(HINT: It’s funny because the animals were shot with bullets from guns and I’m talking about bullet points of information.)

But seriously, here are a few of the highlights from my first BarCampBank, BarCampBankDallas. I don’t take copious notes during open discussions; I just jot down the highlights. So, I’ll give you a few bullets that stood out for me and I’d like to get your perspective on some of the ideas, so chime right in.

Two of my favorite concepts of the day.

• Credit Report + Character Report

• Can FIs ever release their API?

Credit Report + Character Report

Social networks can facilitate understanding a person in context of their friends, family and character. Our credit report coldly calculate our financial dependability outside of the context of our whole life. Let us vouch for each other to fill in the gaps on our credit report and make informed exceptions to the hard numbers. Larry Hooper, beloved entertainer, told us that being an independent musician makes him a leper to the credit report robots. But if you sat down for a chat with any of Larry’s friends, you would quickly get a much different picture of the kind of person he really is, separate from his tax status.

So when can the credit report engines work more like LinkedIn? In fact, why can’t they hook into LinkedIn and view a person’s Recommendations and process that into their credit score?

(As an aside, Larry brought an authentic perspective to the discussions, which makes me think we might all stumble into from deeper insights in future BarCampBank sessions by inviting a few non-industry people.)

Can FIs ever release their API?

This was the ultimate question of Mark McSpadden’s session, “I want to start a nerd FI.” The question was how can a bunch of designers and developers get together and start an FI tailored to our specific needs. (Ex: Photoshop loans, server loans, etc.) Mercifully, there were some people in the room uniquely qualified to answer this question. It was an emotional roller coaster that left us all with one question that, while it is mired in regulations and red tape for now, offers a tiny glimmer of hope for some wild day in the future: Why don’t FIs release their API?

API = Application Programming Interface. When it is released, you can get your mitts in it and make it work for your own purposes, within limitations. Twitter released their API and IconFactory made Twitterrific. That’s one example most of our readers will know well. If a bank released their API, the idea is that groups could come along and hook into it to create an FI of their own. That would be more than just the online banking interface, but the whole bag of what keeps an FI pumping.

We quickly – depressingly – learned from the FI CEOs and General Managers in the room that the romantic days of a few teachers with $20 each and a cookie tin, or a few fire fighters and a lock box under the driver’s seat of Engine #1 are gone. The process of starting a financial institution is eat up with prohibitive regulations.

But, could there ever be a day where an existing financial institution could let people hook into it and meaningfully tailor the infrastructure and product to their own needs? I’d love to continue that brainstorm here for a few more beats. You lot who frequent this blog represent some of the sharpest minds in the biz, so turn those cerebral hounds of yours loose.

I’ll close with what was unanimously declared to be the quote of the day. As we sat around a nice conference table off a main room with enough taxidermied big game animals to make the staff of Bass Pro Shops blush at the excess, one of our young peers pointed up at the pair of stuffy portraits representing two generations of big-game-hunting, be-suited bankers (yes, they are exactly what you are picturing) and said, “We want our own FI because we don’t like dealing with that.”

PS: Go grab a look at the photos from this weekend.

As you may have read here, here, here, here, and here, CUES Experience was a blast.

What struck me the most about Mark Stutrud, Summit Brewing Company’s founder and CEO, was that he knows exactly who Summit is and where it’s going. He makes no apologies, and doesn’t try and water Summit down (figuratively, but also literally….there’s no “Summit Lite”), or grow without reason to be like his larger competitors.

One of my favorite quotes by him was, “If we aren’t making some people mad a few times a year, we aren’t doing our job.”

My main takeaway, and the theme of my workshop after the tour, was to differentiate by knowing exactly who you are and pursing that as deeply as you can. Get specific. It takes businesses years and a lot of hard work to find a nitch. Credit unions come with one – its automatic! And as a result we have a built-in affinity and culture from the very beginning. So own that.

Our final question was this: What is something you can do at your credit union that is so relevant to your specific SEG and/or community, that it absolutely wouldn’t make sense somewhere else?

Also, I highly recommend Ron’s post on his Summit takeaways – “Financial Services Marketers Could Use A Beer .”

