McAlpine does it again

The creative ninja from Chilliwack, Tim McAlpine has delivered another video for the Your Symposium hosted by Forum Solutions in October.

Of course he is going to get together his posse and take over the 2nd morning with the young at heart. But Tim you have to look at yourself in the mirror. You are a Gen Xer. Your the Brand X of the generation pool. These young guys have more energy and are quicker than you. Us Boomers know to stay out of zone that that they create. My kids are Gen Y so there is some history to learn here. They will take you in because you are a nice guy. They will put up with you because you have that creative energy. But Tim you are a marketeer not a mouseketeer. Develop the Young and Free platform, get everyone excited but remember – the Boomers are your real friends. You don’t have to go over to the other side like that. Hoodie? Next you’ll be skateboarding and into graffiti and you will be listening to You Say Party We Say Die.

Seriously anyone reading this and has gotten this far needs to know Tim and I are friends, right Tim? What we both agree upon is that this is by far the best event you can attend and here are some reasons why.

you will meet people who have fantastic points of view.
you will have ample opportunity for discussions.
you will probably meet some people you have never met before but have read their blogs and twitter postings.
you will meet the most gracious hosts (Forum Solutions) ever, period.
the food is lots of and great.
this is the most real symposium with the most real people you can imagine.
what you learn and hear will churn in your head for a long time.
there is a magical, caring quality about this event that is unique and must be experienced.
it will not let you down, it will exceed your expectations.

Sign up, be there, keep Tim happy. This happening is about great people and socializing with them. The media stuff and marketing is the value add on.

BarCampBankBC2

William, Tim and I had a conference call a few weeks back to discuss having another BarCampBank in B.C. Now when you are dealing with these two individuals you do not sit in the front seat, you sit in the back. They either do the driving or give the directions. Your job is just to make sure anything they have forgotten is mentioned or to jump in to volunteer to do something if it is something they can’t do. They really are two guys with extreme amounts of energy and vision.

What will the next Canadian west coast BarCampBank hold? This will be my fifth BarCampBank and as all our totally different you can never know. You hope that there will be a few people who have never attended because the enthusiasm they show seems to drive a lot of the energy of the function. You hope that people come without any preconceived ideas about what will happen. You know that you will meet up with people who have read your blog or who are twittering who you have never met before. The key point is the people. Sure there is always what is discussed and what issues were raised but it is always the people who come to mind when you think about what has happened before. To me that is the strongest point of BarCampBanks.

BCBBC2 is going to be different from all the rest. Above my desk at home is a picture of 6 gentleman from Texas sitting around a restaurant table. This is what I remember most about BarCampBankDallas last year. There are still 4 of them in Texas, one has moved to San Francisco, the other New York. I still hear regularly about events in their lives from their blogs or Twitter. Someday I hope to meet them all again. It really was the BarCampBank that created that connection. It is always an amazing experience when you think about it. Social media is what we all talk about but really the people behind the messages are what is important.

Social Capital and the positive capital of employment

My good friend and colleague William Azaroff has a very thoughtful post about the need for all of us to be creating social capital through our affiliations with others on the web and that this can prove a benefit with these different economic times upon us. I wanted to bring another view into focus.

I have long felt that as an employer (one that hires and fires) one of the most important aspects of working with people is to create an environment of trust and respect. Over the years there have been a number of people that have worked for the credit unions I have worked for that got their start with us and then moved on for various reasons. It has always been difficult to see these people leave as has been the case recently. You train and challenge them to be better employees and people and you watch them grow. Life does not remain stagnant and so things change and people move on.

It is important that as an employer you keep the relationships open to the point of having that person who wants to move on talk to you about it. When they feel confident enough to approach you to say that they are going to be looking for another job then you can prepare for their eventual departure. The process becomes healthy and proves to be a benefit to both parties. One of our employees told me they were looking for something else. That was a few months ago and they recently found a new job. They had the ability to say at any interview that they could call us, the current employer, for a reference. Now how powerful is that? They had the ability to take the time off for interviews without saying it was a doctors appointment. It was a transparent approach for them in moving their career path as they saw fit. It doesn’t happen often but when it does it puts a proper closure to the situation of leaving an old job and getting a new one.

