhibitors.
In terms of innovation, there’ve been a number of solutions offering multi-entity solutions to varying degrees. From the simplicity of collating financials in spreadsheets to robust solutions that offer collation across multiple areas, and offer the ability to drill down in the detail. I caught up with Andrey Kustarnikov & Maria Kustarnikov from G-Accon . They gave me some lovely branded shot glasses. G-Accon is a solution that syncs your GL data with Google spreadsheets. I also spoke with the Joiin team, that’s Joiin with a double ‘i’, who consolidates your reports into Microsoft Excel. Syft Analytics , who have just recently been acquired by Xero, offer the ability to consolidate entities, and aid with eliminating intercompany transactions and balances. I caught up with James Erving , Head of Sales for Fathom . Fathom is a plug and play Analysis, Reporting, Forecasting and Consolidating software solution. It integrates with all the platforms you’d expect, and offers multi-entity reporting. One of the newer players on the block is Translucent , who are a compound solution, which means when you consolidate, it’s like you are building lego blocks of data, so you are able to drill down into a lot more detail. So there are a lot of interesting solutions in the multi-entity space, spending on what your needs and your budget is.?
Another solution Rob Stone asked me to take a look at was AppVentory , which enables and empowers you to roll out advisory. I thought it was quite different to the other offerings we have heard of before. I had quite an extensive discussion about AppVentory on the No Accounting for Tech podcast ep23 with Tom Herbert , Blake & David.
I’m also going to mention, my wonderful husband was able to join me to attend Xerocon. To set the scene, he is a consultant, but not an accountant or bookkeeper, but he’s a smart guy, and has an awareness of the industry and technology. He sat in on a number of the demonstrations on the exhibition floor. Unfortunately, he felt that many of the presenters did not understand what they were talking about, did not understand the industry, and were working off a script - Ouch! That’s really unfortunate, and such a massive waste of money and lost opportunity. I am a certified trainer, and have taught at universities and training colleges. Training is not simply speaking, or speaking from a script, it is structured knowledge transfer and skill development, and appreciating the holistic environment of the student (or person in the audience). It does concern me that lots of webinars and training sessions seem to be run by people more focused on harvesting lists, than providing quality education.
Useful article about training -> https://www.arlo.co/blog/training-skills ?
Speaking at my first international Xerocon
Speaking at my first international Xerocon was quite a milestone. I had pitched a number of sessions to the content organisers, and one of them evolved to be ‘Global Leaders Assemble’, which was part of the "The Build a Modern Practice" stream, on Day 1.
The discussion was expertly facilitated by Managing Director of North America, Ben Richmond CA .?
Fellow Panellists joining me on stage:
As you’d expect, at the start of our session we all had to introduce ourselves. I will give you a speaker's tip. As part of my speaking preparation, I make an effort to understand where I am speaking, so I can weave in something into my talk to localise it.?
So I started off by saying something like When I visited the Nashville Country Music Museum, there was a sign up that said Music was a GLOBAL LANGUAGE…. Music is a global language, love is a global language, accounting is a global language…
What do you think? Hopefully it piqued people's interest….
As the session went on for my part, I talked about how Australians do a good job of being lifestyle first. I talked about how many holidays we get a year in Australia:
And I talked about how many of us, including notably men, actively talk about mental health and wellness. It is part of our vocabulary, and while we are not perfect we are moving in the right direction.?
I knew this was very different to the US and UK, and many people came up to me shocked by the data I shared, and said they needed to really rethink what they were doing, so that is a great outcome!
Beforehand, I practised a lot, and I felt the session went really well. All the panellists actively listened to each other and bounced off one another and everyone shared insightful and interesting content.?
This year, for the first time ever the side sessions were recorded, and if you had a ticket to Xerocon, you can go back and watch them. I’ve gone back and watched my session, and the recording is really high quality so worth checking out.
Events happening around Xerocon.
There were a number of events happening around Xerocon. When I attend a destination conference, I make an effort to attend business events around the conference, so I can tag more of the days I am away as business days.
On Monday, a number of us attended the Chartered Accountants Worldwide inaugural Nashville Chapter launch.?
On Tuesday, the day before Xerocon, there were a lot of events - my calendar was chokkas!
I was invited to an exclusive lunch hosted by ApprovalMax . It was an opportunity to catch up with their international team, and some of their partners. Approval Max is a B2B software platform used to build robust financial controls.
Xero organised a local small business event “Driving Productivity through Small Business Digitalization” and we had an opportunity to hear from and connect with politicians, representatives from the Mayor's office, and local small Nashville businesses. I’m a curious person, and appreciated that both of these events gave us access to learn from real Nashvillians.
