[caption id="attachment_598668" align="aligncenter" width="700"] #FutureReady[/caption]

Over the last year in our townhall meetings we have polled our members on what are the most valuable benefits of belonging to MACPA and among the top five are: Helping members be even more #FutureReady,  Scouting for Future Trends, and Helping our Members Careers and Learning.We have worked with some of the 'top guns' in our Profession to help us elevate and accelerate our transformation and they will all be here to inspire you and offer real-life stories of how our Profession is moving forward in these tiems of exponential change.

You will see them in all the Hard Trend catgories of Government Regulation, Technology and Demographics. And a special Econimic Update at the CPA Summit by Mary Ann Scully, CEO of Howard Bank.

Next week we have three events that elevate and accelerate all three of these.

1. Dec 2nd Monday 1:00pm -5:00pm Future Ready Learning Labs this is a free overview of leading technologies, apps and providers with short 15 minute TED-style talks. This is a chance to meet our Preferred Providers in a fun and informative format and to see a lot in a little time. 4 hours of FREE CPE!
2. Dec 3rd Tuesday 8:00 am - 5:00pm CPA Summit is our signature event devoted to the hard trends of technology, demographics and regulations with practical case studies and examples of how firms are actually transforming and the technologies and applications that can help them. Client Accounting Services, Data Analytics, Payroll and HR, AI, Bots, Cyber-security along with the latest leadership, culture, and employee retention strategies will be featured. In-person and via webcast.
3. Dec 4th Wednesday 8:00 am -Noon is our AI in Accounting and Auditing Conference and features a deep dive into AI, machine learning applied to auditing and Client Accounting Services (Outsource CFO). Mindbridge, Inflow from Thomson-Reuters and Botkeeper will be featured along with several firms actively using these applications. Jonathan Kraftchick, the Chief Innovation Officer of Cherry Bekaert along with Joey Havens the Executive Partner of HORNE, LLP (Top 50 firms) will talk about the mindset and culture shift they led to prepare their firms for the future. We will close with discussion around upskilling and reskilling the Profession and how to approach that.

These sessions will cover how CPAs are transforming their practrices and accoutning and finance departments by leveraging these exponential technologies:

1. Big Data analytics
2. Artificial intelligence and cognitive computing in audit and tax
3. Advanced cloud computing
4. Virtualization and automation of processes and services (RPA)
5. Mobile apps for business processes
6. Cyber-security

We know that in order to successfully leverage these exponential technologies you neeed the right mindset for you and your team as well as leadership, culture and the latest techniques in employee retention. These will aslo be featured at the #CPASummit and #AIAudit conferences.

All of these are great opportunities to form a 'future scout' or innovation team and send them to these events or schedule a 'watch party' on your offices to view these. We are continuing to work hard on being ahead of these hard trends and to help you be even more future-ready and to position your firm to thrive in these exponential times.

We hope to see you there!