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.

A trial with VoiceThread

Learnt about this site at NV08, VoiceThread. In 5 minutes was able to put this amateur picture, comment and doodle about the new ATM that was installed at the credit union. Please forgive the message, it is the medium that is intriguing.

VoiceThread

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 Starbuck incident

Yesterday I went through the drive through at the local Starbucks. Pretty simple order, medium sized coffee (what do they call it grande?) with cream and sugar. So the speaker comes on and this over friendly voice takes my order, asks all the same questions and it seems that life is really good from her voice tone. “That will be $1.97”.

Moving along the line up I get up to the wicket. Of course the change tray in the truck has pennies galore so I add 2 cents to the toonie to get my nickel back. The same girl is cheerfully talking stating this and that and I hear the final ‘Thank you’ and ‘Here is your coffee. I’m fine with the chatter, somewhat overdone, but friendly.

I pull forward, stop and begin to pour the paper cup of coffee into my thermos mug. Black coffee, no cream, no sugar. Aaarrrgghhh!

Now the moral of the story — it doesn’t really matter how friendly you are to the customer or if you are Chatty Kathy extraordinaire, if you screw up the order you really haven’t done your job. Pseudo-relationship building comes at a cost.

End of day or eod in CU speak

Getting ready to head home after a busy day and caught up on the Twitters and Pownces. Tim gets an international lunch and Charlie posts something very nice.

This morning in the Globe and Mail, the front page had a number of articles about the Presidential race south of us. For a Canadian who has lived so close to the border for most of his life and who feels such warmness for the people of the U.S., this race to the election is being watched closely. One realizes when one travels throughout the U.S. (27 states) the political realities are different than here at home. There are mountains of books written on our differences and our similarities. Whether we agree with one side or another it is everyone’s right to voice that freedom and most of our fathers or grandfathers spent some time out of the country 65 years ago to maintain that freedom. What I deem so important to both countries is that our unique relationships continue no matter what the political choice. When you travel north on the I5 and get to the border you see the white Peace Arch. If you ever get a chance stop there and walk through the portal. It mentions the longest undefended border in the world. There is a lot written there that speaks of who we are and what all of us earnestly desire.

I’m going home. Tomorrow night I will be away and off-line for a few days. We all need a rest.

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.

Desjardins movement and it’s truly co-operative nature

Last night a number of credit unions attended an information session by the Desjardin Group. Most of us came to listen to what their IT people had as a banking system. What it turned out to be was a lesson on how a 100 year old co-operative financial system has evolved for its members.

There were presentations by all the component groups (subsidiaries) of the Desjardin Group. Insurance, brokerage, wealth management, payroll services, Visa and IT. Here is a quote from their Web site:

“Desjardins Group is an organization of caisses populaires and caisses d’économie (credit unions). The 516 caisses Desjardins in Québec and Ontario (494 in Quebec and 22 in Ontario1) and their 911 service centres (869 in Quebec and 42 in Ontario1) are assembled under a single federation: the Fédération des caisses Desjardins du Québec.”

This organization has an asset size of $147 billion made up of credit unions from $20 million to a a few over $1 billion. The average size is $170 million. Their whole infrastructure is built to serve the member caisse populaire (credit union). Again and again the co-operative nature of the organization was presented. It was an eye opener.

Why are we becoming aware of Desjardins? In the last few years their members voted to allow other credit unions to participate in the products and services they have developed. The meeting had 93% voting in favour of the motiion. It still is a street fight among themselves in the retail market but there is no discussion as to how fundamental services are to be built and made available.

So when we talk about credit unions individually here is a prime example of where the independent credit unions moved co-operatively to build a system that can compete with the banks. In Quebec the banks are second to credit unions. Sound pretty good doesn’t it. But remember it took some time to get there. Keep them in mind because they are here to stay.

A Monday in February

Today was my day off so headed to the barber (or do they call them hair stylist’s these days). I mentioned my trip to Europe next month and he said “you know we should cut your hair shorter.” I trust the guy and said ok. Now without my glasses I can’t really see what he is doing but I am hearing the buzzing haircutter as it chomps away quite a bit of hair. A little worried I keep my mouth shut remembering to trust the guy. After it is all over and I get my glasses back – it doesn’t look bad. And when I pick my wife up from work she is delighted. So it worked.

The PVR had the Super Bowl taped on it so this afternoon I would get to watch it. I kept away from the papers, radio and TV but yesterday the Twitter group gave it away so I had a clue as to how it would end. (Note to self: turn off Twitteriffic next time) But with all the darn commercials the program didn’t tape the last 7 minutes. Subesquent reading of the sports page then clues me in on how the Giants won. AARRRGGGHHH!!!!

Moral of these stories – trust your barber before you trust your PVR.

How do you sponsor a blogging event?