In the evening, we attended the Ignition Precon. Guy Pearson greeted us at the door of Ole Red, a honky tonk spot in downtown Nashville owned by country music superstar, and The Voice host, Blake Shelton. The party was our first opportunity to catch up with a mass of people, ahead of a busy few days. Thank you to the Ignition team who also gave me a stylish backpack, bottle and sleep mask.
After Day 1, a few of us were invited to a VIP partner drinks hosted at the Whiskey River Saloon by Projectworks - professional services automation software.
Throughout the conference Noel Tiufino , the Managing Partner of the My Accounts (AU) team, who along with several sponsors organised a number of honky tonk boot scootin' activities for the Australian accounting community! MyAccounts offers day to day bookkeeping through to a complete accounts department with CFO services. hammerjack x My Accounts started us off with a food coma by organising a Tennessee BBQ Lunch at Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint. Imagine smoked BBQ with all the trimmings, shots of pickle juice (yuk!) and pecan pie!
The National Audits Group sponsored a whisky tasting & Distillery Tour. Hall Chadwick sponsored an evening in a honky tonk country music venue. If you’re in a honky tonk, they provide you with a menu of songs the band can sing, and QR code. You scan the code, choose the song, and pay US$20 for the song of your choice. A novel way to earn money, and contribute to the vibe!! If you are part of the Australian accounting industry I recommend you connect with Noel Tiufino, as he tends to organise a lot of great events!
The wrap party was held at Luke's 32 Bridge, a honky tonk bar owned by country music star Luke Bryan. It was set across four levels, and I got in early, found a seat in front of the mechanical bull entertainment, and did not shift for the evening. It looked deceptively easy, but people came off quick, and the next day people showed me the bruises - ouch!
From an accountant's perspective, I was impressed at how many country music stars had an interest in the honky tonk bars on Broadway Street. Nashville, is known as the ‘Music City’ and is home to more than 180 recording studios, more than 150 live music venues, and there are about 56,000 jobs in Nashville tied to the music industry. The music industry contributes over $15.9 billion annually to Nashville's economy. I have a new appreciation for country music, and the business of country music. I think Keith Urban is a lot richer than I ever imagined, and maybe we should have an accounting conference in TAMWORTH, Australia!
After a big destination conference I like to take the opportunity to travel, decompress and reflect on what I learnt from the event. After Nashville, I took the opportunity (and 2 hour flight) to visit New York for ten days. We had a holiday booked in New York for May 2020, and it took us 4 years to eventually replace that trip! As an extra treat I caught up with the wonderful Lisa Martin - New Zealand accountant extraordinaire - at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and we watched the New York Yankees and we talked all things accounting and bookkeeping over CrackerJack and Pretzels. Interesting fact, when the Yankees win at their home stadium, they play Frank Sinatra singing the Leonard Bernstein song New York New York. When they lose they play the fabulous Liza Minnellii singing the song. You may recall she also starred in the 1977 Martin Scorsese film alongside starring Robert De Niro.
As I wrap this up, I’d like to share a list I have curated over the years of the many benefits of connecting with accountants overseas:
I joined the Tim Garth & Dan Osborne on the Two Drunk Accountants podcast and they talked about the tax implications of destination conferences. You can listen via a link in the show notes.
Thank you to everyone who made this a memorable experience.
Some of the organisations that I strategically partner with, mentioned, include ApprovalMax Fathom G-Accon Translucent .
I hope you enjoyed listening to the podcast or reading the transcript. I hope for those who attended it was a lovely reflection, and for those who did not attend, I’ve shared some learnings and insights so you feel like you were there.?
Experienced Pension Scheme Auditor. Helping you Manage your Pension Scheme Risks more Skilfully.
1 个月Looking forward to listening to on Sunday as I travel to Manchester. Already craving Smokey BBQ food, a night at The Old Opry and a few Honky Tonk Bars before going to bed before midnight! Just booked a Nashville night out in Oxford for my birthday! ??
"Consultant Bookkeeper||QuickBooks Proadviser || Xero certified || Accountant || ."I aid small business owners in accurately inputting financial data to drive business growth."1 month free trail.
1 个月I’m an OK rapper who runs a peaceful accounting firm, I’m also the janitor at Accounting High
1 个月BRILLIANT Heather! thank you for the shoutout ??????
Co-Founder at G-Accon
1 个月It was awesome seeing you, Heather! So glad you liked the shot glasses. They were a hit at our G-Accon booth at Xerocon! Some people were stopping by just to grab them. ?? Great recap and brings back so many amazing memories! ?? ??
Special Situations - Strategy - Restructuring
1 个月Lovely wrap post ! Thanks for the Hall Chadwick mention. See you in Brisbane soon : )