Employers should be creating social capital that can be used by current employees as they need it. That should be the norm.

Then you have the other side when you have to let someone go. To terminate anyone is one of the most painful experiences you can imagine. To do it abruptly and quickly makes it worse. When you are able create a transitional plan that incorporates social values that both parties hold as important, that takes some of the pain out of the situation. The impact of loosing people affects the bottom line of course but the loss of anyone diminishes the social capital of any business in ways that one never realizes until that person has gone. You really can’t measure this loss. In the difficult times we will face in the future one hopes that the worst situation possible, loss of one’s job, can be handled with care, compassion and respect. Everyone deserves that.

This is the element that scares me the most for the future. Experience has taught me most people can live under difficult economic circumstances. It becomes tragic when people loose their livelihood. Much of what defines us is what we do and when we loose that important definition our lives become that much blacker. If social capital is one way of alleviating that despair it will make a true difference in how we move forward.

Another BarCampBankBC advertisement

Tim and William have done recent posts about BarCampBankBC which amply speak of what it is about. I can only repeat what they have already said.

This will be my 4th BarCampBank and one that hopefully will start “to foster innovations and the creation of new business models in the world of banking and finance.” in our geographic area and beyond. This direction is long overdue.

I have repeated numerous times that the ability and opportunity for financial institutions to create new products and services has never been better. All of the building blocks are there. The only hampering item is ourselves. We have created structures that make it difficult to foster innovation. We fail to keep our eyes focused on the end event and get caught up in the mundane and minuscule processes. Yes the devil is in the details but that should not be the excuse to limit our ability to be creative. This event is going to have some very interesting people attending. There are a few that I don’t see listed that will also be mentioned.

• Tim McAlpine – the creative genius of Currency Marketing.

• William Azaroff – the man behind Change Everything at Vancity.

• Morriss Partee – the New Englander whose CU Everything is a wealth of knowledge for CUs.

• Nala Henkel – another smart cookie from Currency

• Nancy Zimmerman – one of the most energetic and outspoken bankers I know, and she has heart.

• Stephen Akhurst – a very intelligent Central 1 consultant, he puts together the Innovation Awards for CUs in BC.

• Denise Wymore- Watch out when she starts talking about her pet peeves.

• Matt Vance – who wouldn’t like anyone from Bellingham?

• Boris Mann – the Drupal guy who makes things happen.

• Tripp Johnson – don’t know Trip but know about the Gonzo Banker people.

• Wendy Lachance – Coast Capital’s mobile expert.

• Kate Dugas – the other half of Change Everything at Vancity.

• Andy LaFlamme – another New Englander whose points of view are articulate and insightful. (Don’t get him and Morriss together for a Guitar Hero event!)

• Brent Dixon – one of the most creative people I know of.

• Dana Dekker – he was the force behind MACUs success.

• Roland Tanglao – if you want to know anything about mobile phones ask Roland.

• Caleb Chang – Caleb wears Hawaiian shirts on Monday, need I say more?

• David Drucker – a GUI expert and an ex-Bostoner (Bostonite? some one help me here).

• Laurel McJannet – she is from Verity which says it all.

• Mark Sadowski – Anyone from New Mexico has to be mentioned.

• Jeffry Pilcher – if you want to talk to Jeffry make sure all your ducks are in a row.

Who is missing? Ron Shevlin, Charlie Trotter, anyone from the Garland Group, Christian Mullins, anyone from Indianna or the Carolinas and a number of others.

Seriously if you haven’t attended a BarCampBank before this is your chance. You will not regret it. Don’t let the $35 registration fee paint it as a non-event. You will come away with some truly invaluable insights you won’t find anywhere else. It is an international event.

Why I love Twitter

Morriss recently wrote about the 4 stages of Twitter which was as close as it gets to emulating the stages of experience with this product. I hadn’t realized how long I had been on it and then thought about why, after e-mail, it is the one thing that is always checked.

