TGIF

Another week has passed and the events continue.

Our youngest son returned to his home in Copenhagen last Saturday after a great one month visit. As well, a friend returned home to Powell River who had been boarding with us since January while going to school at UBC. It is always an adjustment in a home when the total inhabitants decrease by 50%. Our oldest son and daughter are here for a visit for the next 2 weeks and after that we are home alone again. At least I won’t have to watch or hear the PS3 with Grand Theft Auto blaring away. That is another story.

The iPhone is working out very well. The phone has been dropping calls once in a while out here in the Valley but in Burnaby-Vancouver there hasn’t been any problems. The ability to have one device deliver all of the applications you connect with is really unbelievable. All of us at work have now had iPhones for a month and the glitter still has not worn off. There is only one minor issue, the inability to have your SMS mesages use ringtones instead of the stock alarm sounds. The best and most used downloaded programs for me would be:

• Evernote - Great synching with your Mac desktop.

• Comic Touch - Just add some humour because who doesn’t need it.

• Exposure - decent Flickr app.

• Jott - very usable app with the notes feature.

• BoxOffice - never have to look for a newspaper to see what movies are playing.

• Stanza - the best book reader. Great classics for free.

• Shazam - I finally know the names of some songs after hearing them for years.

• Facebook - a very decent interface.

And the two best!

• Twitteriffic - much better than any other Twitter client.

• OmniFocus - the absolute best program for to dos, projects, etc. Done in the GTD style with synching to your desktop.

As it turns out there are 10. There are a few more that are useful at times and of course the web sites that have a great iPhone interface.

I have started planning for the two presentations I am doing next month. It is always amazing when you start thinking about what you will say, how you will present it, thinking that there ins’t enough material. Then you get started and you have to hack it back because there is too much material. You could probably spend an infinite amount of time always tweaking the end result. One talk will be at Forum Solutions Partnership Symposium in Indiana. The other is at the CUCC 2008 National Lending Conference in St. John’s Newfoundland. After looking at all the other speakers I feel like a lightweight in a heavyweight division.

I have just started a book by Susan Jacoby “The Age of American Unreason”. In it she analyses of the intellectual condition of the US. She does not pull any punches. It has some great writing with inventive and sharp cynical humour. Rationalism at its best.

Have a great weekend everyone! The dog days of summer are upon us.

It just makes one wonder

This is the stuff that drive me nuts.

Credit Union Central of B.C. merged with Ontario Central to form Central 1. Here is something from their homepage:

When the merger took effect on July 1, 2008, the combined organization had more than $7.5 billion in assets, with 475 employees based at offices in Vancouver and Mississauga serving nearly 200 credit unions with some 2.8 million members

Good stuff. But when I click on the following

I get this message:

eCentral:
Our server has detected that you are not using the MS Internet Explorer browser.
Unfortunately, this service is not available for your type of browser. Please use Internet Explorer (version 5 or newer) to access this service.
Explorer can be downloaded for free at: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.asp. Sorry for any inconvenience.

That means Safari, Camino and Firefox don’t work. If you have a Mac good luck.

You would think an organization this size would create web pages that wouldn’t have to have Microsoft as the only company that could produce a browser to use the site. Yep $7.5 billion in assets with all those employees (who never use Macs) serving 200 CUs with some 2.8 million members (who never use Macs). I thought those days were over. The ones where you had to get Microsoft tattooed somewhere to get a job. There must be a good reason, right?

Small is beautiful to some

Ron has a blog post about the downside of being small. Great post with some definite statements about how small is not the panacea for everyone.

First, small and large are relative terms. They are labels we place upon items in order for us to gain some semblance of order. What is small to some will be large to others and the opposite, what is large for some is small for others. Remember the end of the film Men in Black II?

There is another aspect of an organization’s size that is of a prime concern. How it is managed. You can have any size FI and if it is managed well size, though a consideration, is part and parcel of many other goals and strategies. A badly managed organization doesn’t need size to fail.

