recent comments
shari storm on
April 28, 2007
wazaroff on
April 28, 2007 Robbie Wright on
April 27, 2007 Rob Cottingham on
April 28, 2007 Rick on
May 14, 2007 on
May 14, 2007 on
May 15, 2007 Mark on
May 15, 2007 wazaroff on
May 15, 2007 on
October 23, 2007 Robbie Wright on
April 24, 2007 wazaroff on
April 25, 2007 Michael Seaton on
April 18, 2007 wazaroff on
April 18, 2007 The New MBA on
April 18, 2007 wazaroff on
April 18, 2007 Dan Veasey on
April 13, 2007 wazaroff on
April 13, 2007 Rob Cottingham on
April 10, 2007 wazaroff on
April 10, 2007 Stephanie Willson on
April 09, 2007 wazaroff on
April 09, 2007 Colin on
April 05, 2007 Colin on
April 04, 2007 Trey Reeme on
April 05, 2007 wazaroff on
April 05, 2007 Trey Reeme on
April 05, 2007 wazaroff on
April 05, 2007
everythingcu on
December 16, 2007my upcoming conferences
:.see all
Hi, I'm William. I'm the Director, Online Banking & Engagement at Vancity, Canada's largest credit union.
My opinions and views are just that, and don't reflect the views of my employer (or, perhaps, anyone else).
my peers
:.BankerVision
:.Banking Kismet
:.Banktastic
:.The Bankwatch
:.Benry
:.The Boardcast
:.Buzz Canuck
:.The Client Side
:.CU Communicator
:.CU Employee
:.CU Hype
:.The CU Loop
:.Currency Marketing
:.Denise Wymore
:.Doug True
:.EverythingCU
:.The Financial Brand
:.Marketing ROI
:.NetBanker
:.Nexus Connection
:.Noise to Signal
:.Open Source CU
:.Social Signal
:.The Story
:.Tinfoiling
:.Trey Reeme
:.Verity's Our Voices
Kids furniture from cardboard
Make your own kids furniture out of cardboard at foldschool.Labels: design, environment, odd
posted on Sunday, April 29, 2007
A good widget: LibraryThing
I've been thinking lately that I'd like to show what books I'm currently reading on my blog. I did a little search and came up with LibraryThing.You can see it at work in my sidebar. I think it's terrific. Social networking around your library of books. Great idea and it seems to be very nicely done.
Nice to think of a widget I want and then find it, done to perfection...
Labels: blogging, design, librarything, web 2.0
posted on Sunday, April 29, 2007
Results from Net.Finance
Okay, brace yourself for a little auto-horn-tooting. I got the audience results from my presentation at Net.Finance today. I'm quite excited about this.Out of a highest possible rating of 5.0...
Content rating: 4.72
Presentation style rating: 4.61
Some of the comments were:
Excellent!
Great!
I'm so pleased with this, especially because I spent a lot of time on my presentation style, making sure my PowerPoint was active and my presentation had a kind of story-arc. So the fact that my content was better received than my style make me very pleased.
I'm available for weddings, birthday parties and Bar Mitzvahs.
</bragging>
Labels: azaroff, banking, changeeverything, credit union, netfinance, vancity, web 2.0
posted on Friday, April 27, 2007
This is definately a site for me...
Definatly.posted on Thursday, April 26, 2007
Can this possibly be true?
This video is crazy. It doesn't look doctored...posted on Thursday, April 26, 2007
Credit Unions and blogging
Ron Shevlin has a great discussion going on his Marketing ROI blog about tips and pitfalls for Credit Unions that decide to blog. The list is good and comprehensive and Colin from The Bankwatch and Trey from Open Source CU add in some good comments.Note to self: get the hell off Blogger...
See the discussion...
Labels: banking, bankwatch, blogging, credit union, opensourcecu, verity, web 2.0
posted on Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Photos from Net.Finance
Here are some photos from my trip to Arizona for Net.Finance.
The view from my hotel room at Net.Finance. The Camelback Inn was extremely nice, which is what you'd hope at the prices they charged.
A panel discussion with (from L to R) Chris Larsen from prosper.com, Mickey Mencin from Key Bank, Shari Storm from Verity Credit Union and Gabriel Dalporto from zecco.com.