Once again the credit union is part of the group of sponsors for Northern Voice 2008, Vancouver’s best blogging conference. We got involved 4 years ago and every year it is a challenge. How do you present your message to a group of bloggers? These aren’t the beginners, they are what blogging is all about. Lots of attendees rank below the 50,000 Technorati level. An extremely intelligent and intriguing group of people.
This is what we end up doing -we commission a poster, craft a bunch of buttons, give away a couple of these posters (they get to be hot items) and give someone a free registration to the event. This year we are also giving away two hockey tickets (Canucks – Detroit game this Saturday night) at Thursday’s dinner. After that you just attend and enjoy.

Attending creates so many ideas that it leaves you drained after two days. The event always is about the people. Whoever shows up makes it what it has become, a blogging event that is about the person and the idea.

This year Basco5 asked for input as he was designing the poster. There were some great comments on Flickr and by the end of the 4th draft there was more than enough feedback to arrive at a finished product. Interesting that some of the ideas for design are coming from some attendees. See what social media leads to.

This year we understand Vancity is also a banner sponsor. This is great. The largest CU in Canada along with one of the smallest participating in a blogging conference. I remember telling some people in the CU system the first year we were a sponsor. They thought we were crazy. Yup that’s the credit union I work for — real crazy.

Odd thoughts

We were successful yesterday in moving our core banking system to Linux, changing our switch provider to Threshold and installing a new Diebold ATM at the branch. Months of planning and some extremely dedicated staff were the major contributors to a long but satisfying day. Everybody wants to take it easy for the next few days just to catch their breath.

I came across these 3 quotations this morning in an email. They ring true.

Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether its at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored.
— Earl Nightingale 1921-1989, Author & Speaker
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature nor do the children of man as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
— Helen Keller 1880-1968, Blind/Deaf Author & Lecturer
I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.
— Kurt Vonnegut, Author

How many CUs should be blogging or how many angels can dance on a head of a pin?

Morriss has written a blog “How many credit unions should be blogging” over at EverythingCU.com. Some very interesting ideas that I need to expand on.

Beyond the point of every credit union should be blogging is a crucial concept that constantly churns in my mind. Credit unions’ common cause is that of a co-operative financial institution serving the needs of its members. The blog as a means of communicating should augment this premise, again by serving member needs. But how does something as verbose as a blog truly represent the entity? There will be views and ideas proposed that are representative of the individual, blogging about the credit union. That could be staff, management, CEO, board member, or even a member themselves. The credit union’s blog is also it’s banner and that communication will have a human perspective, not necessarily the credit union’s perspective. And this is maybe why CUs are hesitant. Some understood the mantra that their message must be pure, sanitized, non-controversial, politically correct, easy to understand and always towing the marketable CU (company) line.

I don’t believe a blog is a tool in a marketing toolkit. It can’t be a blog if it has to follow the above mantra. It needs to be resilient, challenging, inclusive, fair, honest, thought provoking, communicative, informing and whatever other attribute that will evolve over the next years. It is fundamentally the conversation that those 10 charter members had around that kitchen table that started the credit union. Those people got together out of a need, not out of a marketing direction.

The readers of credit union blogs need to understand the nature of blogs, that they aren’t marketing instruments (they may be tainted with marketing though). That they are open dialogues. They are a member notice board. They are Luther’s Wittenburg door. They are the radio call in show. They are the emotion, passion and human attribute of the credit union in a textual form. Again I would use the phrase – they are like nailing jello to a tree, sometimes very tough to define.

What is so necessary is that blogs become what each credit union needs them to become, developed in the context of their own culture. That diversity is something that should not be feared but embraced because that is what this system is all about. And here is where I will disagree with a number of my blogging peers. It cannot be solely or utterly defined in the realm of marketing because that isn’t what it is. Members will eventually see it as that. Do we really want our blogs to be the cloaked hype machines that so many businesses have made their blogs become? We are co-operatives. Realizing that just makes us different. And blogging should fit so easily with credit unions because diversity is and always is the domain we live in. If don’t realize our difference then we have a bigger problem that goes beyond blogging.

What’s in a name

Last week we began earnestly testing the new SMS product though our MemberDirect Integrated (MDI) channel. MDI is the Internet banking product developed by BC Central Credit Union which is used by a majority of BC credit unions. The product has usage by other credit unions across Canada. The SMS product is being championed by 3 credit unions, Mt. Lehman included and will be rolled out to the system (one by one) within the next few months. We are fortunate to be in this first group.

So now we need to name the product. It seems, at this point, there won’t be a system wide name like MemberCard. That is unfortunate but really a byproduct of our current credit union co-operative system. We will co-operate as long as there is no dilution to our own “brands”. For a credit union our size does it really matter?

Anyway back to our naming-the-product. I invited input from all 10 staff members and we came up with some pretty good names. We all understood the product (don’t forget we have had a SMS alert system for transactions called MemberNote for close to 3 years now) so the discussions really involved exactly what the product did and that is was a new and separate product that was different from MemberNote. We didn’t want to confuse the two as they served two distinct purposes. Discussions like these, at this level, are a neat attribute of this credit union. Everyone gets involved, everyone has input. But we got stuck. And the difference was generational. The younger staff aligned under one name, the older under another. Both had remarkable points as to why one was better than the other. What to do?

