Registration is now open for the 2010 Young CPAs Conference

Register for TSCPA’s third annual Young CPAs and Emerging Professionals Conference to be held June 25 at the Austin Wyndham Garden Hotel and Conference Center to improve your networking skills, hone your social media tactics, get valuable updates on issues affecting the accounting profession, technology updates and much more.

Designed specifically for young CPAs, CPA candidates and accounting students, you can earn up to six CPE credit hours at the conference while learning about conflict resolution and negotiation, diversity in the workplace, and trends of highly effective finance organizations. The conference also includes sessions on cyber crime, social media for businesses and technology trends.

One of the best parts about this conference is that it’s tailored for your particular career stage to help young professionals like you climb additional rungs on the ladder.

Plus, this daylong event comes at the recession-sensitive price of only $95 for TSCPA CPA and candidate members. That low price includes six CPE credit hours, breakfast and lunch.

Save your seat today for this can’t-miss event and be sure to invite your colleagues, friends and former classmates to attend as well.

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We hope to see you there.

Financial Literacy Social Media Day

TSCPA's second annual Financial Literacy Social Media Outreach Day is this Friday, April 30. The purpose is to bring awareness to the financial literacy information available at Valueyourmoney.org. Last year, the TSCPA reached more than 11,000 people with its financial literacy message.

Please send the following message through your preferred social media outlet:

Looking to improve your personal finance I.Q. or know someone who is? Visit the Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants' consumer website at www.valueyourmoney.org.

The TSCPA would like to measure its reach, so please email Kelly Hardwick at khardwick@tscpa.net by 12pm Monday, May 3 and tell him how many people your message reached. Besides serving our clients and employers, CPAs have a role in educating the public about basic financial education. With the information it provides, the TSCPA hopes to help individuals make wise financial decisions. Please participate this Friday to help spread the message.

Computing in the Clouds

Cloud computing. This has been as hot of a topic as eggs on pavement in the Texas' Summer heat. Well, maybe not that hot, but it's been a term that so many people have thrown around in today's business, but many people may not fully understand it and why it is important to know. The purpose of this post is to give everyone a briefing over cloud computing and why it matters.

Who coined the phrase "Cloud Computing"? While there is no definite owner, I did come across this interesting blog post by John Willis. It's a quick read, and thank you John!

Here's a quick intro to Cloud Computing 101 courtesy of my work colleagues, Mike Pinch and Patrick Helmes:

Cloud computing could be one of the largest revolutions in the history of the Information Technology industry. While there are many benefits, the potential to introduce risk is high unless risks are assessed and mitigated before moving into the "cloud." As accountants, auditors, aspiring accountants, and students, understanding cloud computing and the associated risks that come along with it will be the key to making the move to cloud computing successful and secure.

The “cloud” is a term (used by IT) from the telecom industry during the 1990s and is still a concept/idea rather than an exact science. In theory, cloud computing basically means the mass centralization of computing resources. Once centralized, a mass amount of information, processing, and software can be made available by tapping into this so-called cloud. Cloud computing is a broad term, and is still in its early stages of its development, but there are three cloud computing services in use today: infrastructure, platform, and software.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is likely to be used by businesses. IaaS allows businesses or users to create their own virtual data centers, including servers and firewalls, on-demand. For example, these virtual data centers would be housed in clouds such as Amazon.

Platform as a service (PaaS) is similar in concept, except, rather than creating your own virtual data center, you are provided a standard technical platform and toolset to use and can upload your applications into the cloud to run on this platform. The key difference between IaaS and PaaS is that IaaS requires you to build, deploy and manage your virtual hardware remotely, while PaaS only requires that you code your applications to run in the provided environment. An example of this is Google’s App Engine.

Software as a service (SaaS) takes it one step further and allows individuals to use applications that have been developed and deployed on the Web. SaaS examples include Google Apps package of word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software. These three models of cloud computing are likely to appeal to distinct groups of users:

• IaaS will appeal to businesses looking for complete control over data;
• PaaS appeals to independent developers and Web designers; and
• SaaS will generally appeal to home users or business users looking for low-cost alternatives to traditional software.

I hope that this posting creates a deep interest in this topic. For more on this topic, please register for our conference on June 25, 2010 in Austin, TX.

Happy Tax Day!

We thought we would wish everyone a "Happy Tax Day"! We hope it's everything that you ever dreamed of and wished for!

Good luck to those racing to meet the deadline, and good rest to those who are finally finished!

Save the Date: 2010 Young CPAs Conference June 25

The third annual Young CPAs Conference will be held on Friday, June 25 at the Wyndham Garden Hotel & Conference Center in Austin. This daylong event designed for young CPAs, CPA candidates and accounting students will feature sessions on business skills for the workplace, social media for businesses, diversity in the workplace, negotiation and conflict resolution, a professional issues update, technology, and more. Mark your calendars and plan to attend this day-long CPE event on June 25. More details, including registration information to come. Stay tuned!