Colin Henderson from The Bankwatch presenting. Colin painted a great picture of the landscape of what web 2.0 is doing for those FIs brave enough to embrace it.
My presentation. I think I was very well received, and am very pleased with how it went.
A group of us out for dinner on the second night of the conference. Having great Mexican food was one of my goals, which I definitely met.
Ned with cacti. Ned Georgy, a colleague from Vancity and a good friend, and I stuck around Arizona for an extra day and visited the Desert Botanical Gardens, which was fantastic!Labels: arizona, azaroff, bankwatch, camelback inn, netfinance, prosper.com, vancity, verity, zecco.com
posted on Sunday, April 22, 2007
The Bankwatch on my presentation
Colin summed up my presentation in a series of bullets. Here's his post.Labels: azaroff, banking, bankwatch, blogging, changeeverything, credit union, netfinance, socialsignal, vancity, vancouver, web 2.0
posted on Friday, April 20, 2007
Net.Finance Day Four - the big day!
Today was unequivocally the best day of the conference, and I'm not just saying that because my presentation went so darn well.I got to hear how prosper.com works straight from the CEO, Chris Larsen. This would be such a great business for Vancity to get into. I could see it as a separate spin off with its own discreet P&L. I'd be happy to run it, by the way, in case anyone in the C-Suite is reading this.
My new favourite colleague Shari Storm was fantastic. So much of the specificity of last year, the relevance, the results, the strategies that have been missing this year were there in force as Shari described why they started blogging, how they keep it going and what they get out of it. Great job Shari.
I was third up, and I'll let others describe how it went, but I'm really pleased and proud. I got a lot of great feedback and I know I had the full attention of the room. I couldn't get a break because so many people wanted to ask me questions.
Next up was Mickey Mencin from Key Bank, who spoke about podcasting. Last year I was really inspired listening to Mickey in a panel discussion and this year she had a whole presentation about what she's up to at Key. It's interesting to hear from the FIs who are willing to invest a little discretionary spending into innovative projects that don't have to rigidly prove their ROI. As Michael Seaton said so perfectly, "What's the ROI of a business lunch or a golf trip with a client." Sometimes you gotta have a little pocket money to try out new things.
I also enjoyed hearing from zecco.com CMO Gabriel Dalporto. Between them and propser.com I feel like I learned about business models that decentralized heavily centralized industries. People looking to start starfish organizations to attack the big bank spiders.
But my highlight of the day was hearing Colin Henderson. First off, he's a hell of a nice guy, and he's just so knowledgeable about this space. Great to finally put a face to a name, both for him and Jim Bruene, who should have been a speaker for sure.
Last year it was all about the amazing presentations, but I didn't meet a whole lot of people. This year it was all about the networking. Meeting people from across Canada and into the States who are doing interesting and innovative things.
Okay, I'm done. Ned and I are going to spend an extra day down here relaxing and seeing some sights. Let the vacation start...
Labels: azaroff, banking, bankwatch, blogging, credit union, netbanker, netfinance, prosper.com, vancity, verity, web, web 2.0, zecco.com
posted on Thursday, April 19, 2007
Net.Finance Day Three
Well the standout today at Net.Finance was Michael Seaton. He's a great presenter who knows how to tell his story effectively without PowerPointing to death. It was great content, relevant and useful. I wonder about the sophistication of the crowd with social marketing, but I think he gave everyone something big and real to think about.I feel a little bad that Vancity spent good money sending us out and the information is either too esoteric or too high-level and vague. Presenters need to give real world examples, challenges, successes, failures, metrics, results, stories. You know, actionable information to help the rest of us build business cases and spread the gospel of the web as a marketing, communications and engagement tool for our customers and prospects.
I am excited about tomorrow. For me, this is where all the exciting stuff is.
Okay, off for some Mexican food. Great Mexican food is about the only thing I miss about LA. I lived like two blocks from the BEST.
