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If you are passionate about innovation in finance, we invite you to participate in BarCampBankSeattle.
When & Where
Dates: July 21st - 22nd, 2007
Location: 
MiKiJio Arts
Meals: Breakfast & Lunch will be provided on-site, along with beverages and snacks.
Costs: We invite sponsorship from interested organizations, and will ask for participants to contribute $35.
- People and organizations interested in in sponsoring this event should contact Jesse Robbins.
What is a BarCamp & BarCampBank?
BarCamps are part of an international network of “unconferences“. They are open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. Many focus on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols. The name is a playful allusion to its origins, with reference to the hacker slang term “Foo Bar“. The BarCamp movement arose as a spin-off from Foo Camp, an annual invitation-only unconference hosted by open source publishing leader, Tim O’Reilly.
BarCampBank events are organized internationally to foster innovation in banking, credit unions, and finance. BarCampBankSeattle will be sixth BarCampBank event and the first held in the United States.
For more information on this event, please go to the BarCampBankSeattle wiki page or email Jesse Robbins at jesse.robbins@openaid.org!
July 2nd, 2007
I’ve just finished four exciting days at the OECD World Forum in Turkey, and wanted to make sure I had posted before I got on the plane to return. (Also, there have been some intermittent problems with accessing the blog which appear to have been caused by our hosting provider.)
BarCamps are part of an international network of “unconferences“. They are open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. Many focus on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols. The name is a playful allusion to its origins, with reference to the hacker slang term “Foo Bar“. The BarCamp movement arose as a spin-off from Foo Camp, an annual invitation-only unconference hosted by open source publishing leader, Tim O’Reilly.
BarCampBank events are organized internationally to foster innovation in banking, credit unions, and finance. BarCampBankSeattle will be sixth BarCampBank event and the first held in the United States.
What to expect
In Open Space, a facilitator explains the process and then participants are invited to co-create the agenda and host their own discussion groups. Discussions are held in designated areas or separate rooms known as ‘breakout spaces’ and participants are free to move amongst the discussion groups. Each group records the conversations in a form which can be used to distribute or broadcast the proceedings of the meeting (in hard copy, blog, podcast, video, etc). Each morning participants have the opportunity to announce new discussion topics / late-breaking sessions. At the end of the day the full group reconvenes for comments and reflection. This helps participants to re-engage in the full group over the duration of the meeting.
While the mechanics of Open Space provide a simple means to self-organize, it is the underlying principles that make it effective. The Law of Two Feet expresses the core idea of taking responsibility for what you love. In practical terms, the law says that if you’re neither contributing nor getting value where you are, use your two feet (or available form of mobility) and go somewhere where you can. It is also a reminder to stand up for your passion. From the law, flow four simple principles:
- Whoever comes are the right people
- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
- Whenever it starts is the right time
- When it’s over, it’s over
What will happen
We never know exactly what will happen when we open the space for people to do their most important work, but we can guarantee these results when any group gets into Open Space:
- All of the issues that are MOST important to the participants will be raised.
- All of the issues raised will be addressed by those participants most qualified and capable of getting something done on each of them.
- All of the most important ideas, discussion, data, recommendations, conclusions, questions for further study, and plans for immediate action will be documented in one comprehensive report — finished, printed and in the hands of participants when they leave.
- The total contents of this report document can be focused and prioritized in a matter of a few hours.
- After the event, all of these results will be made publicly available, so the conversation can invite every stakeholder into discussion and implantation — right now.
When & Where
- Dates: July 21st - 22nd, 2007
- Location: Still being decided
- Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner on both days will be available, along with beverages and snacks.
- Costs: We invite sponsorship from interested organizations, and will ask for participants to contribute $35.
- People and organizations interested in in sponsoring this event should contact Jesse Robbins.
How to sign-up & get involved
- Add your name to the participant list on this page
- Write and Blog about this event, and forward it on to people you think would be interested.
Confused? Need Help or an explanation?
Please email Jesse Robbins or call +1.206.755.3739. I’m here to help you participate!
June 30th, 2007
We’ve started organizing BarCampBankSeattle, which will probably be the first US BarCampBank meeting. A sign-up form and more information will be posted to the wiki and discussed in the BarCampBank group.
A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants.
BarCampBank is a community organized around the following mission:
The aim of BarCampBank is to foster innovations and the creation of new business models in the world of banking and finance.
Here’s an article about “unconferences” like BarCamp in BusinessWeek: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_20/b4034080.htm
May 14th, 2007
Credit Unions have a mandate to “encourage thrift among their members”. As Denise Wymore pointed out on OSCU, the industry currently sucks at this.
