See what’s bubbling up on the CU Water Cooler.

One of my fellow credit union bloggers, Matt Davis (otherwise known as the Credit Union Warrior) recently approached me with the idea of a site where 12 credit union champions would surface relevant, inspiring and forward-looking online content for the rest of the CU world. It was an intriguing concept and I was truly honoured to be among the initial people he approached.

Well give the guy like 10 days and he’s gone from running the idea past us to launching the damn thing.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the CU Water Cooler, bubbling up the best credit union content.

The site is simple. The 12 editors each tag content on delicious, and the site aggregates it all together. There will also be blog posts and radio shows, where we touch on issues affecting credit unions. Matt’s initial post sums it all up way better than I ever could.

Major kudos to Matt for making this happen. I can see this is the start of amazing things Matt will do now that he’s
joined Filene to help credit unions across the globe learn about, implement, and create financial services innovations. Pretty cool stuff.

Check it out, bookmark it, follow it on Twitter, subscribe to the feed and join in the conversation.

PS: Sorry it’s been two whopping months since my last post. I blame it on lots of activity, both professional and personal. Leave a comment to let me know you’re still reading…

BarCampBankBC2 was a local, reflective event.

BarCampBankBC2BarCampBankBC2 took place today. Tim McAlpine, Gene Blishen and I decided to make it a lower key, locally-focused event, given the economic times. It took place in the Vancity board room, and about 25 people from FIs and FI-related organizations took part in the conversations. The conversations focused a lot on co-operation, and, as often happens at BarCampBanks, the participants were mostly from the credit union world.

We talked about co-operation amongst co-operatives, about innovating new products, about channel strategy, about pulling together our members’ data to help them understand their finances more easily.

As I reflect, I think the main theme that emerged was the implicit or explicit barriers that are in place in our various organizations that hinder innovation, agility and sometimes even common sense. In some ways it was a ‘grass is always greener’ conversation where smaller organizations envy the resources bigger organizations have, and larger organizations envy the agility and lack of silos in smaller organizations.

It was a pleasure to discuss the issues of the day with some Twitter friends, including @eddron, @wendyholm, @dcesarini, @currencyTim, @pennyminder and @ebrett. Almost all of whom were at BarCampBankBC last year. So, I think we’re safe to say we’ll do it again next year. Perhaps same place and same weekend…

The wifi was spotty, and the conversations were involved, so there wasn’t a lot of Tweeting, but the Twitter tag was #bcbbc2, if you want to see the commentary.

On a personal level, BarCampBankBC2 marks the end of one of the busiest periods in recent memory for me. Starting with buying our house, going to Bologna, moving, launching the League of Kickass Business People in Vancouver, Ivan starting Kindergarten, finishing a major business case to revamp our intranet and bring enterprise 2.0 to our organization, writing an online service experience strategy, driving Vancity’s co-op week activities, plus some critical business issues at work and, oh yeah, my day job. Summers are usually a little slower, but this one was jam packed, almost all with outstanding items, but slightly more than my plate could hold. It’s one of those times where I’m excited about all the different things I’m involved with, but I’ve still been looking forward to having some of them behind me and not in front of me.

So there it goes.

Less than a week until BarCampBankBC2.

We still lots more room at BarCampBankBC2. I know that there will be people from most of the major credit unions and FIs in the region, plus some visitors from Alberta, Washington State and Oregon. Should be a good time.

If you know anyone who works in financial services and is interested in a freeform, innovative forum to learn, share and discuss, please spread the word.

See ya there!