Small to me means keeping the organization flat, tight, and productive. It means being able to move on a dime. It means ‘fighting’ with 3rd party suppliers that create expensive products that would force you into a strategy or product that is not even a 50% solution. It means quit ‘whining’ and do what you are supposed to do. Small means have staff meetings where the contribution is from everyone so you formulate objectives that are understood and agreed upon so you don’t need a marketing department to push anything. Small means you don’t have to structure meetings to decide on the colour of the toilet paper in the washrooms. The list could go on and on. It is important that the term small does not get translated in the terms most employ. Small by its nature in today’s society looked upon as an anomaly because so much that we are shown (big) is the antithesis of small. That is why I think ’small is beautiful’.

Ron and Jeffery are right. You need more coming in that going out. A very simple rule of business. But not all mergers have delivered that ideal and so merging sometimes clouds the issue of what is really necessary - changing the management to at least begin to move forward. Sometimes I have seen mergers to build larger empires of senior management. FIs live and they die, nothing continues forever. Try as you might there may be conditions and reasons that are no longer available or valid to continue.

It would be very easy for the Board to say “we need 10% growth and nothing else matters!” Piece of cake. But when they say “we want at least 5% growth, keep the community happy with at least a 7% dividend, make sure donations are 7% of net income, be sure to continue to contribute to the social capital of the CU and the community, and deliver innovative products that are useful, as well as no line-ups in the branch, etc…well that gets a bit more difficult to manage. Keep the bottom line healthy and you can realize all and more of these goals. That is the tough part. Fine tuning all the aspects of what makes you successful. Growing in all of these aspects makes for a difficult and at times impossible situation. But man is it ever rewarding and satisfying when everyone contributes to making it happen. The biggest enemy of being small? Thinking small.

Innovation and where it comes from

People ask me how we handle development work at the credit union. There is no simple answer or formula that one can recite as to how ideas flourish into a product, a process or a service. You wonder if they sometimes appear out of thin air.

Today was a prime example. Our e-statement project is finished, done, complete. Next Wednesday the interface will be in place for actual use by the members. All the components were developed in house except for the web site interface which was done by Central 1’s MemberDirect people. What does it do? It puts a link on the web site to a monthly PDF which is an exact duplicate of what the members have been receiving in the mail in paper form. For all the benefits it saves money and paper. But then as we talked about it, something happened.

Why not have a link for an up to date, real time PDF statement? If it is the 10th or 20th or whatever date in the current month, why not just click and a PDF created on the fly and delivered. Your transaction of 1 minute ago would be included. That means besides the depository of a few years of statements on your account, you could get a real time version statement anytime. As all of the methods and code were built, it looks like it would only take a half a day to do that. That means before Wednesday of next week this added feature will part of the launch.

But where did that idea come from? From a simple suggestion that with our ability to trigger real time transactions we could move that forward to being part of triggering real time statements. Was it valuable? I spoke to a few people and yes it was valuable. In fact it would make some businesses very happy in reconciling their accounts on a daily basis. The beauty of the whole function is that we aren’t using an outside supplier to do this on a month-end batch basis. What has been built is real time in-house the ultimate IT mantra. Expanding what we can do in real time gives us the idea for another product. If statement processing had been done by a 3rd party we would have been stuck in thinking in a ‘batch’ mode and never contemplated doing it differently.

I believe that innovation comes from dynamic thinking. Thinking how something can be done now and not later is important in what you have to offer. In today’s instant age much is possible by keeping everything fluid. It is important that you work in the environment you want to live in. There is always another step. If I ever have to get into a lifeboat I want a life preserver now, not pink plastic water wings later.

