Recently in CMA Category

I've had some interesting responses when I introduce myself as a financial storyteller. The vast majority of these have been very favourable - I help organisations tell their story through numbers. Depending on the organisation, this can mean presenting what their business actually is to an external audience or informing Senior Management internally about what's going on.

So I was thrilled to see the latest CMA Marketing campaign which was launched last week. The new brand platform is "Creative Accountants" and I agree with David Fletcher who is the CMA Vice President, Public Affairs, when he explained "This is about people, not a criminal practice." I think the same can be said for storytelling. The full comments are contained in this article and I invite you to check them out.

As an alternative you can check our the new website, creativeaccountants.org. I applaud this campaign and the thinking behind it. Whether it's easier to say I am creative accountant or a financial storyteller I can't guess but either way we are on the same page.

Tonight I had the pleasure of attending the closing panel of the Canadian Financing Forum West. The event was put on by Dave Thomas of Rocket Builders. Credit to Dave for what was a cracking event. As the Forum's website says:

"The Canadian Financing Forum matches North American Corporate and VC investors with serious entrepreneurs looking to build world-class technology companies."

Basically a bunch of people looking for money able to present to a bunch of people with money. I was invited through New Ventures BC and the company I co-mentored last year, Teampages was presenting. Alas I arrived too late to see the presentation, but I did catch up with Mike Tan and was pleased to hear his business continues to do very well.

The highlight of the afternoon/evening for me was the Panel who discussed Web 2.0 type questions posed to them by a sad (and sick I understand) Paul Kedrosky. Lot's of healthy stuff here which I must blog about at some point including whether Facebook was done? Reading the press today I see that my favourite application on Facebook, Scrabulous may be under threat! That leaves the status updates as the other main reason I go to the site and made me think I should maybe concentrate on Twitter instead!

The reception to round the event off allowed me the opportunity to reconnect with some faces I'd not seen for a while and meet some new folk. Amongst them folk from Contigo, Chrysalix, Eqo.

This was a good opener for me to 2008, good networking, interesting people and presentations. Next week sees the Vancouver Enterprise Forum kick off, the CMA Breakfast Networking I host for the CMA Members and then Launch Party, which Danny Robinson of Strutta mentioned today.

Vancouver is an interesting place right now and at this time of year there is no shortage of things to take our minds away from the somewhat indifferent weather. Enjoy everyone!

Tonight I had the pleasure of presenting to CMA members "A conversation about blogging." The intention was to give an overview of the subject and give some examples about why a Certified Management Accountant should even care about blogging.

My presentation is below and can be downloaded as a pdf here. When you look at the example slides, double clicking should launch your browser and take you to that page. Of course it may look slightly different as there may be new posts on the blog!

There was a good and attentive audience and my feeling is that the presentation was well received. I am not the world's most experienced presenter so I'm looking forward to receiving feedback from the people in the room.

To get things going my own impression was that the presentation was too long and that I could spend more time making some of the slides with screen shots more interesting. The balance of course if that an internet is not always available and being skilled in 'showing' websites live can be more difficult that it looks!

The presentation was followed by a very enjoyable dinner at a local restaurant. For me it was a very rewarding evening, sharing one of my passions with a new audience. If you are reading this and came to the event I would really value your comments to this post!

Technorati Tags: blogging, CMA, storytelling, technology

This week I will be giving a talk about blogging to members of the Society of Certified Management Accountants in Vancouver. My self-written publicity looks like this:

Stewart Marshall, a UK designated Chartered Management Accountant, financial storyteller and blogger introduces ...

A conversation about blogs.

What they are, who used them, who writes them, how you find them and why, as a CMA you should care. Stewart will answer these questions and introduce you to one of the most important communication tools available today. By translating the buzzwords and the geekery, he will illustrate the potential of this worldwide resource to you and your business. Stewart will explain how as a CMA, you can maximise the opportunity blogging presents, capitalize on the knowledge it can give you and even how you can participate yourself!

It should be a fun evening, I just need to finalise the slides ....

More information at the CMA BC website.

Technorati Tags: blogging, CMA, event, storytelling, Vancouver

Bright eyed and bushy tailed CMAs shared coffee and muffins yesterday morning. Society staff made the trip up one floor to join us. Vancouver chapter board members were on hand and much friendly discussion not to mention consumption of coffee and muffins was had.

Judging by the weather for at least part of this week, the summer has arrived as has the opportunities for networking. There will be coffee and muffins throughout the summer. Last year was this was a big topic of debate - i.e. do we stop for the summer and restart after Labour Day?

