about me
I'm William Azaroff. I direct Online Strategy & Community 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).

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An update on BarCampBankBC.

Here's a little update on BarCampBankBC.

We started a Facebook page. You can sign up for the event there and use it to help spread the word.

Pecha Kucha
We decided to do a Pecha Kucha to close out Day One. What's a Pecha Kucha? Glad you asked.

Pronounced "peh-chak-cha," it is a mix of show-and-tell, open-mike night and happy hour. It has become the forum for ideas on design, architecture and lots of other stuff. Pecha Kucha has swept the world in just four years now having taken place in over 80 cities globally. Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each. This gives each presenter 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

We have 12 spots open. To grab the spot you want, add your name and presentation description in the table on the wiki.

38 people so far
We currently have 38 people signed up on the wiki, and I'm very excited at the diversity of attendees. You can see the full list here.

Sponsors

We now have all our sponsors in place, which is very exciting, and helps keep our costs way down. They include:

So make a plan to come to BarCampBankBC and join the conversation. We'd love to see you here...

PS: Tim also has a post today, where you can download some nice banners for BCBBC, like this one.

Labels: banking, barcampbankbc, credit union, innovation, vancouver

posted on Wednesday, June 25, 2008

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Make a plan for BarCampBankBC.

Yesterday, Gene Blishen and I booked the space for BarCampBankBC. I'm very excited that we got such a great space at BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology).

BarCampBankBC will take place in Vancouver all day on Saturday, September 20th and a half day on Sunday the 21st. You can sign up here.

What is BarCampBankBC?

What if we changed banking and finance? The aim of BarCampBank is to foster innovations and the creation of new business models in the world of banking and finance.

It's going to be an amazing time, and may just:

change the way you do your job
introduce you to new concepts and innovations
connect you to some amazing people
inspire you

We've already got 16 people coming from some great FIs and vendors, including HSBC, Industrial Credit Union, Westminster Savings Credit Union, Everything CU, Credit Union Central of BC, Creative Brand Communications, Citizens Bank of Canada, Ripple Project, Open Money, Mount Lehman Credit Union, Community Savings Credit Union, Vancity and Currency Marketing. And I just noticed Denise Wymore is planning on coming in for it.

I have no doubt that by the time September 20th and 21st arrive many more FIs and vendors will have signed up.

BCIT's downtown campus is extremely well located, right in downtown Vancouver. If you're coming in from out of town, you can walk there from any of Vancouver's downtown hotels. It's also very close to a SkyTrain station, so it's easy to get to from almost anywhere.

All that for about $35 Canadian. So go ahead, add your name to the wiki and come on down.

See you there!

UPDATE (May 29): Thanks to Boris for adding this event to Upcoming.org!

Labels: banking, barcampbankbc, credit union, currency marketing, innovation, technology, tinfoiling, vancity, vancouver

posted on Wednesday, May 28, 2008

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Come on down to BarCampBank BC.

I'm excited to announce that on September 20, 2008 BarCampBank is coming to Vancouver.

Gene Blishen, Tim McAlpine and I are putting a stake in the ground, after talking about doing it for some time.

Now, some of you may be asking, what the hell is a BarCampBank. From the main BarCampBank page:

What if we changed banking and finance?
The aim of BarCampBank is to foster innovations and the creation of new business models in the world of banking and finance.

The first one in North America was in Seattle last July, and it was a truly transformative experience. For me, the ideas, relationships and bonds formed in those two days are invaluable, and the memories of it are strong and very good.

Lots of details to be worked out, like an exact location, but it will take place on September 20, 2008. The cost is always break-even (think $25 CAD), so its worth the travel expense for my East Coast readers.

Go to the wiki page to add your name to the list. It will not disappoint!

PS: Thanks to Morriss Partee, whom I credit for keeping BarCampBank alive and kicking in North America. Thanks Morriss, looking forward to seeing you here! Also, I believe it was his idea to create something with the acronym BCBBC. Who couldn't love that!

NOTE: My original post accidentally said that this was on July 20th. It is, in fact on September 20th!

Labels: banking, barcampbankbc, barcampbankseattle, conference, credit union, currency marketing, everythingcu, innovation, social media, technology, tinfoiling, vancouver, web 2.0

posted on Friday, April 18, 2008

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I'm in love with drop.io

It's not often that I come across a new online service that meets a need and adds value to my life. But when my friend Tim McAlpine told me about drop.io I was immediately hooked.

Working at a credit union, we have understandable security features in our system which prevents me from transferring files in the way I was accustomed to doing at the digital agencies at which I once worked. In the CU world I'm a bit of an anomaly - not many other people need to transfer large files across the interwebs. But as my year of conferences gets underway, I need to get 30-50MB presentations to the conference organizers, and don't have an ftp site to use at work. (I had been using my own website, but that becomes cumbersome, because not everyone on the other end can retrieve from an ftp site.)

Enter drop.io. A simply web 2.0 utility, which is basically an online flash drive that anyone can create, anytime, as many times as they want. For free you can get 100MB and for $10 a year you can get 1GB.