Batteries, hamsters and daisies

This morning my MacBook Pro started to freeze up. There was no response to the keypad or trackpad no matter what. I tried booting about 6 times all with the same problem. Dug out the CD and rebooted but again it didn’t work. Holding the ‘C’ key down wasn’t being seen by the Mac so it started to boot from the hard drive again. The only solution left was to take the battery out and let the machine ‘die’ from a complete lack of power. After putting the battery back Voila! everything is back to normal. It wasn’t that scary as I did have a current backup I could get to.

I wonder if sometimes life could be like that. Brent’s post today talked about him feeling like a hamster. I don’t know about you but his words rung pretty true. You tend to just get stuck with all the noise around you. Then you realize most of this crap is not life threatening, it is just noise. I just wish I could remove the battery and get a quick restart but that isn’t going to happen. You need to take care of what needs to be taken care of, just slow down and become human again instead of machine like. We need to remove ourselves of the A + B algorithm that becomes our existence and get outside and pick a few daisies. So if you get to do that today make sure you are barefoot and don’t step on the worms!

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.

Lunch with the Currency people

I promised this 2 days ago. Here is a quick look at the internal workings of Currency with the mastermind Tim and mastermindette Nala. If you ever go for lunch out there this is where you need to go.

Why we do the things we do

Every single day we take a lot of things for granted. What we have eaten, our homes, our vehicles, what we do for a living, everything that makes up our ordinary lives. We just consider most of what we have as similar to everyone else. Just your typical ordinary person living a pretty unexciting life.

We continue in this realm with our family, friends, acquaintances and people we work with. We take the good days with the bad days and have a basic enjoyment of existence. Then we sometimes doubt what we are doing and think we need some authenticity in our existence. We look at life from our own viewpoint and neglect to consider that everyone around us has a unique and different viewpoint, not exactly our own. Life goes on.

I have always had a strong religious belief and don’t attempt to proselytize anyone. A key condition of each person is their free will and no one should be above trying to diminish that aspect of anyone’s life. That is theirs and theirs alone. We establish our own ‘moral compass’ from what we believe, how we think and sometimes how we were brought up. It has been important for me to pay attention to this though most of the time it becomes the most neglected. You tend to be viewed by what you do, not what you think or believe.

The recent Gonzo banker award has brought out some very kind remarks by people who I have the highest regard for. When your peers make the most positive statements about you, well you just are a little overwhelmed. It is something we don’t hear very often and I for one am guilty of not telling others what a positive influence they have been in my life. Sure we have our ups and downs and we all get those bad hair days. That’s life. We really need to seek to understand and voice those unique qualities we see in others. We really need to make sure that we tell that to them. It’s a quality of human existence that makes life really worth living. My deepest appreciation to all of you.

Never thought I was a Gonzo Banker

I was approached by the people at Cornerstone about writing a piece about me and the credit union. If you have done this a few times it tends to be much of the same. Who, what, why, where, when and how. Pretty standard stuff. But the people behind Gonzo Banker were different and when the article was published it was a pleasant surprise. They are good. The best part is that the Credit Union Foundation of B.C. gets $250 in U.S. dollars.

What happens when humans are like bees.

It is July, the time of vacations, with the weather finally something other than wet. You seem to wait most of the year for this kind of weather and when it arrives it is nice.

The staff got the rest of their iPhones today so everyone was setting things up, getting a bit lost in menus and experiencing what all the hype of the past week is actually about. It comes with some limitations that’s for sure but overall it is a tribute to Apple and their ingenuity.

First and foremost it is a phone, SMS communicator, email device, calendar, address book….well you get the picture. What it does well is that it is an extension of the Mac OS in what you can do and it works together with what you have on the desktop. I think of it as a mobile extension of a pretty good OS. And then there are the things that seem like science fiction coming true like the map function that shows you as that pulsating dot moving across a map. Why would you need step by step directions when you just follow the purple line as a pulsating dot? With a hybrid map choice it is so simple and almost unreal. We are just starting to learn what it can do and are pretty sure that a few unanswered questions can be solved with what this device offers.

