Tag Archives: barcampbankseattle

Come on down to BarCampBank BC.

BarCampBank BCI’m excited to announce that on September 20, 2008 BarCampBank is coming to Vancouver.

Gene Blishen, Tim McAlpine and I are putting a stake in the ground, after talking about doing it for some time.

Now, some of you may be asking, what the hell is a BarCampBank. From the main BarCampBank page:

What if we changed banking and finance?
The aim of BarCampBank is to foster innovations and the creation of new business models in the world of banking and finance.

The first one in North America was in Seattle last July, and it was a truly transformative experience. For me, the ideas, relationships and bonds formed in those two days are invaluable, and the memories of it are strong and very good.

Lots of details to be worked out, like an exact location, but it will take place on September 20, 2008. The cost is always break-even (think $25 CAD), so its worth the travel expense for my East Coast readers.

Go to the wiki page to add your name to the list. It will not disappoint!

PS: Thanks to Morriss Partee, whom I credit for keeping BarCampBank alive and kicking in North America. Thanks Morriss, looking forward to seeing you here! Also, I believe it was his idea to create something with the acronym BCBBC. Who couldn’t love that!

NOTE: My original post accidentally said that this was on July 20th. It is, in fact on September 20th!

BarCampBank continues East, West and South.

BarCampBank in San Francisco & New EnglandLast summer I attended an amazing event called BarCampBankSeattle. It was a coming together of, and collaboration between, some amazing bank and credit union folks from across North America. I wrote a few blog posts about it at the time.

Jesse Robbins organized this first-of-its-kind-in-America conference, and now he’s written about two more BarCampBank events that are happening. It was also covered by NetBanker and Frederic Baud.

The next two events will be:

BarCampBank San Francisco
Saturday, March 29, 2008
UC Berkeley campus – Soda Hall in the Wozniak Lounge
RSVP @ EventBrite ($25)

BarCampBank New England
Saturday, April 5th, 2008
America’s Credit Union Museum, Manchester, NH

And now I see that there will be a BarCampBank Dallas. This is spreading like wildfire. Innovation is taking root among some bankers, which is exciting. Hmmm, maybe we need a BarCampBank Vancouver…

Unfortunately, I can’t attend any of these events, although I truly wish I could. Lots of great people will be there, and you can see exactly who will be attending at each event’s homepage.

I hope some of you attendees will blog about it, so the rest of us can feel included. It is worth noting that Morriss Partee is behind a couple of these and seems to be the thread between SF and NE. Morriss, looks like you’re gonna need to go to Dallas too.

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.