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The Best Part of a Conference Never Happens During the Conference

As I write this, I’m sitting on a plane flying back home to Brisbane from what was an AMAZING experience at the second annual ChangeGPS Conference. As this was my first conference I really got a lot out of it, I loved the topics, the speakers and the passion all throughout the room. But as I reflect, I’m realising that it wasn't the actual conference that lead to the most eye-opening and inspiring stories and ideas. It was from talking to the people who were there.

Although I could recite many stories, one that sticks out for me was an anecdote that Craig Little from Xero shared with me.

Do you trust the bank with your money?

When discussing cloud accounting or business in the cloud in general, the biggest objection is always and has always been around data security, and Xero is no different. Craig’s view on this is as beautiful as it is practical.

When client’s ask him the obligatory ‘How do I know I can trust you with my data?’ question, Craig asks,

‘Do you trust a bank with your money?’

A little thrown by the seemingly unrelated question the client invariably replies in the affirmative to some degree. To which Craig follows up

‘Why do you think that is?’

It’s because once upon a time you used to hand over your pouch of gold and silver to a bank teller and they would diligently lock it away under lock and key… a BIG lock and key.

But when was the last time you did that? I for one know that when I receive money it’s very rarely cash, it’s simply numbers on a screen going from one account to another… In other words money has become data, and who should you trust more with your data a bank or a software company?

This really opened my eyes!

 

Access to brilliant minds of the industry at any event is priceless, I for one can’t wait for the next one.