Yesterday Tim (Currency) and William (Vancity) and I got together downtown for lunch and to go over what is needed for BarCampBankBC. Those two are right on top of it and we are well on our way to putting up the framework to make this a memorable event. At one point I had the iPhone out to update the Twitter bunch. After a picture and some text I quickly looked at the SMS messages and email. While I was doing this Tim and William were discussing something and I realized that I had actually left the group for a few minutes by what I was doing. This morning after thinking about what I had done I thought it needed a name so I called that type of action ‘hiving’. It is made up of hive with the -ing. I thought of a bee hive and how busy they always seem to be doing something and yet they are in close proximity. When you have that iPhone or BlackBerry in the midst of people and are doing something with it you are busy, doing what is anyones guess. It seems we do need a verb for what is being done as it is becoming very commonplace. To hive - to be busy or have the appearance of being busy, always within the midst of people, with a small computer-like device.

The iPhone and some new notions

As we spoke at BarCampBankDallas it became apparent that this new device will offer some solutions to problems we have had in the past. But maybe there is a bigger problem with us.

We have always been thinking of developing applications with the view that someone will be sitting at a laptop or desktop machine. That it is either stationary or mobile for use and that wifi or Ethernet connections may or may not be available. That is the physical environment of the user. But what happens with the iPhone?

Suddenly that environment is passé. Now the device has greater capacities and is in the pocket of the individual. Like a cell phone it will travel everywhere and will have that constant connection. It can be transmitting your geographic location and pushing you updates all the time.

We need to begin to think in more ‘real life’ situations. This may seem crazy but after being married for 36 years I like to know what my wife is doing and where she is. Before I head home from work I like to call her and tell her I am leaving. Sometimes I forget. In the near future this device will be able to tell her where I am. If I am stuck in traffic she should be able to see this. I don’t know how possible this was before but it will soon be a reality.

When thinking about financial services we can now view the possibility of geographic location of the person when they spend their money. If they use a debit card then the place of use can be paired up with the individual’s geographic location. Your alert mechanism for fraudulent use suddenly can take on some new dimensions.

And that seems to be the key, considering these new dimensions and being able to do development to deploy the application on the hardware. Software can become much more robust, much more specific and driven for much more usage. To put a function to use is going to be much easier. To use that function anywhere is going to make a major difference.

Sure there will be the glitzy ideas and software because this is so new and thought of as cool. But creating functional applications given the new parameters, that really could change the way some financial services and products are used and delivered. Fasten your seat belts.

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.

Innovation is risky but healthy

Doug has presented an excellent post about CUs and innovation. But as I commented there is another side.

First I am not saying that all 3rd level CU organizations or 3rd party suppliers fit this pattern. There are a number of organizations and people within these organizations that get it. But in large part most fit the same pattern — keep it comfortable and maintain the status quo.

That pattern and the underlying mantra of most credit unions that their brand is sacrosanct creates the problem for innovation. Please don’t ask me for the answer on this one as I don’t have it. It is almost like the system governs the outcome and there is no reasonable explanation as to why it continues. Why can’t we work together to a greater degree? Because we have a brand to maintain and maybe some collaborative effort will diminish it. Our competitive edge will erode if it was know our CU competitors were involved. Or when we are at the table trying to collaborate we can’t agree because the brands get in the way. Maybe it would be just too difficult to have to re-build something by having to admit previous failures that were never fixed. Common sense doesn’t event get a chance to exist.

When you have a culture of innovation in your credit union it is risky. There are daily challenges as to why you continue to do things as before. In having this view you constantly challenge not only your CU but everyone else. There is acceptance in that you do have a proper product or service in place but that it could always you a bit of tweaking when you have the time and resources to do it. There is always this impatience and not being completely satsified. There is always the frustration of trying to arrive at the right solutions for your members. There is the fear of failure. There is the consequence of having spent so much time on something to see it not working as you thought. But all of this leads to the healthy.

