Tag Archives: azaroff

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.

Guest blogger on NetBanker.

If things have been a little quieter around here than usual, I have a good excuse. I have started guest blogging on one of the biggest and best FI blogs around, netbanker.com.

Jim Bruene runs a great blog, his insights and research into how FIs use (and underuse) the online channel is amazing. I have long been a fan and follower, and was happy to finally meet him face to face in Arizona in April at Net.Finance. And now I’ll be adding to his blog a few times a month. It’s an incredible honour for me, as this is the first time Jim’s ever had anyone besides him write on his blog, and because he has 6,000+ RSS subscribers (to my mere 40).

I’ll be writing about how FIs can better use the social web and brand themselves online. I’ll try and write from an insider, client-side perspective. I have the blessing from the folks at Vancity to do this, which is nice not to need the typical “these thoughts are my own and do represent…” disclaimers.

My inaugural post is entitled Finding your way to the Social Web. It’s an examination of how FIs could better leverage the Social Web, and uses a proposed Bank of America case study. You can see all my posts collected together here.

Jim welcomed me aboard very warmly, and I appreciate that. I’ll be linking to my posts on NetBanker from my blog everytime I add a new post, so stay tuned.