Tag Archives: banking

BCBBC08: Some final thoughts.

BarCampBankBCI am elated that BarCampBankBC was pulled off so wonderfully. It was a true pleasure to plan it and host it. But most of all, it was amazing to attend.

I must thank my two incredible partners in crime, Tim McAlpine and Gene Blishen. It was a great experience planning the event with these two. I also want to thank the incredible Brent Dixon who ensured as much of the event was webcast as possible and Morriss Partee for his truly hysterical and humbling Pecha Kucha.

I’ve updated the wiki with all the blogs and photos from the event I can think of. If I missed any, please add them.

In the end, it’s less about any particular thing that was discussed than the nature of the conversations, the quality of discussion, the collaboration, the learning and advising. Two trends that emerged, I think were the future of banking and the ethical nature of banking. I was surprised that the session on social finance was completely full, almost everyone came and it was a lively discussion.

I’m tired, and I may post again as the dust settles for me, but I wanted to get a post out before the day ended. I am grateful to all the people whom I got to see again, all the new people I was fortunate enough to meet and all the people who engaged in the conversation. You make my life a better place.

Thank you to all who attended and contributed. It was a real high!

A note to those attending BarCampBankBC.

BarCampBankBCOkay, what is this BarCampBank thing about?
With BarCampBank coming up this weekend, we thought it would be good to let you know what we’re all in for.

The first thing we’ll do on Saturday morning is a quick round of introductions, so we know who we have with us. Then, those of us who want to create a session will write it up on a piece of paper and stick it on a grid made up of times and rooms. Once we have the sessions on the grid, the people who wrote them up will give a short pitch to the rest of us.

Then we’ll vote with our feet and join the sessions that interest us. If no one comes to a session, it’s cancelled. If someone wants to take up two time-slots in a row to create an extra long session, that’s cool. If you’re in a session that you’re not interested in, leave it and find one that you like better. The conference will be developed organically by all of us together.

What often works well is to propose sessions around the things you want to discover and learn, not the things you have to teach. Curiousity is the name if the game.

All participation is welcome (well except for pitches for specific commercial products or companies, and long-winded presentations). Participation, however, is not mandatory. If you want to listen more than discuss, that’s up to you.

We are lucky to have a great mix of local BCers and people who have travelled from far and wide to participate. Some of us have been to a BarCampBank before, and many have not. We have all the right people and expertise to create a truly amazing weekend.

We hold this philosophy to be true:
The right people will show up and the right things will be discussed.

Pecha Kucha
At the end of day one, we’ll have a Pecha Kucha, where each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds, giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. If you want to do one, come with your presentation on a USB key.

Thinking of live blogging or taking photos?
We welcome all ways to record the sessions. Update the wiki, blog it, upload photos to flickr. Tweet away! We’ll all be using the same tag, which is:
bcbbc08

Anything else?
Oh yes, breakfast will be provided both days, and lunch will be provided on day one. On September 20th, we’ll start at 9am and wrap up at 5pm. On September 21st, we’ll start at 9am and wrap up the whole thing at 1pm. Please come on time, so you can participate in creating the sessions.

We’ll be at the BCIT Downtown Campus, 555 Seymour Street.

We look forward to seeing you here!

PS: Here are two great resources.

Vancity and the Microfinance wiki.

I am so pleased to announce the new wiki Vancity has launched. It is for the Microfinance community in Canada, and lives at microfinance.ca.

Why did we launch a wiki? Well, in short, we are a longtime Microfinance practitioner wanting to expand knowledge amongst those who are involved with Microfinance in Canada.

We have a product called Circle lending, in which a peer group takes out very small loans together, and help each other to succeed in what are usually home-based businesses to repay their loans together. It is an amazingly transformational product, designed to help lift people out of poverty and give them a new chance.

Additionally, we have a Microcredit Toolkit, which is an open source peer lending model so any institution can replicate it. We were incredibly honoured that Muhammad Yunus, who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding Grameen Bank, personally endorsed our toolkit a couple of years ago.

As you can see, we are deeply involved with the Microfinance model in Canada, and wanted to create a place where we could take the open source concept a little further. So we created and are hosting a wiki where anyone can add information as a practitioner, researcher or follower of Microfinance in Canada, with the aim of growing and evolving a central knowledge repository about the subject.

I think it’s a great example of a very inexpensive solution to create affinity within a specific community. Now let’s see if people find it useful.

I want to recognize the amazing Catherine Ludgate, who manages Vancity’s Microfinance programs, and without whose support this never would have been launched. The second I came up with the idea of a wiki to bring together the Microfinance community, Catherine was enthusiastically on board. If you want to know more, here’s a great article about Catherine.

I also must thank Tim McAlpine and Currency Marketing for creating a wiki that doesn’t look like a wiki. See the screenshot below to see what I mean…

Oh, and PS: Colin Henderson at CommunityLend, I am hoping you’ll be the first to add yourself to the wiki…

microfinance.ca