At first it seemed that the community that would built up around Twitter, with you deciding who to follow and who is following you, would be limited. How many of your face-to-face friends would actually use it tended to be few if any and wasn’t everyone on Facebook anyway. But a community did build and it reached beyond any geographic location that you could imagine. Now you can see people responding to each other were you know you were the conduit in getting them followed or following each other. How many people have you interacted with because of someone else’s introduction to that individual?

There also seems to be a grouping of like minds. I have never asked or heard of anyone’s political persuasion, not that it would matter. There is not much knowledge about age or generation. In fact unless the person blogs and has posted the link you really don’t know much about them. Some post frequently, others rarely. There is a link or a connection to each person that proves to be different with each post. There is a unique insight when someone updates you on what is taking place in their life or their thoughts at that specific instant. There seems to be a common bond that is unexplainable. That unknown connection is why I love Twitter. It is an amazing way to communicate with some amazing people.

At the same time I am always somewhat hesitant on what to post. When compared to what some post, mine seem like drivel. Once in a while you can contribute which is satisfying. But one also needs to say what one doesn’t like. I really don’t like it when someone posts 6 or more times, right in a row. Thankfully everyone has a specific icon so when that starts you can quickly pass through the stream. It is also hard to follow a thread of thought when someone posts a short cryptic message to some unknown @person. If it sounds interesting you can click on @person and hope there is something there to understand. There is tinypaste if you want to go beyond 140 characters but it is rarely used.

Finally it is great to hear what music someone is listening to or where they are but I really don’t want to know that you have arrived at Starbuck’s and are having a double non-fat latté. Sorry but I don’t drink coffee and it irks me that I can’t be sitting across from you with a tea.

BarCampBankDallas

Everyone is on there way home or soon to be headed in that direction. BarCampBankDallas is over and once again one sits back and slowly begins to digest what took place since Saturday morning.

The topic of the iPhone and what it can and will do for the financial service industry was discussed at length. The opportunities for development of products and services with this device surfaced again and again. In essence this device gives you some dimensions (where you are, where others are, push technology, enterprise development, etc.) that either were not available or unanswerable in the past. If Jobs is right in suggesting that the iPhone could reach 60% market share then this device could become as common as the iPod. When hardware and software arrive at this new technology plateau who knows where it will lead.

Regulators and regulation and what that means to this industry was considered in a number of sessions. No one likes this segment and though it is necessary sometimes it is very hard to see some reasonable means of dialogue with this group. It seems a continual challenge to find the resources in order to comply with these demands. Much of what we have and continue to do has not changed much but in the regulators eyes that does not matter.

There was an excellent mix of attendees with no single group becoming the main focus. I really appreciated the responses and input of so many people. Everyone there had a passion for the business and you could see that. The food was great and the venue was very different. There were a number of ‘creatures’ (stuffed animals) in the centre area that became part of few discussions. I had never seen a stuffed giraffe before.

People will ask me ‘Was it as good as Seattle or New England?” I have a hard time comparing each event because they are so different. They are all equal in some fashion but also different just based on the agenda and people. The first BarCampBank was exciting because it was new. Those that follow are exciting because you can understand what will be occurring. You not only measure what you learnt and discussed but also view the unmeasurable, the relationships that you have renewed and those new ones that you have made. To me that might be the most important aspect of BarCampBanking.

These relationships create that network of like minded individuals that for the most part are exploring technology, people and markets. They have the common desire to make something better, to change something. There is little if any of a defeatist attitude. You share stories, dreams and the realities of the business you live in. Larry Hooper was the only non-FI person there and it was great to hear his take on things. I think the story he shared is one reason why we continue to strive to do things better.

Did I come away with any great ideas? Certainly. The most important thing though was to hear that your ideas and your plans were being challenged and validated at the same time. You will only get that kind of response at a BarCampBank.

It was an enjoyable event. Good to see everyone again. Good the have some great food and experience that Texas hospitality.

