BarCampBank New England – Intimate equals awesome

Well, BarCampBank NewEngland finally happened. It was an incredible occasion, and a huge thank you to the 15 people who made the event everything I’d ever hoped for it, and then some. Fifteen people from all corners of New England, and other parts of the globe (Ontario and British Columbia), made the trek to America’s Credit Union Museum. I’m glad we held the event here, because prior to it, all but one camper did NOT know of its existence. Which is especially surprising considering that the CU movement in the U.S. originated here in Manchester, New Hampshire, and the first CU law, the first CU league, etc. were all established in Massachusetts.

Since this was a small gathering, I’ll say a few words about each of the special people who came.

Peggy Powell – Director of America’s CU Museum gets major karma points on at least four counts: 1.) normally only official CU orgs get to hold events in the museum, but she made an exception for us; 2.) she came in on a Saturday because she’s the only employee; 3.) she gave us a tour despite earlier having a bum wheel requiring ice and elevation, and 4.) she put up with us temporarily converting the 3rd floor into a concert arena for a game of Rock Band on the dual projector multimedia system.

Ron Shevlin contributed wonderful insights as always, and wrote a terrific blog entry about BCBNE here. My favorite quote from Ron came at dinner afterwards when we were discussing bankers in the CU movement: “Just because you change churches doesn’t mean you change religions.” During the day, my favorite insight was that it’s not about your story (meaning the business or organizations’ story), it’s about the story that members/customers tell themselves, and how you fit into that story. And social media is about creating new stories with them. Ron is writing a chapter for the book Age of Conversation Two, and I can’t wait to read his contrarian take on web 2.0. I am eagerly devouring Ron’s first book, Everything they’ve told you about Marketing is wrong.

Gene Blishen – I heard about what a great person Gene is from following BCB Seattle remotely, tweets, and blogs. Now I understand why. Gene is a treasure of the CU movement, is genuine, profound, and walks the talk. His blog is called Tinfoiling. Gene also wins the “furthest travelled” award since he came here on the way back to British Columbia via vacation in Denmark. A really cool thing that Gene shared with us is that Mt. Lehman CU has two event tents available for members to use (for weddings, parties, etc.). It’s a small way that Mt. Lehman gives back to its membership and also weaves itself into those important events in its members’ lives.

David Inverarity – I didn’t know of David of Ontario before BCBNE, but I am very happy to have met him. Ron nailed it when he described David as a Tour-de-Force. He’s a whirlwind and provided the funniest photo of any BarCampBank EVAH. I love that David not only brought his PowerBook, but also his Macintosh Air and iPhone. (And made use of air-quotes frequently.) I’m still not sure what to make of his challenge to try to remove his MacBook Air from the building and he wouldn’t make a move to stop them. Perhaps it de-materializes if someone other than David tries to touch it? Ron thought it would make an excellent frisbee if thrown from the third story window.

Andy LaFlamme – I had been looking forward to meeting Andy ever since his outstanding blog, The CU Loop, came on the scene. Andy has a cogent write-up of the day as well. A special thank you to Andy for so many great photos and recordings of the day.

Adam Lueb – A special thank you to Adam for making the journey to Manchester from Western Massachusetts despite not feeling 100%. Adam keeps EverythingCU.com humming despite our best efforts to overwhelm him with new stuff to make that resource even better.

Ginny Brady – Ginny continues to delight me with her progressive thinking, and to be the beacon of truth and justice for board members to truly represent the members’ best interests. After a full year of blogging via The Boardcast, still the only board member to be creating online dialogue with members via a blog as far as we know. I hope her example paves the way for more board members to engage in dialogue via this avenue. And don’t even get me started about how awesome this photo of her and Louise is. Shout out to Ginny, Linda, Jody and UFirst FCU for sponsoring breakfast. Ginny gave a great description of the events at The Credit Union World’s Best Kept Secret.

Charlie Kroll – Came up from Providence, Rhode Island, representing online account opening and funding operation Andera. Charlie had outstanding questions and insights throughout the day. Here is Charlie’s blog entry on being pleasantly surprised by BCBNE.

Dave DelVecchio – Thank you to Dave for coming to the camp, also from our area of Western Mass. David saw me give a talk to the Pioneer Valley Chapter of the MA CU League and does tech implementation and support for many F.I.s in the region. He gave us some insight into the big I.T. issues organizations are wrestling with.