Labels: azaroff, banking, blogging, credit union, netfinance, usa, vancity, web, web 2.0
posted on Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Net.Finance Day Two
So today started off strongly. Eskander Matta from Wells Fargo gave a very good presentation of some of the things they've done for business customers. People back at Vancity will be happy to know that business banking is a big focus here this year, and I don't remember anyone addressing it last year. Some good info to take back with me, including the keynote address from Michael Donalson from HSBC. Everyone's moving on business customers.Also some great new research from James Van Dyke from Javelin Strategy & Research on online banking trends and stats. He was great last year and his info was strong and relevant this year too.
James McGuire from Royal Bank of Canada also had a great presentation, which I'm hoping to get my hands on. Great to meet the Canadians down here, and there are plenty of us. Everyone comments how the Canadian banks are so far ahead, which is nice to hear, though not altogether believable.
At the cocktail reception, I met Jim Bruene, which was great. I've followed his blog for a while and am a subscriber to his extremely useful Online Banking Report. Nice to put faces to names of the bloggers I follow.
The conference just isn't as strong as it was last year. It's good, and I am getting some great ideas to bring back with me, but last year by this time my head was already swimming with new ideas and I had taken a ton of notes of relevant material to bring back with me.
Looking forward to Michael Seaton tomorrow from Scotiabank talk about crowdsourcing, and of course I'm super excited about Thursday. Evidently a bunch of people are leaving tomorrow night, as Thursday's an optional day, but 100 new people are coming in just for that day's presentations.
Labels: azaroff, banking, blogging, canada, credit union, netbanker, netfinance, vancity, vancouver, web
posted on Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Net.Finance Day One
It was a good kickoff today at Net.Finance. This was the Customer Acquisition and Cross Selling Summit, an optional first day to the conference. I gotta say, so far it doesn't seem quite as strong as last year, but some great highlights.It's a tad early to say, but people seem to be buzzing about social media. There have been a few questions from the crowd, some comments in presentations about blogging, YouTube, Facebook, social networking, etc...
Emily Edwards, SVP of Online Sales Marketing at Bank of America was talking about Bank of America's plans in the social media space, and she asked of her company "How do we start to give up control without giving up complete control?" I thought it was great to hear a big bank talk like that. People seem to get the new world of marketing where companies don't control the message, and have to operate with a greater level of transparency to increase trust among the network of people who are talking about your company and brand online.
It's nice to reconnect with some great people I met last year and meet some new folks, including Shari Storm from Verity Credit Union in my old stomping ground of Seattle. Also nice to meet some Canadians who make up a sizable group here, including Michael Seaton from Scotiabank, who was recently in a panel in Toronto with Rob Cottingham from Social Signal.
Looking forward to tomorrow, and hopefully meeting Colin Henderson.
I am excited to give my presentation. I think it will create some good dialogue, because it's so far removed from anything anyone else is doing.
I discovered today that I can't do math. This whole time I thought I had 45 minutes, but if I had added the minutes on the schedule together, I only have 35 minutes. Ugh. I'll move fast and hope we have some time for discussion. I really don't want to cut anything out, I feel it's a strong presentation as-is.
Labels: azaroff, banking, bankwatch, blogging, credit union, netfinance, socialsignal, vancity, web
posted on Monday, April 16, 2007
Totally naked blogging
On our flight down to Arizona this afternoon, Scott Baldwin tapped me on the shoulder and showed me this article in Wired. It's about CEOs who expose all the secrets and are totally transparent with their company's blogs. Really interesting and feels very 'credit union' to me.Take a look, and let me know what you think...
Labels: blogging, corporate responsibility, credit union, vancity, web, web 2.0
posted on Sunday, April 15, 2007
Online financial calculators
We have all of these calculators on vancity.com, and one of them helps our site visitors decide if they are better off renting or owning their home. It turns out that The NYTimes does it better. They have a nice little flash tool to determine whether owning or renting is a better way to go given rent increases, market value shifts, downpayment percentages, mortgage rates, etc...Check it out.
PS: Thanks for the link, Ruben.
Labels: banking, housing bubble, vancity, web
posted on Sunday, April 15, 2007
Net.Finance
On April 19th I'll be talking about ChangeEverything.ca at Net.Finance. I'm pretty excited about my presentation, and am ready to go. This week I had two practice runs, one for our agencies TBWA\ and Social Signal, who created ChangeEverything.ca, the other at Credit Union Central of BC. I received great feedback which has made my presentation better.Net Finance is a conference at the intersection of eBusiness and the world of financial institutions. It would have been hard for me to believe a few years back that this would have gotten me excited, and yet here I am raring to go. I am speaking on the "Financial Services Innovation Forum" day.