Apple WDC and our choices

The first day is over and the news is out. New iPhone, .Mac changing to .Me and Snow Leopard Server. Again Apple pushes product and updates its technology to higher levels but this time there is something different.

Apple seems to be directing its eyes to the business sector. Sure the iPhone was launched at consumers but the tools and processes shown are a fair indication that Apple is looking at expanding into the non-consumer area. With what was stated today why wouldn’t any business who has some development budget and has been working on the Mac platform not get excited? There are some great possibilities of using these tools to create some unique and interesting products and arrive at answering some old questions.

The key understanding is that the iPhone is a computer in your pocket. So what would you think 5 or 10 years ago about having that much IT power sitting in your glove compartment? With the wireless availability becoming common place there is now an immediate means to communicate and transmit data. Viewing this from a historic timeline we used to wait until the punch cards were run for the printed work, then it became the waiting for the system to come up before we could use the terminal, our desktop computers were the biggest step in having data and applications available on a desk, then the laptops arrived and we could carry them anywhere and now that same power sits in your pocket and is usable anytime.

Any information or data that you can push or pull can be viewed and worked on. Any place. What will that mean to businesses and to us an individuals remains to be seen. One of the programs mentioned today will give you the geographic location, via GPS, of anyone with an iPhone. You will get a choice if you want that information about you available but if you do then you might not have to answer the cell phone from your spouse asking you were you are. A small point but it is significant. You no longer have to tell people where you are, they will have the means to know where you are.

The questions will be asked will it save time, the precious and finite commodity we all treasure. Maybe, maybe not. But it will change the way we view events, processes and what we have been used to in so many unseen ways. Again technology has an offering that we can either use or it can ‘use’ us. We can either be bombarded by vast amounts of useless information or we can filter and broaden our knowledge with needful and proper information. It all ends in one simple but powerful characteristic, individually we choose for ourselves with our own free will what we will do with this technology.

Expectations and realities of BarCamps

Yesterday Tim, William and I had a conference call about the upcoming BCBBC. During the conversation we talked about the Seattle Bar Camp Bank and how we viewed it. It was interesting to hear that we all wanted to repeat Seattle’s success by having something similar.

But are BarCampBanks always similar? The format and the way the event is held is unique and it contributes a lot to its success. No one owns the agenda. You vote with your feet. Sessions can continue until everyone says its over. Discussion, dialogue and conversation are great ways to communicate, debates aren’t. Relationships have already been created through Internet means (blogs and Twitter). Meeting people face to face after you have know them online is a phenonemal experience. Venues can add to the flavour of the event. It is a time of incubating ideas. It is the Olympics of conferences. No talking heads telling you what you already now. Inexpensive. Unbelievable value. The points are numerous and everyone who attends can give numerous examples as to why they will attend again.

But each one that I have attended is unique. And I keep trying to nail down what makes it so. There is a climate of networking and relationships that form at these meetings based on the individuals present. The BarCampBanks are made up of such a wide range of characters that they can’t be the same just by the fact of who attends. Maybe it is because we don’t really have such a strong expectation of what will come from the event. We already know that will happen. The expectation is the excitement of the discussions, the passion shown by everyone, the energy in just being in a room with such remarkable people. We thought we came seeking a holy grail but found that each of us had the capacity to create something unique in our relationships and our being together for this short time. The time you have is limited and you want to make the most of it.

BarCamps cannot really be explained. You could add numerous paragraphs to the above and still just touch on what they are. You have to be there and experience a BarCamp to understand fully what it is. With everyone being different you realize it really is the people that are important here. The focus is us. And that is so different from those expensive, boring, talking head, self-appointed expert sessions we have all fallen asleep at.

Some final thoughts on Northern Voice 2008

This has been the 4th year I have attended this conference and there is a difference on how I feel about this one as compared to the others. This time a number of the faces were familiar so in some ways you took the time to “catch up” with what has been happening in so many of these peoples lives. The names are too numerous to mention but you always recognize the faces. Flickr has over 3,000 photographs of the event! If you aren’t in that photostream it is because you weren’t there.

