Tag Archives: barcampbankseattle

Why BarCampBank?

One of the interesting things about coming to an event like BarCampBankSeattle is trying to explain it to people who have no framework with which to contextualize it.

What’s a BarCamp? Why a BarCamp for banking? Why not just have a regular conference? What are you doing down there in Seattle? Why on Earth would a grown man go to Banking Camp?

It’s only now struck me that with new tools emerging to allow for greater online collaboration, whether you’re talking about BaseCamp, Facebook, Del.icio.us, LinkedIn or Second Life, the needs for in-person collaboration is changing. For people who are not using these new tools, nothing has changed and therefore they don’t need new ways of interfacing with their peers. But for those of us who have embraced these new tools and found that they have significantly improved their ways of collaborating and working together, we want our real world events to change too.

Along comes BarCampBankSeattle. I wouldn’t be interested if a traditional conference was organized this way because you’d be in a room full of people who want content served to them, just like people who are used to traditional web experiences (the irony of a term like “traditional web experience” is not lost on me) want content served up to them. They aren’t used to co-creating and collaborating.

So the idea of BarCampBank – that the right people are here and the right things are being discussed – really works because the people who have opted in to this process are all on the same wavelength when it comes to collaborating and working together. The guys at Trabian are leaders in this space, because their employees live in different cities and still work together through tools like AIM, Twitter, blogs, Facebook, BaseCamp and so on. So a loose, informal heavily collaborative event like BarCampBank makes perfect sense to the people who are here because we want new models for in-person meetings that fit into our new working relationships.

The penny dropped and it’s amazing to be here.

I’ll format my thoughts properly and post some content this week – I promise.

BarCampBankSeattle day one.

So I gotta admit, although I was totally excited about BarCampBankSeattle, I was skeptical about the concept that those who show up are the right people, and whatever is discussed are the right things to discuss. It sounded a little too airy-fairy for me (and I can handle a lot of airy-fairy). And yet it totally works.

The day has a structure we decided in the morning and we strayed from that structure in exactly the right way. If a session loses focus, people leave. If a session needs to go on for longer, people keep discussing.

It truly is an amazing group, and it’s great to be a part of it. This is also a great structure for smaller groups who really want to cross-pollenate. Kudos to Jesse Robbins and Ben Black for putting it together!

You can see the photos tagged barcampbankseattle on flickr.com. Some good shots here.

I’ll get some good posts here and on netbanker.com as soon as I’m able to gather my thoughts and put something coherent together.

Facebook vs. iPhone.


Quick update. It’s great to meet Jason Knight of Wesabe.com and hear his thoughts. He spoke of choosing a platform, because no one can afford to develop for everything that exists. He feels that the iPhone is a better platform for them than Facebook. Not that he’ll ignore Facebook, but the ‘always with you’ experience of the iPhone is more compelling to him. Very interesting, I hadn’t thought of those two in the same space, but to him there’s a choice to be made.