If you’ve been watching the news in Australia recently you’ve probably noticed, if not been amongst, some pretty ordinary weather recently.
If you think of the way we now receive information, there have been huge remarkable changes in the past 20 years. It’s difficult to imagine many people waiting for the local evening news on television. So while some look to Facebook, others reach to apps like Periscope, to find out what is going on in their area. So whereas before you’d probably wait for the 5 or 6 o’clock local news to see what is going on, now we have progressed from still photos, to live videos.
In one area we saw someone using a drone to fly over a dam which was overflowing. The quality of the drone footage something was impressive. More recently we’ve seen a news report about a 23 year old that made a million dollar business from his home, taking drone technology from another country and importing it into Australia. Many new business ideas are frequently the adaptation of something from somewhere else, to the current business situation.
Back to Periscope, this is a live video streaming app, which was designed to sit on top of Twitter, and allow videos of current events to be streamed live, and recorded. And as of January 2016, users can stream live from Gopro.
Leaving aside the massive changes in the newsprint and TV industries, Periscope as a concept brings to light a massive number of new opportunities. And it is these opportunities that accountants should be exploring for their clients, and not just completing annual compliance work.
But what about new business streams that might arise from live video feeds from Periscope-like applications… Security, virtual tourism, virtual adventure, virtual reminiscing like asking someone to go visit your old school, old house. And what about the internet of things where we can have cameras or monitoring devices in places where live monitoring brings significant benefits. Instead of crowdsourcing problems, we are crowdsourcing monitoring.
The possibilities that are opening up in the world today need people to experience the technologies and to imagine what might be possible. For accountants, as trusted advisers, we cannot be comfortable completing compliance work when our clients need so much more. Is there any acceptability in keying bank statements, when there are so many possibilities available in the future. Accountants need to be monitoring these new technologies and working with their clients on possibilities for these new technologies in their clients businesses.
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