You don’t do anything for the recognition but you do it to serve the members better and to make the staff’s daily routine easier and less mundane. You do it from an open source attitude. If another CU can use what you have and make it better isn’t that something better for all of us? You learn from the mistakes because you are willing to take the risk to make mistakes. You always move forward from a position of the positive. The health of your CU is certainly measured by it’s financial performance. There are also some subjective measures such as what have you produced for the members that they can use and value? Cloning a free checking or youth account doesn’t count. Challenging the status quo both inside and outside the CU is the starting point. Asking a simple 3 letter question is maybe the best way to start. “Why?”

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.

The joys of technology

At work we have been using a program (Mac) called SnapMail for a number of years. It worked very well as the program allowed us to send messages, files and notify people immediately about anything. You could be typing an email and up comes a small screen telling you your wife is on the line or the Revenue Canada agent has been waiting to see you for 30 minutes. But in the last little while it hasn’t been working very well. It doesn’t seem to work with Leopard and Intel machines on Tiger have problems. We needed something different.

We seem to have gravitated to Skype. It really is a pretty good program to communicate with in a small office setting. In fact it has a lot of potential because it incorporates just about every method to communicate with someone — text, video, or phone.

Now what if we can have the same conversation with our members? There will be some who use Skype and probably would prefer it. The possibilities of better and different dialogues are pretty far reaching. It would definitely be a new conversation method. And what about Board members who need to know and discuss information on a periodic basis? This could be a very genuine means to hear and be heard within various groups of a credit union.

WDC - San Francisco. Two staff members head out Sunday for the Apple WDC next week. The agenda is full of opportunities to learn about the inner workings of the iPhone which we have come to see as a means to have some real effect on retail banking. When you realize that this piece of hardware (or something similar) will give the member a truly portable banking facility it is something we need to learn and prepare for. The possibilities to retrieve relevant financial information at any time, anywhere, begins to expand the definition of mobile banking. And Rogers will soon be selling iPhones here in Canada. There should also be more information about the Mac OS server product which is turning out to be a very stable and robust system. Most of what we have built that surrounds the core banking system is Mac based so San Francisco is going to be more than just “wearing flowers in your hair”.

Updated the OS, spoke out of the time zone and picked up a library book

I saw where Apple updated their OSX to 10.5.3. Usually I would wait and let others suffer the challenges but there have been some minor irritations for me with loading a series of tabs in Safari. For the past month if there were 20 or so loading the last 10 would fail to load. It wasn’t working properly at work. Then at home it would be ok with everything loading. We checked everything and nothing. With this update everything works fine. The pages load quickly and all the tabs loading.

This morning I had a great discussion with Morriss Partee of Everything CU. We discussed the upcoming BarCampBankDallas and BarCampBankBC which we will both be attending. The great thing is that we can continue these discussions shortly, face to face. He is one interesting person who has a great deal of passion for credit unions.

Was able to snap up “The Mind of the Market” by Michael Shermer. The inside cover states that the author uncovers the hidden psychology and biology that shape the way we think about money. That sounded interesting. Further down the page it said “Drawing on the new field of neuroeconomics…investigates what brain scans reveal about decision-making processes such as bargaining, snap purchases and establishing trust in business”. This looks interesting. I just hope the writer doesn’t wander off into the Land Contrived Assumptions.

And tomorrow is Friday!

Transitions

There seems to be so many different points in one’s life that move you in one direction or another. You reflect on your recent and distant past and wonder how things might have been different had you chosen a different path.

And then there are times of transition. Those seem to be the areas where you know there are changes happening around you with more to come but you aren’t sure of what the ending will be. It’s like you are in the middle of the book but only at the 2nd chapter. You can be in the middle of a few transitions at once or be at a point where nothing seems to be moving at all in your life.