No, is the short answer. I felt then, as I do now, that despite it being a quieter time in the city, there are still lots of CMAs still around. We did run the coffee and muffins in July and August last year and far from seeing lower numbers we had the highest attendance up to that point. I think in August around 40 CMAs came out and the buzz in the room was something to remember.

So I encourage you this summer to come and join us. Maybe it's the warmer weather but last year that translated to a warmer environment to meet, share and connect with fellow members. See you there!

Tomorrow morning is this month's Coffee and Muffins Networking Breakfast. This informal gathering of CMA members is an opportunity for members to meet each other, catch up with contacts and generally participate in the wider CMA community.

For my part I get to host the morning, which really involves welcoming new faces, introducing members to each other and keeping my little announcements to a minimum before people head off for the working day. Many staff members from the Society will also be in attendance, including our President Colin Bennett and Sandra Record, it's a great opportunity to meet the folks who represent and support our professional body.

I've met many facinating CMA members from a wide range of backgrounds. Many are working as CMAs in their organisation, others have moved into other fields of work which the CMA has prepared them for. CIMA members are also invited to the join the wider Management Accounting community and learn more about what the CMA is all about.

So if you haven't registered and would like to come, please let me know or register online. You can of course attend unannounced but we would like to avoid running out of coffee!

This week I received an email from CIMA, the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. They are the UK equivalent to the CMA here in Canada and I act as their BC Correspondent.

This coming week see's the Canadian Branch host the biggest event of the year in Toronto. The CIMA Canada Mayor's Trophy takes place on June 23rd at Sunnybrook Park, 1132 Leslie Street and has grown over the years to be a very successful and well reported event.

The event is a Celebration of Cricket and every years succeeds in bringing together people from diverse communities across the Toronto Region. Sponsors have included Bell Canada, Scotiabank not to mention the support of the Mayor of Toronto, the Toronto Police Service and many more. Last year the event won a Global Prize from the International Cricket Council for Best Cricket Promotional and Marketing Event. High praise indeed!

This year Gordon Grant, the newly elected President of CIMA and Glynn Lowth Deputy President will be in Toronto to attend the event next week. CIMA is striving to be an International organisation and the visit of our youngest ever President and his Deputy President is very welcome. It's a shame I can't make it to Toronto, but it does demonstrate this is one very big country - maybe I'll suggest this for next year and the clearly excellent sponsorship team can factor the costs in ;-)

The CMA, at least here in BC had a very successful marquee event of their own in May. Over 250 participants attended the provincial conference, which featured keynote speakers from across North America including international bestseller Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner, Captain of the Canadian Women’s Olympic Hockey Team Cassie Campbell, and award-winning psychologist and Harvard Professor Dr. Brian Little. You can read more about the event here.

CIMA and the Society of Certified Management Accountants have an existing Mutual recognition programme which I was pleased to give feedback on recently. Personally I think the two organisations should continue to increase our links to each other. The global community of Management Accountants can only benefit from strengthening our ties with each other.

I'm told there should be plenty of publicity for the event and for CIMA - CBC is the official media sponsor this year, as well as coverage in more traditional press. The CMA campaigns are also well worth looking at as well. If you click here you can see the online ads. I must ask the office if they can give in a proper link so I can embed on on this blog!

Over the last year I've had the pleasure of hosting Breakfast Networking Meetings for the Vancouver Chapter of the Certfied Management Accountants Society here in Vancouver. Over that time I've had the pleasure of getting to know many of the BC Society staff.

I've also been discussing with the Chapter President how we can have some kind of online tool/community for the Chapter Board/Members etc maybe as an extension of the informal breakfasts I already host.

I am greatly encouraged by these discussions, the latest of which I had yesterday morning over coffee. The subject was blogging. We had a friendly chat over coffee about what this 'blogging' thing is. The subject originally came up when a staff member ran a 30 day trial with Typepad - a service I use to run the BC Floorball Federation Blog. (btw, this blog uses Movable Type, and there are other solutions available, such as Drupal)

The discussion was a good one and amongst other things led me to think running an 'introduction to blogging for accountants' would be a worthy thing to pursue! In the meeting I handed over two of the best books I've read about blogging. These were Shel Israel/Robert Scoble's 'Naked Conversations' and Jeremey Wright's 'Blog Marketing'. Both of these do an excellent job of introducing the subject and have the advantage of presenting a new media subject in an old media way. The books also enable the reader to read about what can be a quite intimidating subject in a more familiar environment.

Both books of course have associated with them which are worth looking at blogs">here and here respectively.

Interestingly over in Ontario they do do a few student blogs following student through their studies. The Society here is thinking from more of a Provincial/Chapter perspective. I'm looking forward to the next meeting and will be sure to keep you posted!