Finovate, a fast-paced annual showcase of new financial startups, is happening all day today. Although I can’t be there, and wish I could, I’ll be keeping up with attendee (and presenter) coverage and commentary over Twitter using Summize’s #finovate08 stream.

Update (11:30am): Thanks to Caitlin Rosberg’s suggestion, click here for a broader Summize feed, including a search for #finovate08, #finovate, or finovate.

Also, click here to follow the Banktastics’ videos and presenter reviews.

The Partnership Symposium was a huge success. Thanks so much to everyone who organized, attended, or dropped by the chat room and live stream. Between the insights, Jerry-Springer-style fisticuffs, and Rock Band…it was an action-packed event.

Videos from the live stream are available after the jump. Or click the video window below (Heads up: When you click through, some of the videos start to auto-play. This is a Ustream bug, but should only last a few seconds.):

...and read Symposium coverage and commentary from across the blogosphere here:

• Everything CU
• The CU Skeptic
• The CU Warrior
• CUES Nexus Connection
• William Azaroff
• The Member’s Group’s ‘Payment Industry Insider’
• The CU Loop
• Marketing Insight’s ‘Grow Your Bank’
• The Story
• Currency Marketing
• Michael Hostetler

Do you have thoughts or suggestions for next year’s Symposium? We’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Read the rest of this entry

In a few hours, I’m hopping a plane to Indianapolis for the 2008 Partnership Symposium . Like last week, I’ll be broadcasting sessions and events live right here on Open Source CU (this time with improved audio and video). I’ll post the Ustream video window up here tomorrow morning.

In addition to the live video feed, we’ll have a chat window up – accessible to anyone – and will be taking questions not only from the live audience, but from virtual participants as well. Here’s the agenda (all times are Eastern):

Day One – Oct 1

9:00 am – 9:15 am Welcome & A Look Forward – Ron Shevlin, Event Host

9:15 am – 10:00 am Young & Free – Attracting New, Young Members
Tim McAlpine, President & Chief Strategist, Currency Marketing
We all want new members, especially those with many years of borrowing, depositing, and investing ahead of them. Tim McAlpine will share the grass-roots approach one credit union is using to engage the youth market. He’ll share the process, phases, and results of Common Wealth CU’s Young & Free Program, as well as provide insight into how they have solved some unforeseen issues that have come up during the campaign. Learn from Tim’s experiences with the Young & Free Program how to better attract younger members to your credit union.

10:00 am – 10:45 am Brand Positioning: Cascade Community Credit Union
Jeff Stephens, CEO & Brand Director, Creative Brand Communications
In this look at Cascade Community Credit Union, Jeff illustrates positioning through advanced branding tactics, why trying to be “different” is more effective than trying to be “better,” and how to avoid differentiating yourself on the same attributes as everyone else.

11:00 am – 12:00 pm Debit, Credit, & More – Remaining Relevant to Your Member’s Payment Habits
Jeff Russell, Executive Vice President, The Members Group
Radical changes are taking place in the payments industry. The door is open for an entity to become the center of your members’ payment and financial management world. Who will that “entity” be? Learn from Jeff about trends in financial payments and how you can best position your credit union to remain relevant in your members’ payment habits.

1:00 pm – 1:30 pm “Fire Your Trainers” and More Advice to Make Symposium Stuff Stick
Andy Janning, AVP Training & Quality Service, FORUM Credit Union
You’ll leave the Symposium with new ideas and innovations for your credit union and members. Your first stop back home may be to your Training department, where you may request, “Make a class that teaches everyone about this fabulous new idea!” Ironically, this approach could be the kiss of death for your innovative brainchild. We’ll examine the short, focused list of questions that will radically transform the way in which training supports organizational innovation and delivers member-focused results.

1:30 pm – 2:15 pm Top 5 Success Practices for Building an Online Community
Morriss Partee, Chief Experience Officer, EverythingCU.com
EverythingCU.com started in the year 2000 as an idea, and has since blossomed into an active online community of 5,863 credit union professionals, with a focus on marketing and business development. In this session, Morriss will share the top 5 success strategies that make an online community thrive (as well as be profitable). Credit unions inherently have every one of these success factors available to them, only they currently lie dormant. We’ll examine how you can apply each of these practices to revitalize your CU’s web presence.

2:30pm – 4:00 pm Idea eXchange – led by participants
This time is for attendees to discuss solutions that have worked for them, present problems for others to offer ideas, and generally collaborate with your peers. Attendees can sign up for a topic/issue they wish to present.

Day Two – Oct 2

8:45 am – 9:45 am Engaging with the Social Economy
William Azaroff, Interactive Marketing & Channel Manager, Vancity Credit Union
A growing segment of the economy is driven by social decision-making. Credit unions play a natural key role in this shift, both as community-focused organizations and as holders of significant consumer assets. This presentation will include examples of the emerging social economy, as well as a case study of ChangeEverything.ca, a social network created by Vancity, which speaks to the values shared by the largest credit union in Canada and the community it serves.

