Mid-week, we (DC and I) travel to the West Coast for an annual gathering of thousands of our peers, along with consultants, asset firms, and as many technology firms that you could shake a stick at…. with a new cell phone (and more importantly camera and battery), twitter followers ( @johnkvale ) can check some pictures that will be posted – and of course we will have items here as well… hopefully later this week….
A History of Planning Technology
Technology allows great things as most everyone knows. Over the last several decades, the Financial Planning and Portfolio Management process has adopted technology… as has our firm.
Originally the seemingly unstoppable power of Excel continued to improve speed, make for greater accuracy, and ever detailed specifications.
As a firm, we gravitated from the powers of Excel (Once upon a time this was done with pencil and paper – we know some that still do it this way today!) on to a heavy server burdening system, then on to a slightly lighter in house/on-line system, finally to the web based/full on-line systems (each time with much heartache and heartburn.)
Enter Donald “The Brain“
Donald “The Brain” On Deck this Week
With an almost from scratch to modern day software background as mentioned above – Excel to server/web/cloud systems, Donald, who has always been in charge of this, immediately understood the challenges, necessary views, and possibilities when an all-new, completely cloud based on-line system became available.
As a Beta tester, and later almost a technology consultant (offered up enhancements that were eagerly accepted) Donald has been a go-to person for our modern day software and the firm that created it!
In the spirit of helping as many as possible, Donald will be on panels during the annual conference this week helping fellow advisors understand the power, simplicity, accuracy and productivity enhancements that we utilize, much to our software providers pleasure.
It is a great honor to be asked to do this before thousands of your peers- Well Done DC!
Spirit of the Conference
We know what your thinking … big party that you get to write off the expenses? Once upon a time many years ago – maybe! NOT TODAY – showing our age I guess…haha
Today, we have a working list of items to review with various providers (all of the team has been gathering wish lists and needed understanding items for the last month from each perspective), multiple meetings as soon as we hit the ground, specific questions from you guys/clients in the field on certain subject matters, as well as a full schedule of planned viewing of panels of others, that we are not specialists in!
Several years ago, while solo and a morning of too much coffee, multiple new items were agreed upon and contracts signed ( i.e. New Web site provider, other tech services). Upon return, the gang was NOT happy (sorry guys) as we tried to digest everything over the next several months… we have learned to keep things bite size, but we will certainly stay informed!
Look for an informative post on Wednesday as we travel, then likely a brief post of Friday as we make our way back home, with frequent twitter posts and likely a deluge of posts here once we get our feet back on the ground …. stay tuned – Can you tell we are excited and ready to go?
Have a Great “Inform and get informed” Day/Week!
John A. Kvale CFA, CFP
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