Here are the slides (a few of which make little sense without their talking points):

| View | Upload your own

Also, Summit beer is fantastic. If you can get it in your area, do it.

ps: I didn’t take any pictures, because I’m a moron. But I’ll update this post with a link to some shots from the tour as soon as a certain someone hooks it up.

We’ve received two lovingly-crafted auditions. Check them:

UFirst FCU / The Boardcast’s Ginny Brady

2008 Partnership Symposium Audition – Ginny Brady from Ginny Brady on Vimeo.

Maine SCU / The CU Loop’s Andy LaFlamme

Thanks to both of you for your awesome work.

Earlier today Matt Davis asked “When’s the deadline?” The answer for now is…keep em coming. The more the merrier.

Do you have one up your sleeve, Matt?

(Click here to learn more about auditioning for the 2008 Partnership Symposium)

I apologize for the lack of love OSCU has been receiving lately. As my Twitter-friends know, I’ve been on the road and elbow deep in on-sight client work pretty much constantly for the past month.

But I miss you. I do.

Here are three things we woulda/coulda/shoulda been covering over the past couple of weeks:

1. FinovateStartup

I wish to high heaven I could have attended FinovateStartup this year. But fortunately, I was able to stay in the live-action loop thanks to fantastic coverage by the following folks:

• Brad & Mark from The Garland Group / Banktastic. Their coverage includes reviews of each and every demo and video interviews of presenters.
• Ron Shevlin’s “Notes from FinovateStartup 2008,” in which he tells it like it is.
• Jeff Stephens from Creative Brand’s insightful series of posts.
• Christophe Langlois from Visible Banking’s collection of posts and video interviews. Aside – you should add this blog to your feeds.
• Live-action commentary from the Twitter militia.
• And, of course, the belle-of-the-ball, Jim Bruene from Netbanker’s write-ups.

Congrats to Jim on another hugely successful event.

2. Joe Lieberman introduced CURIA to the Senate

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a legally or regulatorily-inclined person. I color with crayons and markers for a living. But after doing some research I realized how significant CURIA could be for CU’s ability to impact people. To quote the Cornerstone CU blog, CURIA, which stands for the Credit Union Regulatory Improvements Act, proposes to:

• Modernize credit union capital standards to permit more efficient capital management while allowing more earnings to be returned to members in lower costs and expanded services;
• Expand the ability of credit unions to make loans to finance their members’ local small businesses; and
• Permit more credit unions to offer needed services in lower-income communities that are not adequately served by other depository institutions.

Learn more about CURIA here.

3. Account portability

When I was at the GAC, I had an awesome conversation with Robbie Wright about data portability – the idea that your data from any given online service (from your Facebook profile to your online photos to your gmail acount) belongs to you and not the service. Groups like DataPortability.org are working to make this a reality, and web services like Wesabe and Mint have applied the same concept to transactional data.

So I was excited when Colin Henderson linked to Better Banking Blog’s write-up on ‘BPAY’s top-secret MAMBO project’:

...the top-secret BPAY proposal could deliver the bank account portability that Treasurer Wayne Swan so desperately wants Australian consumers to enjoy.

Instead of a bank account number and BSB, individuals would register for their own BPAY code which could be used to facilitate payments. Consumers could then port their number from bank to bank without the need to re-establish direct debits or credits, and use it to enable online payments.

Because of your collaborative nature, I think this is more relevant to CUs than banks. The closest thing I’ve seen to this in the states, outside of general back-end consolidation work (which is great), is Filene’s ‘Once a Member Always a Member’ i³ Project. But even that is limited in scope compared to the potential of account portability.

How member-empowering, representative of your cooperative structure, and incredible for retention would this be for credit unions?

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to interview Cornerstone Advisors’ strategy and tech guru Steve Williams for the very first CUES Experience Podcast.

What can you expect to see happening in the FI tech-space over the next year? Listen to find out:

powered by ODEO

The rest of the CUES Experience Podcasts will happen live from the conference from May 13th – 16th. They’ll be hosted by Currency Marketing’s Tim McAlpine, so you know they’ll be great (for a sample, check out Currency’s podcast).