9:45 am – 10:15 am The Hyperlocal Credit Union – A Vision
Matt Dean, CEO, Trabian
The Internet connects people across the world, but it also brings together people within a community. Just as hyperlocal media has revolutionized journalism, the hyperlocal credit union can transform the way their members interact with local merchants, with each other, and with their financial institution. Matt will share a snapshot view of a credit union that uses its local focus as more than a “we’re from your hometown!” warm and fuzzy feeling to bring tangible value to its members.

10:30 am – 11:15 am Serving the Mobile Member
Gene Blishen, General Manager, Mount Lehman Credit Union
Still not sure how to best tackle mobile banking or are you looking for alternatives to enhance your current offering? Gene will share valuable member and product information his credit union has gained over the past three years, discuss various aspects of mobile banking and service options, and talk about different approaches for implementing mobile banking (do-it-yourself, vendors, partnering, etc.). Gene concludes with thoughts about “harnessing the wisdom of crowds” and the concept of innovation coming from multiple outside sources and how to ensure your credit union is receptive to these sources.

11:15 am – 12:00 pm Thrift: The Rise of the Credit Union Warrior
Matt Davis, Director of Public Relations, Members Credit Union
As the guest speaker contest winner, Matt will reintroduce the concept of promoting thrift for credit unions. He will discuss some of the ways that credit unions across the country are promoting thrift, not only amongst their members, but also amongst the general community. Finally, Matt will introduce some exciting ways that your credit unions can recapture public goodwill with this concept.

1:00 pm – 1:45 pm Turning Business Problems into Business Opportunities
Robbie Wright, General Manager, fi-linx
How do you turn an obstacle or problem into a potential business opportunity? In this session, Robbie from fi-linx, a CUSO of MaPS Credit Union, will discuss how the CU has taken challenges and turned them into new CUSO ventures and partnerships. He will review the CUSO industry and discuss past and present CUSO ventures, the role that credit union employees play in the formation of new a CUSO, and what the CUSO landscape may look like in the not too distant future.

1:45 pm – 2:30 pm Improve CU Reputation & Build Loyalty
Michelle Bloedorn, Executive Director, Member Loyalty Group
Diana Dykstra, CEO, San Francisco Fire Credit Union
Six credit unions, including San Francisco Fire CU, have come together to form the Member Loyalty Group CUSO. This CUSO has the goal of spreading the use of the Net Promoter Score among credit unions and making it affordable for institutions of all sizes. Hear about how San Francisco Fire CU has incorporated NPS and social media techniques to engage members and create true loyalty.

2:45 pm – 3:15 pm Using Video to Engage Your Target Market
Jon DiGregory, Founding Partner, Cantaloupe
New ideas for using video to engage your market.

3:15 pm – 3:45 pm The Credit Union Difference?
CU Skeptic, Unveiled
“At their current state, credit unions as a whole are no different than banks to the end user.” Since his arrival in the CU blogosphere, the CU Skeptic has been stirring the pot with articles, comments, and interviews based around this central theme. Discover why he thinks “the credit union difference” is largely unapparent in today’s (US) market and what he thinks are the keys to turning the tide of irrelevance. For the first time ever, the CU Skeptic will reveal his true identity and is prepared for an extended Q&A session.

3:45 pm – 4:00 pm Symposium Rewind
So, what did we learn at this event, anyway? Let’s bring it all together and make sure we’re all leaving with new ideas and strategies that will help us better serve our members and engage them in new, relevant ways.

. . .

Safe travels to everyone who’s flying in. See you live or on the web tomorrow!

I just returned from BarCampBank B.C. 2008. It was the first such event I had ever attended. I was only there for the first half of Day One, but I can say without hesitation that it was simply an amazing event.

There were no speakers, no presentations, no agenda. It was 60 or so financial professionals — from two countries, banks and credit unions, and included folks from all positions (CEOs, IT, marketing, etc.).

It was, quite simply, professionals learning from each other — a free exchange of ideas. They simply got together and figured out what they wanted to talk about. As Mark McSpadden noted, it took about 45 minutes to set an agenda, vs. the 3-4 months it normally takes to plan an event.

Each topic is addressed in an open, round-table setting. Everyone is welcome to speak, and no one is considered a “leader.” The beauty is that it entirely eliminates those boring, one-sided presentations where the inescapable conclusion is to “buy more stuff” from the presenter.

Everyone knows the interesting part of a presentation is the questions and conversation afterwards. So BarCampBanks just get rid of the presentation part altogether. Brilliant.

If you haven’t been to one, you should go. These events will only grow in their popularity, if for no other reason than that people get to talk about- and learn about things that are really relevant to them.

That said, here are four ideas that might improve both participation in the events, as well as the overall experience for attendees.

1. TOPIC SELECTION

Part of the charm of the BarCampBanks seems to be the spontaneity of the agenda. The topics were basically set on a first-come, first-serve basis about 5 minutes prior to the first session. 