Mark Vautour – Another young CU marketing professional learning more about the movement every day, who was not aware of the Massachusetts/New Hampshire CU movement’s origins the existence of America’s Credit Union Museum despite working at a Boston area credit union. I got to visit Mark at halftime of my first-ever in-person Celtics game at Boston Garden because we both have the Celtics fan Facebook application. Props to Mark for setting up and handling the event’s registration on Eventbrite.

Debra Trautman – Was the only camper who was aware of America’s CU Museum before the BCBNE event because she had received an award there for her work for the Maine Credit Union League. Debra, like many of us outside major cities on the East Coast, was not familiar with the BarCamp format, and now that she’s experienced BCBNE, is eager to share it with more Maine credit unions.

Jeanine Perrone – Represented Marquis software. It’s great to know there are people who work for CU vendors who are this interested in the movement. Jeanine is also formerly an employee of a credit union.

Christian Mullins – Provided wonderful and detailed insight into credit union mergers, and why they are happening at a rate of about one per day. (46 so far this year alone). He had detailed knowledge of a big one happening in his former area in Madison, Wisconsin

Joe Mello – Arrived in time to catch the second half of the day’s topics. I had met his brother, Steve Mello, in San Francisco the previous Saturday at BarCampBank SF. Joe and Steve are doing some exciting work in the world of wireless banking.

I hope that everyone enjoyed themselves, learned a lot, were re-inspired about this crazy CU movement experiment, and made valuable new connections with like-minded people. I know I did.

If you are an employee of a credit union or league, and want to continue this conversation with thousands of other CU professionals, check out EverythingCU.com. (Full disclosure: we created EverythingCU.com as a resource for you to connect with your peers nationally and worldwide, so we might be biased.)

Shameless self-promotion, part two: I was agog when I first visited America’s CU Museum nearly two years ago. I have since discovered that many in the CU movement don’t know about it, or the history of this amazing movement. To do my part in stamping out ignorance everywhere, I am available to deliver a concise, relevant presentation that connects the dots between this movement’s humble origins and how we came to be where we are today. Send me an email if you’re interested in having me deliver this presentation to your credit union, league chapter, or league.

For more photos of the BCBNE event and the museum, visit the BCBNE group flickr pool.

Please share YOUR thoughts on the day, and what you got out of it, here and on your own blog/twitter/flickr/facebook/crowdvine/wiki.

Thank you DC! You’ve been real!

Wow, what a great turnout at the TwittaBloggerSocial Meetup in DC on Tuesday night. Adam and I had dinner with Ginny Brady, Liz Woodard, and Jody Carpenter of UFirst FCU located in Plattsburgh NY ahead of the main meetup. Then 8:30 rolled around and we connected with Bryan Sims of Brass|CU located in Corvallis OR, and I met his Sales Manager Tim. Then we were joined by Jeff Hardin, Communications Director for the North Carolina CU League and Christopher Morris, Web Manager for the CUNA Councils, HQ’d in Madison, WI. Then Brent Dixon of Trabian, located in Dallas stopped in. Later we were joined by his brother Paul who now lives in San Fran. Then we were also joined by Rob Rutkowski of Current Issues in Credit Unions podcast fame, who was there with his brother, Tom. I also said hi to Mark Meyer of the Filene Research Institute who was grabbing a bite to eat with Bryan Sims earlier in the evening.

Conversations covered a wide range including Batman movies, the usefulness/uselessness of twitter, general impressions of the conference so far, and enjoying DC. Later the party moved across the block to the Renaissance Hotel. Brent, Paul, Adam and I decided to take a cab rather than having the downpour soak us. It was a very good call.

Photos are on Facebook and Flickr. I am still awaiting the group photo from Ginny Brady. My favorite part of the meet up: I just couldn’t get over sitting at the same table with Ginny, Jeff, Christopher, Brent, and Rob, who blog and/or twitter from NY, NC, WI, TX, and OH respectively. What was your favorite thing about it?

Something positive always comes out of conferences

Okay, I will admit it. Adam Lueb and I are crashing CUNA GAC 2008. We are not invited. We are not official conference goers. We are not exhibitors. But we love our CU peeps so much we made the trek down just to hang with them. When you are a small company, such as we are, it is a risk to come all this way, take time out of two employees busy schedules, and pay for meals, transportation, lodging, etc. So is it worth it?