Over the last months there is a group, well it really isn’t a group it is an undefined bunch of people associated with credit unions that actively twitter. Why not throw this one out to the pack of experts and see what comes up? There were some great suggestions but one stood out (thank you Ron ! ) Textus. This was proposed to the group and was quickly accepted. We now have a new name for a new product.

When I look at this process it is so simple. I imagine we “should” have hired the experts, done the focus groups, etc. etc. etc. Would they have understood the product enough to come up with any better names? It just seems so fitting that the name came through Twitter. An tech name for a tech product from a tech bunch of people.

Time just seems to move on

Yesterday we were informed of the passing away of a dear person we knew and loved. Laurie was the wife of Marjun’s cousin and had suffered from cancer for over 2 years. She was a Canadian who had lived in Denmark and understood what it meant to be part of that society. We had so many interesting discussions over the years about Denmark and its people from a Canadian perspective. She was always so kind to the boys and put herself out whenever we saw her. She was the kind of person you never forgot, someone you could automatically connect with no matter how long it had been since the last time you visited with her. She was such a strong person, sure of herself, who had such a wonderful way of stating her opinion, letting you know that you were wrong but never making you feel that way. She will be missed by so many people. We will not forget you Laurie.

It is so sad when people pass on. It always shocks me when that person is younger than me. It doesn’t seem right no matter what. And at the same time Laurie passed away another friend and his wife, who I have known since he was a youngster, had their second son. On that same day two households, one with joy the other with sorrow. How can you feel with those two absolutes? One just sits back as time moves on and you say to yourself, that is what today has brought you.

For the lack of a word does the idea get misunderstood?

It seems we are brushing against new realms, new ideas and the fallout, new ways to do things. And yet we use old words and concepts to try to make some meaning for ourselves in these new realms. Those involved in blogging and twittering are sometimes at a loss explaining this new realm because how do you explain something so new that never stops changing.

I recently used the word ‘geekoid’ to explain how a program automatically setup a recorded TV show’s mpeg for streaming with a new http address. ‘Geek’ because it is using technology at the edge in a unique fashion and ‘oid’ because it sounds cool and as a suffix it means to form an adjective/noun with the sense of having the form or appearance of something related but not identical. It suggests that it is a cool use of technology but using TV technology that isn’t the same as we are used to. The program is Elgato’s EyeTV and its wi-fi access preference.

The word micro-blogging has appeared a few time recently to describe what twitter does. Users of twitter had just been calling it twittering, everybody who used this means to communicate easily understanding what it means. Micro-blogging seems to limit what it means.

One of the more interesting concepts is what credit unions do which is offering banking services. Who would understand them as offering credit unioning services? Our quest to make meaning of the new and redefining the old goes on. What seems to be taking shape with twittering is the quick sharing of concepts and ideas, off the cuff remarks that stick and begin to be used again and again until they find some small fashion of usage.

We as English users have a rich heritage of words to use, in fact probably more than most languages. But with 26 letters the capacity of understanding exactly what we say seems limited at times. I would suspect the challenge for bloggers/twitterers is to mold and message our communication not for the coolest of words but for the most understandable language. We shouldn’t be afraid to create something new or reuse words. We should not be persons of indolence.

Are we relevant or just expansionists?

Tim has brought up an interesting point about two ways to grow:

1. Become more relevant to your original field of membership

2. Expand the credit union’s field of membership

One of the most important criteria in this decision is what resources your have and how can you deploy them. And this is a major stumbling block when we talk about provincial or national campaigns. If you are large you have ample resources to expand your field of membership. Global awareness campaigns would fit this. But smaller CUs don’t have the luxury of a large budgets or ample HR. Maybe point #1 is the only consideration you can accomplish. That type of focus, that constant attempt to be relevant doesn’t always fit with a larger co-operative campaign. In fact it might make your message seem confusing.

For all the broad brushed attempts at expanding membership, being relevant is the hardest. Products and services are key, the delivery of these is vital. How do you take that cold, technical, database driven function and wrap it around something human, understandable, and friendly to make it relevant? I don’t think there is any single answer. Experience can define what works for your CU. Books and bloggers help.

One way to ‘monitor’ relevance is to very carefully watch the reasons people are opening and members are closing their accounts. I review these functions daily with the biggest question being Why? Why did they open or why did they close their accounts? Most reasons should be out of your control i.e. married and moving out of the area but if they aren’t these become the ‘soft’ areas that you need to get back and work on. And sometimes it becomes something that you can’t help. It hurts but you still exist in a competitive market place and giving away the farm isn’t always in the cards.

Taking care of business is the ever expanding goal of being relevant to your members. I don’t know if you ever arrive or are completely satisfied by the results. What is important is that you don’t give up trying.