I think the most important thing to realize is that what is happening does have some purpose. We tend to be much more comfortable when we can at least see some land in the distance. Most transitions are not life threatening. They tend to be a defining moment well remembered. And they do lead us to change something, move something forward, leave some baggage behind. It becomes a new start in ways and fashions that we hadn’t expected.

When you think about it there is always something changing and moving in so many circles of your life. Physically, mentally, socially, spiritually, work-wise or whatever. We need to realize that this is life’s journey. I’m thankful that I still have the capacity to see and perceive these changing forms because that is what life is all about. We capture growth in such economic terms and neglect to distinguish the growth in our own human lives. Reflection on life’s transitions — something important, something that keeps me human.

Victoria Day Weekend

This has been somewhat of a strange weekend. On Thursday I was feeling pretty bad so left work early. Friday I was sick but unusually so was Marjun. For the past 3 days we have been at home not going anywhere or seeing anyone. That has never happened before. Very different and not like us. My wife is an extravert beyond comprehension so it is really tough for her.

Besides reading ‘The Wind-up Bird Chronicle’ by Haruki Murakami and delving into the finer points of the Nikon, convalescing is extremely boring. You have limited energy don’t do much of anything. Sitting outside has been nice except when having to listen to the neighbour next door tell the world through his cell phone every business deal he has conceived is brilliant. This megaphone neighbour has this dog who has an extreme dislike of me. I like dogs having had everything from Bulldogs to Daschounds but with this pooch there are no warm and fuzzy feelings. In fact all the neighbours don’t like this dog. It is like a spoiled child that does no wrong even though there is more evidence on everyone’s lawn than we care to clean up. But Mr. Businessman thinks nothing wrong. This is a continuing narrative.

The time of BBQs has begun in earnest. You can hear the clank of empty propane bottles being taken to vehicles. The wire brushes are scraping in earnest. Depending on which way the wind is blowing it is either hamburger, ribs or steaks. I think we are having Maui ribs tonight.

And what will Victoria Day have in store for us? Here’s hoping some movement farther than the front door.

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.

P2P lending

It seems this “new method” of lending is beginning to re-appear on the Canadian market. CommunityLend has a web site with information about itself and what it does. There are some very valid points for peer to peer lending but there seems to be things that need to be discussed, outlined and disclosed.

Will this industry be regulated? In other words with a solicitation to the general public, through a business model that derives profit, is it to be viewed as a “bank”? Lending, for those that have not had much experience, is not just a science but also an art. There are a myriad of variables that one has to view and digest before funding a loan. My fear is that people are getting involved to save money i.e. cheaper interest rate for the lender and higher interest rate for the depositor, without assessing all of the risks involved. Lending institutions are obligated to follow some due diligence in lending due to responsibility to shareholders, owners, members, directors and regulators. If all goes well and there are no defaults everyone is happy. But one needs to plan and assess what will take place when things don’t go well.

CommunityLend is doing this for free. Maybe I have overlooked this on their site but could someone tell me if they are taking any fees or basis points for setting up these P2P loans. I see they have raised $2.5 million in capital so there are some costs to cover here.

The management, directors and advisors are a pretty knowledgeable group of individuals. Are they seeing CommunityLend as a good business that they can invest in? Being solely cynical, if they know the business they know what they can make in profit setup as the conduit for this type of industry. As a middleman they assume no risk and just piece the deal together. I would hope they would divulge their interest without the platitudes about social aspects of P2P lending. You are in it for the money, right? Wouldn’t a proper disclosure be in order similar to mortgage brokering?

Don’t get me wrong, I am for P2P as long as the playing field for all participants in a public call for funds is equal. Banks and larger financial institutions seem to think they are too big to finance smaller lending so there is a vacuum here that needs to be filled. Putting a term loan into a revolving credit card with an exorbitant interest rate does no one except the lender any ‘good’. I worry about people loosing money by not knowing what they are getting into.