The conference is always remembered by the people who attend it. They really make what it has become. Everyone is pretty comfortable discussing all aspects of the digital world we live in. The conversations can become pretty intense. Maybe that’s why when its over everyone’s brain is very tired. It is that intenseness and passion for the subject that is so rewarding. You give as much as you can and you end up getting back more.

I keep my notes of the conference in my Moleskine. This year I have 19 pages of words, ideas, URLs, and miscellany. Those notes will be key in today’s reflection of what is happening on the Internet. There will be a few more blogs subscribed to from the people you have met, a few that you will read more often and probably a few more readers of your own blog. The social fabric continues to get woven.

We all tend to want to measure things in terms of success (it was a successful event). I have never thought NV as a success. It is more a happening, an idea exchange, a period of incubation of thoughts and words. By attending you are propelled into a different realm that everyone who participates understands by experiencing it. It isn’t something you can necessarily write about or listen to. You have to experience what took place. And experiences are made with people. We are social animals. We like to be with others to share, understand and have a venue to express what we think and believe. And that is what Northern Voice does.

Our national anthem has a phrase “the truth north strong and free”. I sense that in a fashion at NV. The strength is from who we are, the free is our ability to express it. Thanks to everyone who was there.

Social Bookmarking and the dilemma of choice

At the recent Northern Voice conference Alan Levine made a presentation of WordPress Web sites that don’t look at all like a WordPress blog. Jim Groom also had a presentation about this. Alan had a tag on del.icio.us that he used to keep track of these sites and suggested anyone use it if they also found examples. There were a few people that mentioned work they had done in this area, Alan hit the sites, tagged them, and the source of the information was complete. It was the first time I had seen that happen at a public session.Wikipedia has an interesting introduction on social bookmarking that deserves reading. The article mentions other sites including Simpy and Ma.gnolia. There are a vast variety of features in them all but it brings up the Twitter vs Pownce debate again. Trey twittered William’s quote this morning — community beats cool. With the plethora of web apps available does one choose to use something because it works, works better, has more features or there are more people using it?I would like to use Pownce but there are so few of us there that everyone has drifted back to Twitter. (Flock does a decent but not perfect job of helping one keep informed about the feeds.) So community has outweighed function with that choice. One of the problems we all face is filtering. There are volumes of information pushed out onto the web daily that make it impossible to keep up with. Here again the ‘wisdom of crowds’ comes into play. The use a common social bookmarking service could filter and highlight for all of us those areas of interest. I would love to have an RSS feed of informative bookmarks suggested by friends and peers on a daily basis. It can only add to keeping current on so many important subjects. But again who does one pick? De.licio.us, Ma.gnolia, Simpy or ??

The first day of Northern Voice 2008 = MooseCamp

The first day of NV08 was pretty good. Of course there were sessions you couldn’t get to but there certainly was enough to keep you busy.

The Enterprise Social session had a good attendance and talked about wikis in the enterprise and how to successfully grow and use them. One aspect of wikis which was noted again and again was that search of all kinds sucks. But the biggest question was how do you get people to use these tools? What exactly hinders their use? It was interesting to note that the successful use of a wiki in an enterprise situation was conditioned on both the top and the grassroots contributing and there had to be a balance of both. It wasn’t like it would take hold just because it was introduced.

Citizen Journalism was interesting but it was also a presentation by CBC. The ‘motherhood’ culture predominated. Sure you can send stories and news to them but they will control the content. I don’t think they get it. By it’s nature citizen journalism uses the ‘openness’ of the web as one of its strongest points. To have it funneled and used by a large public media outlet takes away that strength. It was interesting to see how the CBC have now silently changed into beginning to understand what is happening. A few years ago blogging and alternative sources of news were largely ignored and discounted. But the giant will move slowly.

Photocamp was great. Lots of discussion around light.

WordPress and your problems was everyone moving into specific groups with resident experts leading the discussions and helping everyone with their questions. Jim Groom led our small group with some amazing information about plug-ins and presentation schemes.

