10/13/2008

The Finance 2.0 Summit in New York City: if you're nice to me, I can get you a discount!

By Tim McAlpine

My next speaking date is day one of The Finance 2.0 Summit. It is a new conference being held in New York City at the swanky Harvard Club on January 26 and 27, 2009. It is 100% dedicated to educating financial industry professionals about social media. Here are some of the key learnings attendees will get out of it:

• How to measure marketing success in the world of Finance 2.0
• Social media's impact on consumers' financial decisions
• How to optimize the revenue-earning potential of your eMarketing division
• Leverage the channel partner model online and offline to extend your product footprint
• How to maximize the benefits of blogging and other new mediums
• Successfully integrating social media campaigns into traditional marketing strategies

I will be presenting Young & Free Alberta: Integrating Marketing and Social Media to Connect with Consumers.

As a speaker, I am able to offer my blog readers a discount. Ten of you can get a 15% discount off the regular registration fee.

If you want a discount, contact me at tmcalpine@currencymarketing.ca and I will send you the discount code.

It should be a great conference, with many talented, entertaining and smart speakers, including:

• Trey Reeme – Are You a Spider or a Fly? Defining Your Relationship with the Web
• Ron Shevlin – Why Are We Talking About Finance 2.0 When We Haven't Figured Out Finance 1.0?
• Ed Terpening – Crashing the Party: Are Financial Institutions Welcomed on the Social Media Scene?
• Shari Storm - Best Practices in Blogging: How to Maximize the Benefits of This New Medium
• William Azaroff – Using Social Media to Connect with Your Community
• Morriss Partee – Perfecting Your Palette: Recipes for a Successful Social Marketing Campaign
• Jeffry Pilcher – Results 2.0: Using Web 2.0 Tools to Achieve Real Business Objectives

I hope to see you there.

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09/18/2008

We helped Vancity change everything about ChangeEverything.ca

By Tim McAlpine

I am thrilled to be able to talk about the redesign and relaunch of Vancity's hugely successful social network, ChangeEverything.ca! The new verson launched today. Currency was hired to redesign the user interface and was part of a fantastic team including Affinity Bridge for Drupal development and Ballistic Arts for video production.

Kate and William from Vancity are passionate about Vancity's online community and brought plenty of insight to the project. The key challenges were to increase usability, clarify navigation and, most importantly, to reveal the wonderful dialogue and participation going on within this vibrant online community.

The community member videos are terrific and immediately tell visitors why ChangeEverything.ca exists and why people should care and get involved.

This was a dream project to work on and we are honoured to be part of such a great team.

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09/09/2008

We helped Vancity launch a new Microfinance Wiki.

By Tim McAlpine

I have had a few phone calls from William Azaroff at Vancity lately and these conversations typically start like this, "Hey Tim, have you guys ever designed a [insert a something we haven't done before]."

And my typical response has been, "No, but I think we can figure it out!" The latest is a wiki project for microfinance.ca.

What is cool about this new website is the position that Vancity has taken. Rather than trying to own Microfinance in Canada, Vancity has decided to act as a facilitator to grow the sector. Not for selfish reasons, but because its the right thing to do. The wiki platform will enable the entire sector to contribute and to use social technologies to move the social economy forward.

"Building on that first version of microfinance.ca, we wanted to do more: we wanted to help practitioners of, and thinkers about, microfinance in Canada to come together in an ongoing conversation about how microfinance can help alleviate poverty in Canada."

This is yet another innovative project backed by Vancity and we are super proud to be involved.

William has blogged about the launch as well. What's great about working for William is that he totally understands the social media space and is 100% open to using whatever technology is going to get the job done. This is refreshing (and slightly scary). Sometimes we get so locked into a single technology platform that we forget to come up for air and see what else is out there.

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06/22/2008

Must-read book: Groundswell.

By Tim McAlpine

About a month ago, a friend of mine recommended that I read a new book called Groundswell. Since the last month has been a bit of a whirlwind, I never got around to ordering it.

It dawned on me Friday night that I should buy the audiobook version from Audible to put on my iPod for something to listen to on my six-hour flight on Saturday from Vancouver to New York. I am presenting a session on Monday at the Forrester's 2008 Financial Services Forum For Marketing and Strategy Professionals on the topic of Designing a Social Computing Strategy to Attract Gen Yers.

The Twilight Zone part of this story is that I had no idea that Groundswell is a book written by two senior Forrester analysts, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, and that Josh is also scheduled to present at the Financial Forum on Monday!

Groundswell is just the book that I have been waiting for. It categorically proves the business case for social media and for implementing Web 2.0 strategies into the markting mix. Josh and Charlene provide dozens of real-world examples with hard ROI calculations backed by extensive research and analysis. The findings in this book make it impossible to refute the power of the social web. They have put real meat into this feeling that thing are a changing. And, as Groundswell was just released in May 2008, the information and examples are extremely current and comprehensive.

I have been speaking at a number of conferences lately about social media and the general sense from many folks is that it is a passing fad. To this notion, I quote the book, "The Groundswell trend is not a flash in the pan. This is an important, completely irreversible way for people to relate to companies and to each other. Why is it happening now? The Groundswell comes from the collision of three forces: people, technology and economics."

This is the perfect book to buy and read yourself no matter what your level of social media understanding is. I consider myself pretty tuned into all of this stuff, but I learned a tremendous amount and found my mind racing with new ideas that I want to help credit unions implement.

Who should read Groundswell at your credit union?

