So today started off strongly. Eskander Matta from Wells Fargo gave a very good presentation of some of the things they’ve done for business customers. People back at Vancity will be happy to know that business banking is a big focus here this year, and I don’t remember anyone addressing it last year. Some good info to take back with me, including the keynote address from Michael Donalson from HSBC. Everyone’s moving on business customers.

Also some great new research from James Van Dyke from Javelin Strategy & Research on online banking trends and stats. He was great last year and his info was strong and relevant this year too.

James McGuire from Royal Bank of Canada also had a great presentation, which I’m hoping to get my hands on. Great to meet the Canadians down here, and there are plenty of us. Everyone comments how the Canadian banks are so far ahead, which is nice to hear, though not altogether believable.

At the cocktail reception, I met Jim Bruene, which was great. I’ve followed his blog for a while and am a subscriber to his extremely useful Online Banking Report. Nice to put faces to names of the bloggers I follow.

The conference just isn’t as strong as it was last year. It’s good, and I am getting some great ideas to bring back with me, but last year by this time my head was already swimming with new ideas and I had taken a ton of notes of relevant material to bring back with me.

Looking forward to Michael Seaton tomorrow from Scotiabank talk about crowdsourcing, and of course I’m super excited about Thursday. Evidently a bunch of people are leaving tomorrow night, as Thursday’s an optional day, but 100 new people are coming in just for that day’s presentations.