And on a final note, if you’re coming, don’t forget about my tour of Summit Brewing Company. It will be many good times.

Thanks to Christopher Stevenson from CUES for the opportunity and Steve Williams for his time and brilliance.

A few weeks ago we received a couple of comments on Doug’s ‘Haps’ post asking about BarCampBanks. The first was from Sue:

Since the barcamp in Seattle was done some time ago, what tangible accomplishments can be attributed to it?

These conferences take money away from our members and need to provide tangible benefits.

The second was from Juan (read the thread for the full comment, it was sassy…which we dig):

What specifics can you bring to the table about the value of the barcamp conferences and achievements of past conferences relating to credit unions?

“Why BarCampBank?” Great question. I’ll start before that…

What is a BarCampBank?

BarCampBankSeattle, the only one I’ve experienced, was an Open Space-style conference (or “unconference,” whichever bakes your cake). Basically, it goes like this:

1. People gather in a place at minimal cost. To quote Morriss (from the same comment thread), most BarCampBanks “are either free or $25 to cover some basic expenses like t-shirts and coffee.” That’s the first reason I dig them. I’m cheap.
2. Lay out blank sheets of paper on the floor and empty time/room slots on the wall. Our setup looked like this:
   
3. Anyone who wants to fills out a conversation topic, posts it, and…
4. Conversation ensues.

Boom. That’s it.

To see our schedule from last year and the collaborative notes from each conversation, click here.

(...and to learn more about Open Space, visit OpenSpaceWorld.)

Was it worth it?

I have to say, for me, absolutely. The conversations definitely shifted my perspective as a designer, marketer, and a consultant to the financial services industry. There’s no doubt that I changed my approach to designs, client relationships, and brainstorming as a result of BCB.

But more importantly, perhaps, were the relationships that grew out of those couple of days and the ongoing conversation and inspiration that has happened since. Flesh and blood contact always always always beats technology. BCB planted the seed that has lead to friendships and regular conversation with pals like William Azaroff, Tim McAlpine, Gene Blishen, and Robbie Wright.

The only thing I’d love to see different in future BCBs is more participation from people who actually work for credit unions and banks (banker count at the Seattle meetup: 0). The consultant/vendor to FI employee ratio was way off, and a greater FI perspective would have been great.

Was it worth it for the credit union folks who attended? Is it better or worse value than other industry conferences? I honestly can’t tell you, and will have to let them speak for themselves….so I’m tagging Gene Blishen, Robbie Wright, Shari Storm, and William Azaroff to weigh in.

What say you?

(All that said, sadly, I won’t be able to make any of the upcoming BCBs because I’m already traveling for clients. Lame. [Just kidding, clients.])

This week I’m at the CUNA Governmental Affairs Conference. It is enormous.

I’m here working with the NCUF’s REAL Solutions to hunt down CU industry thought leaders and record their thoughts on the conference, and, in particular, gather insights on serving low-income consumers.

We’re documenting the conference through video interviews, podcasts, and photos which are all viewable (with more to come) at realsolutions.coop.

One of our chats was with Doug Fecher, CEO of Wright-Patt CU. In this video, he unpacks the story of a vocal low-income member and how it lead to their payday lending alternative StretchPay:

Also, CU Communicator Jeff Hardin and Boardcaster Ginny Brady have been covering the conference on their blogs as well. Definitely check them out.

And if you’re in town, come hang tonight at the TwittaBloggerSocial Meetup – going down at Capital City Brewing Company.

One thing credit unioners love is conferences. So, here’s a non-comprehensive list of where all the cool people in the movement are hanging out. If you you’re going to any of these or have information on an event that isn’t listed here, add it to the comments.

CUNA GAC (Washington, DC)
Colin Powell, Dave Barry, Marie Osmond, and Chris Matthews headline. At the Washington Convention Center starting Sunday and lasting through March 6, 2008.

Brent told me to mention the TwittaBloggerSocial meetup on Tuesday, March 4 from 8:30 p.m. until everyone’s loaded at the Capital City Brewing Company at 1100 New York Avenue, NW.

