Tonight my wife and I went to our son’s one-man art show at the Downtown Eastside Gallery. This is a very small eclectic gallery whose sole reason is to show art in whatever fashion to those whose interest is art. Period. No politics or seeing what is in vogue or “in”. It is a labour of love by 3 individuals who own the gallery and just want to see art and all of its benefits presented to the public at large. One of the co-owners said she pours money into it because to her it is important. When you meet people who are ardent in what they do and believe what they do is important you realize you have come to the right place.

Now who would attend a small gallery on the edge of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside on Powell and Victoria Drive? Young unpretenious people who make viewing art part of their social life. They want to be together and share. There is a vibrancy in what they see, in what they discuss and their lack of inhibition in discussing art. This is the new generation that is becoming part of the world of many. They are not leaving the culture we live in but in many way creating it in a fashion that at times is foreign to us who are children of the 60’s. In some small way it does remind you of that time. But the war we saw and heard about (Vietnam) is now invisible and unknown. It is the quiet world of the powerful that they want to be different from. They show a concern for all and not a concern for a few. It was an interesting and refreshing experience.

This week we finally finnished installing the new telephone banking product. To the project team go all the thanks. They pulled it off without any major hitches. And the programmers at SmartSolution and TelTek were great. We just kept plowing through the bits and pieces that needed small fixes. The product is much easier to use and managing the system is simple with a lot of options.

The first option, and probably the most difficult, was implementing bill payments via voice. Once you get to that sub-menu of paying bills you can do everything via voice. No more buttons. It is really strange to pay Telus just by speaking to a telephone handset. The next step is to have all the menus activated by and chosen by voice.

And now we begin implementing a new internet banking system, compliments of Credit Union Central of B.C. We basically clone our current system and then work at developing various products and services i.e. electronic bill presentment with payment, delivery and archiving our monthly statements in PDF format, secure messaging, and the list goes on. Our major goal is to develop products that gives the user the ability to choose delivery and product variables through the internet banking product. For example if you don’t want your statement mailed then you should be able to choose to turn that function off. You should be able to choose an electronic delivery method instead. And you should be able to do that anytime. Want to be notified when your payroll deposit comes into your account via e-mail or text messaging? (We have our MemberNote doing that now but just for ATM and Interac transactions). Again you should be able to choose that through an internet banking program. We hope in some small way we can begin to develop some creative ways of banking. And with today’s technology, why not?