• Leaders within your organization who don't know anything about social media
   
• Those who have a general understanding but are still on the fence about getting involved
   
• Anyone involved in marketing, communications and technology
   
• Those charged with implementing a social marketing strategy
   
• Number crunchers who question the ROI of engaging in social media
   
• Folks that are already involved in social media but want to take their efforts to the next level

Although the audiobook was easy to listen to, I would recommend buying the actual book as there are so many great, actionable tips and checklists that you will want to highlight. I've already ordered my hardcopy.

Also, check out the Groundswell website complete with a blog, author profiles, videos and a discussion board.

P.S. Wish me luck tomorrow. With 450 attendees, this is the biggest event that I have ever spoken at.

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02/05/2008

This P2P song sounds so familiar.

By Tim McAlpine

My credit union and banking RSS feeds are full of peer-to-peer lending articles. It is early days and everyone is sussing out where P2P lending fits into the financial services landscape. If this topic is new to you, here's a Wikipedia definition:

Person-to-person lending or peer-to-peer lending is lending done between individuals circumventing the bank's traditional role in this process. Community lending had the advantage that people's interpersonal relationships fostered increased fiscal responsibility. The risk was that without the benefit of diversification, when something went awry the entire community could suffer. Lending through banks has benefited from scale and diversity. By pooling the available money supply and lending it out again, the impact of any one default would be trivial in light of the timely payment of the vast majority of the notes. The downside to this model is that it has introduced greater transaction overhead and removed community loyalty from the equation. New ventures are seeking to blend traditional practices with new scale economies via online marketplaces. The marketplace serves many functions. Most notably it facilitates bringing borrowers and lenders together. Furthermore, it simplifies what might otherwise be a cumbersome process to properly document and service the resulting loans. It is hoped not only that these new markets will be more efficient by removing the bank as middleman, but that factors leading to default can be mitigated by reintroducing a social component to the mix.

 

I have been following a number of P2P discussions with great interest. Between the arrival of Zopa in six US credit unions, the growing number of P2P players entering the North American lending space and the disingenous marketing tactics of some of these players, there is a forboding feeling that P2P lending is not a flash in the pan.

How does P2P lending affect your credit union? I believe it will have a huge impact in the not-too-distant future. You need to understand it and develop strategies to embrace it. It should not be ignored.

This feels like déjà vu. The emergence of P2P lending is eerily reminiscent of the early peer-to-peer music sharing days. Out of nowhere, a very young Shawn Fanning introduced Napster and the recording industry was changed forever.

Replace the young Shawn Fanning with the older, wiser and richer, Richard Branson, replace music with money and replace illegal with above board and you get the picture of the potential impact that P2P lending will have in the financial services world.

The music industry's answer was to use the law to take down Napster, use digital rights management to throttle the inevitable tidal wave of file sharing and litigate against the common man in hopes of striking fear into the general public.

This took the music industry's eye off the ball as legitimate players like Apple's iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic and Amazon swept in to fill the void. The ultimate victor in this bloodbath is the consumer with ease of use and instantly available legitimate access to music. Mega record stores are soon to be a thing of the past.

What can we learn from this parallel musical universe? Where will your credit union be after the P2P lending music gets cranked up to 10?

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10/22/2007

The dinosaurs didn't have broadband, what's your credit union's excuse?

By Tim McAlpine

Many of the credit union technocrats that follow the blog-o-sphere will find this post old news. However, many top-ranking credit union executives seem sadly unaware of the impending onslaught of Web 2.0 financial service offerings quickly making what credit unions offer seem almost prehistoric.

While credit unions are busy guarding their market-share and fiercely competing against other credit unions and banks, there is a new breed of financial service offerings out there that may well pass the credit union movement by.

From the online free Personal Financial Management (PFMs) services like Wesabe, Mint and Jwaala to alternative lending services like Prosper, Zopa, Lending Club and Bill Me Later, these start-ups are for real and heavily funded by venture capital. Unlike their dot-com predecessors that dot-bombed, these new ventures have timing on their side. The Internet has matured to a place where broadband is the norm and the general public is comfortable doing business online.

And, with legitimate, innovative (and free) services that make sense and actually work, this new crop of financial services represent a huge threat to credit unions or a huge opportunity. The choice is yours. Here are 12 just to get your feet wet.

They have great names and branding, great websites and many of these services are using the social web to build like-minded communities that out-community most credit unions. So what is a credit union to do? 

1. First of all, be aware of what is happening in the world beyond your branch doors and your city limits. The best thing you can do is get educated on the myriad of new services popping up monthly. Here are three blogs to follow. All three follow this space very closely.
   • Netbanker
   • Bank Watch
   • Open Source CU
      
2. Stop trying to control your members online activities—they have Google and they are smarter than you give them credit for! The first reaction of your peers is to try to shield members from third-party services. The winners will be those credit unions that figure out how to work with these companies to provide the best value for their members. Make the calls and see how you can partner.
    
3. Think like a start-up. It's time to shed the best practices mentality and stop living in the past. Pull up your socks and start innovating and aligning your credit union with innovators.
    
4. Don't think this is just the realm of the young person. Did you know the average age of YouTube's participating members is over 45 years old? Everyone is getting more and more comfortable with technology.

These are exciting times. At the recent Partnership Symposium at FORUM Solutions, Robbie Wright asked an interesting question in a session on lending trends by Doug True. Robbie asked, "These start-ups seem so able to innovate compared to credit unions. What's stopping our credit unions from coming up with these ideas?"

Doug's response said it all, "Absolutely nothing."

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