But this created some problems. Some topics were redundant or overlapped. William Azaroff, one of the event’s coordinators tried his best to fix things, but it’s tough (if not impossible) to do this in 90 seconds.

The biggest problem was that there were topics suggested that few people (if any) were really interested in. If someone was first to write their topic down and tape it up in a time slot, it was basically a done deal. If no one shows up, that topic is cancelled and a time slot evaporates.

So here’s the suggestion. There should be a website prior to the event where paid and registered attendees can (1) propose topics, and (2) give an “I Like This Topic” vote for all the proposed topics. There would only be a chance to express support for topics (not a thumbs up/down option — you only need to know which ones are popular).

This does a few things. First, it makes sure the most-popular topics aren’t all competing in one time slot; they can all be distributed across time slots to maximize the experience for attendees. It also makes sure that the time slots aren’t assigned simply on a first-come, first-serve basis (which seems to run contrary to the notion of populist decision-making).

If a Wiki was used to manage the topics, then topics could be modified, edited and combined in relatively real-time.

Second, it allows possible attendees, fence-sitters and other curious parties to see what would be covered. These events are scary/weird/unfamiliar to outsiders, so letting them know what they could learn or talk about PRIOR to making a 3-day, $750 cross-country trip would probably increase attendance.

Third, using a Wiki+Votes seems to be very much in the spirit of this “social media” thang. I’m sure changing the nature of BCBs is probably a touchy subject, but hey, isn’t this supposed to be all about things like “engagement,” “democracy,” “innovating” and “adapting in real time?”

2. SPONSORSHIP

BCBs could have all kinds of formal and informal opportunities for sponsorships.

What about a whiteboard where everyone got to draw their own ads on it, or put their name and email address on it — like an interactive billboard or mural. It would be like an analog version of those “buy-a-pixel” montages. Maybe a small space is free, while bigger spaces cost a nominal amount?

Or you could use a corkboard where people could tack up whatever they wanted as long as it fit on a 5” square piece of paper. Again, charge for this or not.

There could also be a table for people to put stuff out on. I’m sure folks would pay $50 for an 8.5×11 space. The breakout rooms could be sponsored with one sponsor’s stuff.

Sponsorships for things like the t-shirts, nametags, lanyards, etc., could be more formalized, with a list of items needed at the BCB website. Like a signup sheet for a potluck.

The point isn’t necessarily to make more money (although more money = more better). It’s that there are costs that can be covered by firms who will be glad to fork it over. They just don’t know how to.

3. SOCIAL NETWORKING

It seems like there’s a lot of social energy at the events, but the opportunities to network feel really outmoded: Handing out business cards? Come on…

There should be some simple way for attendees to find each other’s LinkedIn pages, Facebook accounts, email addresses, blogs, websites, etc. I don’t think the Wiki cuts it. There needs to be encouragement and a medium/method for social connections AT the event itself. A sign-in computer? Nametags would help, too. (Both are sponsorship opportunities.)

4. NAME

I have to throw this out there: I don’t think BCBs will go mainstream or get as big as they possibly can unless they change names. “BarCampBank” just doesn’t seem to fit. The word “Bar” implies there will be excessive drinking (which is fine, but…). “Camp” is a strange allusion that could confuse people about the texture of the event (“This one time at BarCampBank…”).

It’s not that the event needs a descriptive name — that’s not the point at all. It just seems like there’s an opportunity to have a name that is more reflective of the events’ personality. BarCampBanks are open, collaborative, democratic, fresh, informal, efficient, egalitarian, volunteer, leaderless, sharing — all novel and distinct aspects of this kind of event, vs. a traditional conference.

Does anyone have any name suggestions? I’m still mulling it over.

---

Jeffry Pilcher, publisher of The Financial Brand, has worked exclusively on financial brands for the last eight years. In summer months when he isn’t knee-deep in credit union brands and names, he’s knee deep in Alaska’s rivers, fishing for king salmon. The rest of his free time with is spent with his wife, Tina, or loving his faithfully devoted dogs Dude and Sweet P.

Subscribe to The Financial Brand’s RSS feed here or sign-up for the email bulletin here.

Update (9/22): We’re done, and it was a fantastic event. Many high fives to William, Tim, and Gene for all of the work they put into it. Check out archived video from sessions by clicking the “On Demand” button in the video player.

BCBBC to you

BarCampBankBC starts tomorrow. At around 9am Pacific time, I’ll put up a post with a live streaming video window. Throughout the day, I’ll use Mogulus to broadcast sessions and happenings from my laptop. It’ll almost almost be like being in the room with us.

You to BCBBC

I’ll also have Twitter on all day, as will several other attendees. If you’re on Twitter, and would like to jump into a conversation just tweet to @itsjustbrent.

Mogulus also allows chatting, so all viewers can talk amongst themselves. At certain points in the day, I’ll open the chat window so we can all chat with anyone watching on the web:

Should be fun. Hope to see or hear from you tomorrow!

(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)