As a member of the Institute’s member communications working group I would welcome your views on the revamped icaew.com website

I believe it looks crisper and fresher, but can you use it better than before?

The problem used to be that there was so much information on there that you couldn’t see the wood for the trees.

Another criticism was about needing to know your ICAEW membership number and password for some pages and not others, has this changed for what you need?

Why oh why do mobile phone contracts have to be so difficult to evaluate.

My contract is up for renewal, so far my provider has admitted to making several mistakes in the history he has pulled up making each quote he has given me next to useless. I make an enquiry about using a Blackberry and lo the cost is 5 times that given on a major providers website.

Is it so difficult to quote for five phones and a 3G broadband package, where I only want to replace 3 phones and have mobile email for two.

Now I need to do the call evaluations that I thought my supplier was doing, to ensure he has done it properly.

Phones I have been looking at range from my Nokia E61 replacement the E71, the Samsung Omnia, Blackberry Curve and a Nokia E66/6220.

I have just come back from a local Oxfordshire County Council initiative seminar entitled “Operation Ostrich”.

The breakfast time seminar was well attended by local Cherwell businesses and I think all learnt things that, though obvious, were not in their own business plans.

The event was run using an audience participation case study where a fire had started in a vehicle in your office/factory car park and gradually escalated until it had reached your own building.

As you no longer had access to the building for an unknown amount of time how would you run your business, who would you contact, how would you contact them. As remember when you evacuate a building you aren’t supposed to take anything with you or go back for anything.

So where is the backup of your laptop, mobile phone, time manager etc.

Now I think I have found a use for all that offsite disk space Microsoft/BT keeps inviting me to use at minimal cost. Just have to keep it in a format that is easy to move around and password protect it.

BT Digital Vault

Windows Live SkyDrive

This presentation was rolling whilst the attendees of this year’s agm were networking and enjoying a curry at the award winning curry restaurant at Baylis House, Slough earlier this year.

15^th May 2008

Thames Valley Society of Chartered Accountants
President’s Review of January 2007 – May 2008

Normally our formal financial year would span two presidencies however as I have been your president for two years I thought I would report on the eighteen months since my last report. Our strategies have been nurtured from infancy leading to a higher level of support for members than ever before.

Chartered Accountants in Business

Our CAB group goes from strength to strength, with quarterly meetings with various topics, again we have held some successful soft skills events, hosted by one of our members, Joy Ainley. More recently another of our volunteers, David Harmes put on a successful evening event (“Putting the Numbers Front Seat”). Our next CAB event has just moved from the planning board to the flyer, we are taking over the Oxford Union in June when we have four star speakers for and against the proposition “This House believes Corporate Responsibility will not survive the downturn”, you should find a flyer in the pack, my thanks to Michael Cooper for his efforts in putting this together.

Practice Support Groups

We now have four practice support groups with Newbury successfully joining Oxford, Reading and Thames Valley East, new members are always welcome. During the year, together with the group chairmen I attended two of the three Practice Advisory Group forums where the new group wanted input from the general practitioner, should any of you want to see what Moorgate Place has to offer for the practitioner I highly recommend these events.

Job Club

The job club has not met for some time, with the current “Credit Crunch” we might find it valuable to resurrect it..

Technical Advisory Committee

The TAC is kept busy with monthly meetings reviewing Institute pronouncements.

Continuing Professional development (CPD)

As can be seen in the Treasurer’s report the SESCA managed CPD programme runs from strength to strength, with over a 1,000 course seats in each year.

Annual Dinner

We held a successful annual dinner at the Ashmolean Museum and the Randolph Hotel, where the Randolph surpassed itself with the quality of the local Thames Valley sourced produce.

Annual Conference

The annual conference, held in Stokenchurch, again ran in two streams with delegates mixing between practice and business focused lectures.

New Members Dinner

This year the New Members Dinner will be amalgamated with the Annual Dinner at the Crowne Plaza in Marlow.

This is a presentation I made to the Ordre des experts-comptables in Orléans, summer 2007. I was part of panel that they had put together to discuss doing business with their neighbours, in this case the UK as a precursor to their national conference in September.

I found this on the ICAEW ITCounts community, thought it would be useful to share it.

The 12 Rules from ION ICAEW on Vimeo.

After you?ve watched it here are some links to a few blogs you may find interesting:

• A top accountancy and technology blog AccMan (I see Dennis already writes here, ahem!)
• A banking and innovation blog: Bankervision
• My personal blog – where I sometimes write about issues to do with personal reputation: Open (Minds, Finds, Conversations)

Lastly, if it?s your company?s online reputation you?re thinking about do please take a look at the author, Antony Mayfield’s company iCrossing’s website. They have also published a free eBook called What is Social Media? which you may find useful.

Well it’s all over, thank you for the opportunity and your support over the last two years

At last night’s agm Michael mentioned online forums, coming soon, I found this on YouTube:

This clip was recorded from France24’s website:

http://www.france24.com/en/20080326-sarkozy-carla-bruni-france-uk-brown

at the time of President Sarkozy state visit to the UK March 2008

It won’t play here, right click, save and then play using something like Realplayer