So… If ‘Thrift’ means the quality of using money and other resources carefully and not wastefully, and to encourage is to inspire with courage, spirit, or hope…
Why does Thrift take Courage?
May 3rd, 2007
Marc Hedlund and the Wesabe team have begun to flex the muscles of community finance. By tagging abusive bank fees, Wesabians are exposing and beginning to change a reprehensible practice.
I’m hoping to see a “worst offenders” report sometime soon!
(from Marc’s original post)
When we first launched Wesabe last November, we were not surprised to see that our #1 top merchant at that point was Amazon, and #2 was Netflix. That matched well with the stereotype of “early adopters.” What was surprising, though, was the merchant #20 was Overdraft Fee. If you think overdraft fees just hit people who are “bad with money,” they don’t — they hit a huge percentage of the population, and as Wesabe has grown, we’ve seen that more and more. Currently, our users have been charged roughly $200,000.00 in overdraft charges in just the past few months — an average of one overdraft charge for each and every person tracking their money on Wesabe.
See the original thread, and Marc’s post about it.
Update: you should also read this analysis by of NetBanker!
April 30th, 2007
Allegra and I met yesterday with Joe Edelman of RipplePay which looks really cool. I really like the ability to create loans of time… “I owe you 1 hour of work”.
“Ripple is a monetary system based on trust that already exists between people in real-world social networks. By cutting out the institutional middlemen, Ripple is both more community-oriented and more efficient as a means of exchange.
National monetary systems rely on trust in large financial institutions. A bank account balance, stored as electronic bits in a computer, represents a promise by the bank to pay the account holder. That promise is only meaningful if the bank is trustworthy. Banks, in turn, leverage those deposits to issue new money by making loans to trustworthy individuals as determined by an often labour-intensive screening process.
Ripple cuts the banks right out of the picture by allowing anyone to act as a bank and grant credit within the Ripple system to anyone they know. The system keeps track of the source of all IOUs, so that debts that are not repaid are automatically borne by the issuer.”
April 22nd, 2007
It’s been a while, and so I wanted to send out a quick update on what’s been happening with the project.
Recent updates:
- I spoke about the project at the IgnitionNW Town Hall Meeting on March 26th and made two important announcements:
- The first group in our Field of Membership will be IgnitionNW.
- I’m building a technology platform to create and operate Credit Unions like Black Rock Federal. (There will be more about this soon!)
- I also had an outstanding meeting with Carmen Mauk of Burners without Borders, who is taking BWB in some exciting directions.
-
Upcoming:
- I’m sending our revised Field-of-Membership to the NCUA on Friday.
On Saturday I’m flying to San Francisco to help Brady run the Ignite Event @ the Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco. (Justin.tv will be there and presenting, so you might be able to see it live… and from a speakers perspective!)- I might be speaking at the Web2.0 Expo as well (check my personal blog if you want to know more)
Next Update: Friday, April 20th
April 11th, 2007
I recently found the BarCampBank, which describes itself as a “community of people interested in disruptive innovations in the world of banking and finance”. It is part of the BarCamp movement, which wikipedia describes as:
“BarCamp is an international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols.”
I know we will be participating in this community, and I hope leaders such as OpenSourceCU, Trabian, the Filene Research Institute, and Wesabe will be doing so too.
March 11th, 2007
Trabian (the people behind OSCU) just announced that they are releasing their Credit Union focused Content Management System (CMS) as Open Source.
This is extraordinary news, and represents the first major step toward an open source Credit Union technology platform.
March 8th, 2007
Credit Unions seem to be really slow in adopting Open Source Software to reduce expenses & empower their members. To help address this, I’ve started putting together an “Open Source Technologies for Credit Unions: Best Practices” wiki. In the mean time, here’s something that Credit Unions should be using *NOW*:
AsteriskNOW™ is a Software Appliance; a customized Linux distribution that includes Asterisk®, the Asterisk GUI, and all other software needed for an Asterisk® system. The most popular open source IP PBX software, Asterisk®, can now be easily configured with a graphical interface. AsteriskNOW™ includes all the Linux components necessary to run, debug and build Asterisk®, and only those components, so installation is easy. You no longer have to worry about kernel versions and package dependencies. Unlike other Linux distributions used to deploy Asterisk, no unnecessary components that might compromise security or performance are included.
Asterisk® is a powerful open source telephone system for organizations. It’s been around for a while, is extremely stable and well supported, and is a great example of technology that empowers communities.
What other technologies should Credit Unions start adopting *now*?
February 23rd, 2007
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