Alan Levine had a session ‘More Than Cat Diaries’ that showed some web sites that don’t look like blogs but are running on blog software. The tag ‘notcatdiaries‘ on del.icio.us gives numerous examples.

That was it. Voxant was buying the beers and handing out T-shirts at the local bar so a bunch of us headed over there and continued discussing the day’s event. By the end of the day my brain hurt. And now we move into the second day.

The ongoing saga of Twitter and Pownce

Once upon a time in the land of virtual worlds there lived a little service called Twitter. He (ok it could be she) had a great idea about sending messages to friends. So he released his idea and low and behold it became popular. It worked and people loved it. All was well as groups of friends shared in a fashion they hadn’t thought possible before. Communities formed and relationships built and all was well.

Then came along another little service called Pownce (let us say Pownce is she for the sake of equal gender participation). Pownce loved Twitter but felt hampered at times, and so her idea was released and low and behold it became popular. Friends found out about here, told others, and now the groups started forming. But wait something unforeseen happened.

How could these established groups maintain contact using one or the other? The discussions began. People changed from T to P and then back again from P to T. Groups all over the place were stating similar things. All the twitterers and powncers were amiss. What would happen? Would the grey knights Googley and MicroHard do something?

We can’t say everyone lived happily ever after. We do know that things change. Everybody is still here. The relationships between people in the groups haven’t changed, just the means of communicating. Twitter and Pownce continue to develop because both can see they have to. The real beauty of this is us. We, by using whatever platform we choose, are influencing what in the end will be a changed platform. Will someone be able to develop the DIY concept in microblogging, that is create one area of all my friends but choose the features I want to use with friends, groups or the public timeline? And that has been the neatest things about this episode. We are watching it unfold as well as being part of it.

Facebook and Twitter and what a pundit said

With Microsoft’s getting a piece of Facebook there is a lot of discussion about what this means. Charlene Li at Forrester Research says “Facebook really represents the new computing platform for this new age of computing and I think any social application that is written in the future is going to have to take into account the Facebook model”. So what exactly is Charlene saying here?

Is Facebook a “new computing platform for this new age of computing”? I hadn’t thought of it as that. It seemed to be a different interface that quickly allowed a connection to a number of people, already registered with the product, who I knew. It compacted a lot of information because the screen fonts though small where readable. And it had a lot of choice on how it would look and how it would work. Is it a new computing platform? No. It is just a nicely designed product that caught a wave of popularity and with this momentum has a large base of users that made it more relevant than other social networking systems. I wouldn’t call it a new computing platform, just a better refinement of how others could enhance your platform for you.

If you use Twitter and Facebook consider this question. What do you find easier to use, what do you use more, what defines social networking in your mind – Twitter or Facebook? Or are there other “new computing platforms” that ring truer to your sense of social networking?

Social networking, just by it’s name, is difficult to describe. It is 90% human communication and 10% technology ( I’ll leave you to adjust the percentages). Do I really care what the screen looks like as long as the result is what one feels comfortable with when using it? If it works, then it is used. If it doesn’t work for you for whatever reason you won’t use it. Twitter works. It connects me in real time to some of the most interesting people I know. It is simple. It is intriguing. Facebook does this in a different fashion, in a slower fashion, much more historic with social aspects defined by the various applications you choose. What it does for me is not the same as what Twitter does. Why? Because it only augments or tries to emulate what I as a person already experience daily in my non-computer life. When I sit across from someone and communicate I am experiencing who I am in the real human setting. This is reality. And all the factors and inputs that I have learned since birth are at work listening and communicating with this person. What they are saying, how they are saying it, what their body movement is, how their hands are moving, everything all your senses offer to establish human contact. Is this the same experience as Twitter or Facebook? No and it never can be. They are only partial facilities in our human connections. They work to a certain point. I think the best part of social networking is when you finally get to meet all these neat people in person. Knowing and realizing that event will someday happen makes these virtual places pretty amazing.