The answer is a resounding yes. I’ve found that nearly always something positive happens when you do any or all of the following: break your normal patterns, go visit your peeps, understand your customers’ world better, facilitate getting smart people together, make new connections, and/or reinforce existing connections.

Over on OpenSourceCU, some are questioning the ROI of attending a BarCampBank. I have no response to that, other than, if you can’t see the value in meeting smart, creative, passionate people who are willing to learn and share what they know about the leading edge of the industry, then you definitely should not attend.

Tonight, Adam and I hooked up with Robbie Wright of MaPS Credit Union in Salem, Oregon. Last July, Robbie invited me to attend BarCampBank Seattle just a few days before it was about to occur. By chance, I was in Spokane at the time consulting with a CU there, instead of at my usual home base in Western Massachusetts. I had never heard of a BarCamp nor BarCampBank, and after checking out the wiki page for it, didn’t want to rearrange my schedule to hop over to Seattle for the weekend rather than return home to my son whom I hadn’t seen in many days. While I love my son dearly, I am still kicking myself that I did not attend that first BarCampBank in the U.S. when I had the opportunity.

Returning to the present, at Adam’s suggestion, we headed over to Washington DC’s Chinatown for Tony Cheng’s Mongolian Barbecue earlier this evening. While enjoying the fabulous dinner, Adam and Rob got to talking tech stuff. It turns out that Rob faces the same challenge we do in wrangling the NCUA 5300 data on all 8000+ CUs in the U.S. into shape every quarter when it is published. Rob asked Adam if he would be interested if his CUSO developed a way by which we could import it in the blink of an eye, andweimmediatelyansweredYES. So now Rob has direct feedback of the usefulness of a potential product, and we now have a potential source for a process that sidetracks us from more relevant work for a significant amount of time each year. This conversation would not have occured had I not invited Adam to come to DC with me.

As an additional bonus, we discussed briefly the online switch kit that EverythingCU offers to make it easy for a member to switch their previous financial institution to the credit union, and realized that MaPS CU is not offering it to their members. Talking with Rob has reminded me who the person at his CU would be the one to evaluate the product, I’ve sent her an email about it.

This trip is already worth it, and we’ve only connected with one person so far and haven’t even gotten to the main event; the reason why we’re here, the TwittaBloggerSocial MeetUp.

TV News meets Kung Fu via Facebook

EverythingCU.com’s resident Cold Fusion programming genius, Adam Lueb is a busy guy. In addition to keeping the EverythingCU.com site humming and implementing Online Switch Kits for scores of credit unions all over the country, he also runs the Shaolin Kung Fu Center in Chicopee, Massachusetts.

Tonight, Adam and the Center held a Chinese New Year’s celebration and Kung Fu demonstration. And Adam, being the social person, and savvy entrepreneur that he is, listed the celebration on Facebook. In addition to being a great time, the Chinese New Year’s celebration and Kung Fu demonstration is also a way to get new people interested in becoming Kung Fu students. So Adam hoped to attract additional people to the event via Facebook.

When an event is posted to Facebook, if it’s a regional event, it will appear on the Network’s home page calendar unless you choose not to have it appear there. Oh, and did I mention the cost to put your event on Facebook? It’s free.

A couple of days ago, Adam got a phone call from a reporter for one of the local TV News stations, an ABC affliate, WGGB ABCNews 40. She wanted to cover the event. Adam readily agreed, and asked how she had heard about it. The calendar of events on the Network page of Facebook was the answer.

So what is the lesson from this chain of events? Well-planned events that are closely connected to your core brand/business strategy are terrific for getting the word out about your organization. And you never know who is going to see your event when you publicize it in online channels. By the way, the Celebration was enthralling. Here is the event’s Facebook page, and more photos.

Meet-up at GAC in DC on March 4

For anyone who is coming to CUNA’s GAC extravaganza in Washington DC from March 2 through 6, myself, Matt Taggart, and Adam Lueb will be dropping in on Tuesday evening, March 4 for a Networking meetup at Capital City Brewing Company at 8:30 pm. Ginny Brady, blogging board member of UFirst FCU in Plattsburgh NY will be there, along with Christopher Morris of the CUNA Councils. (Ginny has also created a Facebook page for GAC-goers.)

If you are going to GAC and want to meet up with fellow social media/blogger/twitter/EverythingCU-ers, either comment here, post it on the facebook event page here, or shoot me an email. Even if you are not attending GAC, if you are in the DC, VA, MD area, we’d love to meet up with you on Tuesday night for drinks.

