Tag Archives: innovation

BarCampBankBC2 is coming in September.


I was thinking about whether or not we’d want to do another BarCampBankBC this year.

What’s a BarCampBank?

The aim of BarCampBank is to foster innovations and the creation of new business models in the world of banking and finance.

Budgets are tight, and the industry is in a very different place from when we were organizing the event last year. So I reached out to Tim McAlpine and Gene Blishen, my partners in crime from last year, to discuss.

We wondered if a smaller, scaled-back event, with a more local flavour might be a nice idea. No sponsors, no fancy meals, just a place to brainstorm about banking innovation and some amazing people to do the brainstorming.

I am very excited to announce that BarCampBankBC2 is on! It’ll take place on Saturday, September 26th from 9am to 5pm at Vancity’s Head Office. I especially want people at local banks and credit unions to attend and join the conversation.


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We’re charging $10 (CDN) to cover a pizza lunch and to ensure people will actually show up if they say they will. You can register for the event now.

If you’re coming, please add your name to the wiki.

ChangeCamp coming to Vancouver?

ChangeCampLast year I was one of the co-organizers of BarCampBankBC, an un-conference devoted to innovation in the financial services industry. BarCampBank has occurred several times around the world, and, as one of the attendees Morriss Partee recently blogged, each one takes on a local element. Morriss said that BarCampBankBC specifically “had a worthy-cause and social media flavor”.

After BarCampBankBC was over, Jeremy Osborn, a friend and sometimes commenter on this blog, mentioned to me that he would like to see the same un-conference, collaborative style applied to topics of sustainability and social change. Sounded like a very good and extremely worthwhile endevour.

I am lucky to work at a financial institution focused on these issues. Not many FIs aim at this space, but it exactly the intersection of where the money is and the changes we need to make in our society that makes Vancity such an amazing anomaly.

In a questionnaire, I recently (and somewhat inarticulately) told one of my favourite conferences, Net.Finance, in answer to their question “In a volatile economy like we have today, what does it really mean to be innovative?”:

As FIs in today’s economy the greatest innovations we can achieve are those that bring us closer to our customers. Anything that helps us better understand their needs and help them understand and manage their finances so as many people as possible can get through this period with their assets intact. Those are the innovations our customers will remember us for, how we treated them when everything was down. That’s how we build loyalty for the long term.

Recently, I found out that a BarCamp devoted to social change may, in fact, be happening.

In Toronto, people are planning something called ChangeCamp. This is how the organizers describe it:

ChangeCamp is a free participatory web-enabled face-to-face event that brings together citizens, technologists, designers, academics, policy wonks, political players, change-makers and government employees to answer one question:
How do we re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation?

Very intriguing. If you live in Toronto, check it out.

And now I learn that there is a spinoff group of ChangeCamp starting right here in Vancouver, calling their event VanChangeCamp. I’m paying close attention. Looks like it is currently being aimed to happen on March 28th, 2009.

I’ll post more as I learn more, but it should be an event worth watching…

BC credit unions launch mobile banking commercials.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about Mobile Banking launching at Vancity. At the time we had just introduced it, as did many other BC credit unions. In fact, 80% of credit union members in BC now have access to this new feature. I also mentioned that all BC credit unions came together to advertise mobile banking province wide.

Credit unions in BC have been working co-operatively for quite a while now (Gene, do you know how long the Province-Wide Advertising Committee has been around?) to advertise our shared differentiators. You can see a bunch of recent BC credit union ads on YouTube.

Each addresses a different perception in the marketplace that we’re collectively trying to address in the minds of consumers. We know we have the emotional, or heart, attributes like giving back to the community, being local, etc… What we need to move the needle on is the intellectual, or head, attributes. These commercials deal with issues like accessibility (Ding Free ATMs), full service options (That Guy, one of the less successful ads in my opinion). And now with the mobile banking ads, we’re dealing with innovation.

I’ve embedded the two mobile banking ads below, so take a look, and let me know what you think. I don’t sit on this committee so be honest. Personally, I like these commercials, and I also like many of the recent commercials credit unions in BC have run (That Guy excepted).

Enjoy!

PS: For those of you who wonder, that is NOT Gene Blishen as the dad in the second ad!