BarCampBankSF (San Francisco)
In Berkeley, actually, at the University of California campus on March 29, 2008

BarCampBankNE (New England)
Cool location: America’s Credit Union Museum in Manchester, NH on April 5, 2008

BarCampMoneyNYC (New York)
Another cool location, just more urban. 1301 6th Ave between 52nd and 53rd in Manhattan on April 12, 2008

FinovateStartup08 (San Francisco)
A showcase of dozens of the coolest things happening to the future of money happens on April 29, 2008. Today (2/29) is the last day to register at a discounted rate.

CUES Experience (Minneapolis)
A marketing and technology conference that breaks outside of traditional conference walls. In addition to sessions, attendees load up in a bus and tour innovative companies outside of credit uniondom. Happens May 13 – 16, 2008.

Brent is facilitating a tour of Summit Brewery. Every time it comes up in conversation he starts giggling and clapping.

BarCampBankDallas is still in its nascent stages and the organizers are hoping for a June date.

Partnership Symposium 2008 (Indianapolis)
Ron Shevlin hosts. An annual convention of technology, credit unions and how to marry the two. Brought to you by Forum Solutions and Trabian Technology. October 1st and 2nd, 2008, Fishers, IN.

Events updated: (2/29 at 2:15p)

FinovateStartup is right around the corner, and if it’s anything like last October’s conference tickets will be sold out soon. Finovate and FinovateStartup are financial innovation and technology conferences put on by tech+finance guru Jim Bruene of Netbanker.

Startup companies demoing their products (Jim’s blog says “No PowerPoint slides allowed!”) include: Andera, Boulevard R., Buxfer, Motley Fool CAPS, ClairMail, Credit Karma, First ROI, Jwaala, Lending Club, Mint, Prosper, SmartHippo, Unified Money, and the rockstars from Wesabe (see how big a fan I am of Wesabe here).

It’s a stockpile of some of the coolest things to happen to money since they invented “buying stuff.”

Watch videos from last year’s Finovate here, and sign up to attend here.

In a session on reaching the 18 – 30 year old Hispanics”, Reverend Ed Gomez of El Buen Samaritano Epsicopal Mission said the best way to build trust, engage, and serve the Hispanic culture, and I would argue any culture, is to get outside of our own heads – both when we communicate and design products.

In a quote I swiped from the YES Summit blog, Ed said Wells Fargo did this…

...because it hired Hispanic staff, including management, and engaged the market by participating in local community events. It made its presence felt on the personal basis and used the relationships it built with community leaders to design products specifically suited to people who operate outside the majority economy.

Wright-Patt CU wanted to be more relevant to young adults, so they hired 23 year-old Dustin Limburg on as Marketing Representative for Young Adults. When I asked him how they are approaching the market, Dustin said, “We basically look at them like a separate SEG.”

How are you getting outside of your head and speaking the cultural language?

This morning we had the opportunity to hang out with some Gen-Yers and talk about how they bank, save, and plan for the future. Here’s a snapshot (note: because they didn’t speak in html code, I added the links) -

Marsha

...is a 23 year-old University of Texas student and Starbucks Barista. She says:

My debt is in student loans and credit cards. After I graduate, I’m going to law school. When it’s all done, I expect to have $200,000 in student loans. It could take until I’m 45 to pay them off.

I bank with a credit union, and do all of my banking online. All of my loans are through Wells Fargo and Sallie Mae, but if my credit union had private loans I’d use them.

I go to my mom for financial advice. There is so much clutter on my credit union’s homepage that even if they had financial advice I still wouldn’t read it.

Do I think about retirement? Well, I know I want to go to France and I want to write a book.

Aaron

...is a 24-year old developer for St. Edwards University. He says:

I do all my banking online. I use ING for everything. I used to use a credit union because my parents were members. But I dropped them when they killed their mobile banking.

ING’s Orange Checking account makes me more aware of how I pay my bills because I’m getting a yield. It helps me save and probably helps me pay on time.

Elysa

...is a 19 year-old University of Texas student. She says:

I probably wouldn’t go to a financial literacy seminar put on by a credit union or bank, but I’d listen to a speaker invited by my sorority.

