An online community about banking? Really?

Ever wondered where bankers go to discuss financial services issues online. Well neither had I, but then Brad Garland of The Garland Group invited me to join Banktastic.com.

What’s Banktastic? Here’s how the site positions itself:

A community helping bankers quickly find relevant, industry specific information and share it with others.

It could just as easily have been called CreditUnion-tastic, but that’s just not as much fun. People are discussing all kinds of issues like:

  • Who will win the p2p lending wars in the US – Prosper, Zopa, LendingClub, Virgin?
  • What is your favorite bank marketing campaign of all time?
  • Just wondered what some of our experts thought the next big thing will be in banking? I still meet with smaller banks that think that remote deposit capture is new and they have a problems getting a good marketing plan created. Any ideas?

The site is in “semi-private beta” which means you need to be invited to join. I still have one invite left, let me know if you want it.

Thanks to Brad and Mark (I was fortunate enough to meet them at BarCampBankSeattle earlier this year) and the gang at The Garland Group for creating this forum. I look forward to seeing where it goes.

UPDATE: I neglected to give my friend and CU influencer, Morriss Partee his due props here. His EverythingCU is a great repository of information about all things Credit Union. They have 5,621 members (including me) and have tons of topics and discussions daily about all kinds of topics, ranging from

  • Getting management approval for cutting edge campaigns
  • Auto Lending Channels
  • Philosophy and Practice
  • Web Site Re-design
  • The best ad you NEVER Ran
  • Name change?
  • You know you’re a marketer when…

It’s an amazing resource, and I owe it to Morriss to give him a plug along with Banktastic.

My Net.Finance session.

Net.Finance has just updated their website with the full agenda of their upcoming Online Innovations in Financial Services Marketing conference. It will take place at the New York Information Technology Center from January 23-24, 2008.

The main proposition is: Engaging Your Customers Through Social Media, Social Lending & Mobile Banking. Sounds pretty good. I’m fortunate enough to have been asked to speak at this conference, and I’m also happy to be speaking about something other than ChangeEverything.ca (not that I ever get sick of talking about it).

My topic is Responding To Bloggers – Playing On Their Turf. The session is described as so:

There is a conversation going on right now in the blogosphere about your FI. Are you tracking the comments being made? Are you responding? Do you have a strategy in place to determine the right course of action to deal with bloggers who write about your company?

  • Learning how to track conversations in the blogosphere
  • Determining when is the right time to respond
  • Seeing and evaluating the pros and cons of entering the conversation

Should be a fun time, hope to see you in New York.