Successful World 2.0 Hands-on Workshop in Lake George

Just got back from a fun, intense day of leading a workshop for the NYSCUL Adirondack and Capital Region Chapters on Bringing Your CU into World 2.0. This was a laptops-up, hands-on workshop, and it was a resounding success. As part of the workshop, we twittered with several people who couldn’t be at the event, including Ginny Brady, Ron Shevlin, Jeff Hardin, and even Brent Dixon, who we conversed with while he was with 20-year-old Board Member Justin Ho in Austin TX for the YES Summit. Via twitter, Brent asked our collective workshop in Lake George if we had any questions for Justin. Linda Dickie, of Hudson River Community CU asked what the average age of Justin’s board was. I twittered that question to Brent, who in turn asked Justin. Brent twittered back to us that the answer was 57. (A very young number according to our Lake George friends.)

It was fantastic to take the mystique out of World 2.0 by demonstrating how quick, simple and free it is to sign up for these tools and sites. Attendees now have the foundation for how to succeed and win in this new World 2.0 we are living in.

Also, huge props go to Linda Bourgeois and Jody Carpenter of UFirst FCU, for organizing the event and making today possible. In addition, a big thank you to EverythingCU’s Dan Reynolds and Adam Lueb, who demonstrated EverythingCU’s webinar interface and online switch kit, respectively (and for taking some great pics of the workshop). And it was indeed great to meet Charles Folensbee, Matt Barbell, Kim Reilly, and Kip Summerlin in person at last, and to reconnect with Walt Everhardt, VP of Marketing for First New York FCU, who has been blogging for several months now.

I will be doing this workshop throughout 2008 to help CUs across the country experience first-hand how easy it is to get going with World 2.0. If you know the education director at your state’s CU League, please email me and I will email you back a PDF containing the info that is covered in this hands-on workshop that you can, in turn, forward to him or her. If you attended this event, in-person or virtually via twitter, please comment here! Here are some Twitter Tips. Also, if you send me your email, I’ll send you a PDF of the slide deck. Let me know what we could have done better, or what topics you’d like to see covered more, or less of. More of Adam’s great photos of the event available here.

Live World 2.0 workshop in Lake George NY

Myself and the EverythingCU team is getting pumped for a live, hands-on World 2.0 workshop taking place in Lake George, NY next week on Wednesday, December 5. The combined chapters of the Adirondack and Capital Regions of the NYSCUL are hosting us. We’ve instructed all the participants to BRING THEIR LAPTOPS. We’re not just going to be talking about World 2.0 and social media/networking, we’re going to be DOING IT. We’re so excited about the sites and tools we’re going to be covering. It will be an eye-opening experience for all the attendees, and will hopefully catapult their respective CUs into this new wired digital age. It’s exciting! And we’re so excited to be meeting several long-time EverythingCU members, including President Charles Folensbee of Saratoga Community CU. Walter Everhardt, VP of Marketing for First New York FCU is going to be there, along with President Linda Bourgeois, and Director of Marketing Jody Carpenter of UFirst FCU in Plattsburgh. Ginny Brady, blogging Board Member of UFirst FCU will be with us virtually via twitter, as will our own Matt Taggart and Nate Duval…. can’t wait! Dan Reynolds and Adam Lueb will be assisting me in person. If you can’t make it, please join in via twitter…. here I am on twitter.

Thank you, Spokane Federal Credit Union

Thank you, Krista Felker, Pamela Kippes, Deb Olson, and Charlotte Nemec, for hosting my webinar on Thursday. It was fantastic to re-connect, and meet such great members of EverythingCU.com. I really appreciated having an audience while I delivered my Bringing Your CU into World 2.0 webinar for you and 25 other credit union professionals all over the country. It was such a treat to be able to broadcast the webinar from Spokane Federal Credit Union’s boardroom during my Spokane week which included two days of brand consulting for United Health Services Credit Union.

Special thanks to Krista for supplying me with a lovely stand so that I could have my laptop near eye-level while delivering the presentation. Also, big thanks to Dan Reynolds for moderating the webinar so nicely from the EverythingCU.com homefront in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Also in attendance from Holyoke were Matt Taggart and Adam Lueb, giving shout outs to all of our credit union friends.

Afterwards, Krista, Pam, and Deb were gracious enough to select and accompany me to a fantastic little restaurant called Downriver Grill for lunch. The chicken taco salad really hit the spot!