I’m a business student, and plan on learning about investing through classes at school.

I have no debt, I was always told to pay my credit cards in full (my dad is financial advisor).

John Donovan of peer-to-peer lending community Lending Club kicked off his presentation by comparing his company to an “online credit union.”

Lending Club began solely in Facebook and launched independently in September of this year.

Using Google’s OpenSocial platform, Lending Club is placing themselves inside of popular social networks “the same way you put a physical branch where people are.” From their blog:

OpenSocial offers the ability to retrieve information about a user, and get distribution, across many social networks. What it means is that Lending Club borrowers will be able to leverage their network of connections more broadly, that lenders will be presented with better opportunities to invest in people they trust and feel more comfortable with (such as friends of friends), and that a broader distribution will help find better matches between lenders and borrowers.

John also brought up the prospect of a white label partnership between Lending Club and credit unions. In this scenerio, Lending Club would play back-end provider to a CU-branded P2P lending community. This is pretty interesting considering Zopa’s announcement last week. I wonder if they were planning that before they heard about Zopa’s US plans.

Also, in July they hosted a consumer-generated video campaign, asking users to explain the value of Lending Club and P2P lending. Here’s one particularly well-done submission, followed by one particularly wacked-out submission:

(I dedicate them both to Ron Shevlin)

Christopher Morris has set up YES Summit social network at yescucommunity.com. He used Ning, a free (for a basic account) tool for building custom social networks, to create it. The YES CU Community allows users to engage in conversation forums, post blogs, join and create groups, “friend” each other, and share photo and video content (Ning automatically converts video files to a flash player…awesome).

In Christopher’s session explaining the network, he said they built it to 1) Facilitate and perpetuate discussion on reacing the 18 – 30 demographic and 2) Provide hands-on education to allow users to play in a social networking space and see how it works.

I like that CUNA is experimenting with this. A conference-specific social network has the potential to add a lot more depth and follow-up opportunity to the experience. Facebook and LinkedIn are both much better ways for me to keep up with new credit union friends than the lunchbox I keep my business cards in. Admittedly, half of this is because I always forget to bring my business cards to conferences.

Ning’s functionality and back-end interface are really impressive. To add features to your network, you simply drag and drop:

Definitely worth checking out if you’re looking for a way to kick off an online community.

Later today I’ll be speaking at CUNA’s YES Summit on whether or not it makes sense for credit unions to blog.

In short, I’m going to say this (spoilers ahead):

Heck yes, it can be a great fit – but only if the credit union is culturally ready, has realistic expectations of the resources and commitment blogging takes, and is using it to add value to their members.

I’ll also be covering the conference here on OSCU over the next three days.

I’d love to meet up with any CUers in Austin for the week. Drop me a line.

Brent and I gave our “Building your relationship with Gen Y Members” presentation in Wisconsin a few weeks back.

One of the slices of feedback we got:

I was a little disappointed in the Gen Y presentation. They kept talking about social media, but saying not to do it.

That makes me feel good. Too many marketers are looking for a silver bullet, and social media isn’t it. I’ve never said, “Don’t do it.” But I have said, “Don’t do it without a strategy.” And I’ve said, “It’s not a fit for every business.”

During my co-presentation with Shari at Symposium, I showed the following slide:

My next point was:

I then called Tim McAlpine up to chat about Young & Free Alberta, which had just launched.

It’s immediately up there with Change Everything on my best FI social media campaign list. BTW, this outtake video from their CEO cracks me up:

Also gaining ground is what Diva Deb’s doing with the hoopty loan. As Charlie commented,

Talk about promoting thrift and building community. Nice work, CPCU.

So, back to the comment our WI presentation drew. I’d say that the keys to using social media successfully in your business are:

• You’ve got to have something compelling to talk about in the first place.
• It’s got to fit your culture. Thick skin is required.
• You’ve got to treat it as part of a larger marketing strategy.

Sure you can launch a blog or build a MySpace page or get that Jumbalooster account for your CU. But unless you know what you’re trying to accomplish, as Brent likes to say, all you’ll hear will be crickets chirping – or worse yet, criticism for not having it worked out in the first place.