I think my presentation really tells the story of ChangeEverything.ca as a form of social marketing - as engagement rather than traditional marketing. I hope I capture how this came about, why we did it, and how the site has been a success. I'll blog after the presentation, and if I can, throughout the conference about what I'm learning. Between me and Colin, we should sum it up pretty well.
Labels: azaroff, banking, changeeverything, netfinance, socialsignal, vancity, web 2.0
posted on Saturday, April 14, 2007
A follow up on my America Saves post
I was speaking to some people at Vancity about the issue of serving the underbanked and underserved, both of which are areas where we focus strongly. Two interesting things came back.1> Someone in our Sustainability division (who shall remain nameless) came back with this nugget:
Money is like sex, you can have a lot of it or none of it and still have an unhealthy relationship to it.
2> Catherine Ludgate in our Community Business Banking division told me this story:
I was at a conference last week with a woman from Micro Business USA, and she was talking about the different mindsets of folks along the income spectrum. In her 30+ years of doing microlending and setting up savings programs, she said she has learned that poor and low income folk generally think of what they earn only in terms of their hourly pay (and certainly not about savings). An income cut above, the lower middle class earners think about their weekly earnings. Middle class earners think in terms of their monthly income, and upper middle class earners think in terms of annual income. The truly wealthy (however that is defined) think ahead in terms of three to five to ten year investments they will make.
Her argument was that changing how folks identified their value (hourly to weekly to monthly to annually to forward looking) is the first step in changing other behaviours, like the ability to save. And that change in thinking can lead to movement out of an income group, as the woman in the case study in the NY Times article moved.
I thought those were two good and valuable insights.
My original post is here.
Labels: banking, canada, corporate responsibility, poverty, underbanked, vancity, vancouver
posted on Thursday, April 12, 2007
ChangeEverything.ca is a Webby Award Official Honoree
After a lovely four day weekend, I arrived back at my desk at work this morning to find out that ChangeEverything.ca had won the status of Official Honoree at this year's Webby Awards.
From their site:
Congratulations on being selected as an Official Honoree
Your submission has been selected as an Official Honoree of The 11th Annual Webby Awards. As a result of the exceptional quality of submissions this year, the Academy has chosen to recognize work exhibiting remarkable achievement that was not selected as a Nominee. Out of more than 8,000 entries submitted to the 11th Annual Webby Awards, less than 15% are deemed Official Honorees.
After years of producing web sites, this is my first Webby. Needless to say, I'm extremely excited. And just in time for my Net.Finance presentation next week!
Thanks and cheers to Kate Dugas and the team at Social Signal for making this happen.
Labels: azaroff, banking, canada, changeeverything, design, media, socialsignal, vancity, vancouver, web, web 2.0
posted on Tuesday, April 10, 2007
America Saves
Interesting article in the NYTimes: Can Poor People Be Taught to Save?Why can't poor people save money? Part of that psychological barrier... was social pressure to not save; the minute people got a little surplus, friends and family would start asking for loans. There were other obstacles too. People in both communities feared losing welfare benefits if they accumulated cash. Many families didn’t even define savings monetarily; they talked about the things they would sell in desperation - baseball-card collections, heirlooms or other low-value assets.
Enter AmericaSaves.org. What is America Saves?
America Saves is a nationwide campaign in which a broad coalition of nonprofit, corporate, and government groups helps individuals and families save and build wealth. Through information, advice, and encouragement, we assist those who wish to pay down debt, build an emergency fund, save for a home, save for an education, or save for retirement.
It's a social network changing the peer pressure in poor communities from spending and lending to saving. According to the article, "about nine million households have effectively no financial assets - nothing to fall back on for emergencies or retirement."
Banks help out by joining the program and creating accounts that charge no fees and have no minimum balance requirements. Amazing.
Something credit unions should get involved with. Creating wealth and assets for those with none. Banking for the under-banked and under-served. Hey, isn't that already our mandate?
PS: Thanks for the link, Rob
Labels: banking, bankwatch, canada, corporate responsibility, media, opensourcecu, socialsignal, vancity, web
posted on Sunday, April 08, 2007
Have you seen this?
Or maybe not. Scientists have discovered the secret of invisibility.posted on Sunday, April 08, 2007
Nikon's Universcale
A beautiful way to show scale of size. Universcale.posted on Sunday, April 08, 2007
Focus groupie
We held a focus group with members of the ChangeEverything.ca community. Fascinating stuff.I don't want to give away anything proprietary, but the trust the members of the focus group have in Vancity is amazing. It's a bit of a virtuous circle: they use CE because they trust Vancity as a local, mission-driven organization with strong roots in, and ties to the community (if we replaced the Vancity logo with one of the big 5 banks, they wouldn't even have tried the site even if everything else remained the same), but it goes the other way too because their trust in Vancity has improved because of CE and our lack of ulterior motives.
We also walked away with a lot of usability issues to address and some interesting functionality enhancements, which hopefully we can afford to make. There are some frustrating issues with the site, and seeing it through their eyes makes me happy the site is so sticky that it keeps our users coming back in spite of the technical issues. They all really liked the design, the open space, the colours. The Vancity brand lends itself well to this kind of endeavour, both aesthetically and thematically.
Watch the site over the next few weeks and even months for changes we'll implement as a result of this amazing and inspiring evening.
Labels: azaroff, banking, canada, changeeverything, corporate responsibility, design, socialsignal, vancity, vancouver, web, web 2.0
posted on Thursday, April 05, 2007
Housing roller coaster
US Home prices adjusted for inflation plotted as a roller coaster. This is truly brilliant.Labels: canada, housing bubble, usa, vancouver, video, web
posted on Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Aw shucks...
Rob Cottingham is such a mensch.Labels: azaroff, socialsignal, vancouver, web 2.0
posted on Wednesday, April 04, 2007
CommunityLend
I find the explosion of peer to peer lending very interesting. Avoid the bank, lend money to someone who needs it - you get a better rate on your investment than a bank would give you, they get a better rate on a loan than a bank would give them. It's a win-win. As long as no one defaults.I love the openness of it, the eBay quality. We buy and sell things for money, why not just buy and sell money itself? Clearly a reputation mechanism is key to this working.
So if we go five years in the future, will anyone remember this, or will the banks be screaming mercy? Is this to the banks what Napster was to the recording industry? Is this a classic case of a spider battling a starfish. I look forward to finding out.
If I was a betting man, I'd say that this will have a significant impact on banking, not a life or death impact, but enough that banks and credit unions will notice and either try to buy some of these guys up or start their own.
Time will tell if I'm right. What do you think?
CommunityLend.
Labels: azaroff, banking, canada, web 2.0
posted on Tuesday, April 03, 2007
A new direction
I have recently been asked why I don't give my opinion about web 2.0, social marketing, banking, etc on my blog. Why I limit it to a more frivolous link blog. I was surprised by the question: lots of people are talking social web and FIs. My favourites include:Social Signal
Open Source CU
Net Banker
NextCU
But then it occured to me, all of those are written by people outside of an FI. They're written by supporters, vendors, partners, but not insiders. So I'm branching out and will start blogging more about trends I'm seeing, things I'm focusing on, ideas percolating under the surface. I hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes at these other fine companies and blogs. I admire and respect all of them, and merely am attempting to join their online conversation.
I also hope I won't upset anyone at Vancity. I love the company and my job, and will strive to merely represent how we do business without giving away any trade secrets, inside information or anything else. I'm going to assume I have that freedom unless I'm told otherwise. Sara, I'll wait for your call...
Now the question is, am I doing this for myself only, or is anyone else listening.
Thanks,
Wm
Labels: azaroff, banking, bankwatch, canada, corporate responsibility, nextcu, opensourcecu, socialsignal, vancity, web, web 2.0
posted on Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Ex-Aide Says He's Lost Faith in Bush
A fascinating piece in the NYTimes about Matthew Dowd, a Bush strategist who's changed his mind about a thing or two. (may require registration)posted on Sunday, April 01, 2007
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.