You can create as many as you want, and upload whatever kind of files you want. You can put a password on it, or leave it open. You can email to a special drop.io address that you get with each drop, so you can drop attached files directly via email. You get a special phone number to leave messages and record them as a file in your drop. You can fax to your drop. You can even get widgets to so you can drop from your website, blog or social network. Oh, and with the RSS feed, you can be alerted when someone else drops something to you.

It's a really streamlined concept, no accounts to manage, just start as many drops as you need. Did I mention that it's friggin brilliant?

I have two little quibbles. It would have been nice to have a little question mark icon next to the password field, as I was confused between a drop password and an admin password until I got all the way through the set up, at which point I realized I had done it wrong, and had to delete my drop and start again.

The only problem with a non-account model (users start drops, they don't set up accounts) is that if you forget your admin password, you can't retrieve a lost password. You just have to abandon the whole drop and start again. I was annoyed by this until I saw it written explicitly in their FAQ:

I lost the drop's admin password, help!

This is basically the equivalent of losing the drop address - sadly, no dice. Part of the ease and simplicity of drop.io comes from the fact that we do not require usernames or passwords. The downside to this is that if you lose your admin password we have absolutely no way to verify that you made a drop, and therefore that we should grant you access as an admin.

The good news is that if this happens in the absolute worst case scenario your drop will evaporate in less than one year. Again, just consider that drop.io is really more about flash online storage –make sure you have your stuff backed up elsewhere!

Somehow seeing that they knew about this issue and saw it as a feature and not a bug made me feel better, but still, this functionality would be very useful. Perhaps this will be introduced with the upgraded $10 service.

The amazing thing is that drop.io is smart. I added a video file that a conference organizer wanted of me speaking about my topic. I uploaded the .mov file to drop.io and it automatically treated it as a media file. Users can view the movie directly in my drop (like in the above screenshot), get an embed tag from the site or download it. Nothing to configure, it just does this automatically. Same with other types of media files. Brilliant.

So I just upgraded my drop (had to do this via paypal, as I don't have a US address), so I can have more storage and to show my appreciation for this terrific service.

I've now used drop.io to get files from and to several different people, some of whom are not what I would call web-savvy. No issues, no problems, just a smooth transfer of files, and some questions about this cool, useful service.

So I'm in love. Drop.io solved a real need that I had, is easy to use, and is simply delightful. Thanks Tim!

Labels: currency marketing, drop.io, innovation, web 2.0

posted on Friday, April 11, 2008

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Celebrate Vancity's carbon neutrality.

Here's a video from the celebration on Wednesday when Vancity announced it became the first North American financial institution to achieve being carbon neutral.

Enjoy!

Labels: banking, climate change, corporate responsibility, credit union, environment, innovation, social media, vancity, vancouver, video, youtube

posted on Friday, April 11, 2008

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Vancity is carbon neutral.

There are so many reasons why I love working at Vancity, and now I have another really big one.

We announced today, after having it externally audited and verified, that as of December 31, 2007 Vancity is offically carbon neutral. In fact, we are the first North American financial institution to become carbon neutral.

So what does that mean?

It means we've tracked our footprint to assess the amount of carbon we emit.

Then we focused on reducing our emissions as much as we possibly could.

And finally, whatever carbon emissions we could not reduce, we purchased high quality local offsets to bring us to carbon neutrality.

This is a huge accomplishment and has been a major focus of the company for quite some time. In fact, we achieved our goal a full two years ahead of schedule by getting our employees across the organization involved and engaged in the issue.

A truly great announcement, and I imagine we'll garner quite a bit of press coverage about it.

I especially love our new limited-time carbon neutral logo on the website.

Labels: corporate responsibility, credit union, environment, innovation, news, vancity

posted on Wednesday, April 09, 2008

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ChangeEverything.ca is nominated for a Webby Award.

I am so pleased and excited to announce that ChangeEverything.ca was nominated for a Webby Award.

This is such an incredible honour, and follows on the heels of being an Official Honoree last year. Please vote for ChangeEverything.ca for the Webby People's Voice Award.

It is worth noting that the four other sites nominated in the category of Social Networking are:

Perhaps you've heard of some of them. It is mind-boggling to be nominated against some of the biggest developments in social networking of the last year or two. Amazing also to be the only company-created social network, up against a bevy of startups.

Equally impressive is the lineup of judges who selected the nominees and will select an ultimate winner.

The Academy is an intellectually diverse organization that includes members such as musicians Beck and David Bowie, Internet inventor Vint Cerf, political columnist Arianna Huffington, Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser, "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening, R/GA Founder and Chairman Robert Greenberg, Virgin Atlantic Chairman and Founder Richard Branson, Crispin Porter + Bogusky Partner and Chief Creative Officer Alex Bogusky, and The Weinstein Company Co-Founder Harvey Weinstein. Members also include writers and editors from publications such as The New York Times, Wired, Details, Fast Company, Elle, The Los Angeles Times, Vibe, and WallPaper. The 11th Annual Webby Awards received over 8,000 entries from over 60 countries and all 50 states and generated over 750 million media impressions worldwide.

It is pretty much exactly two years since we started developing the site from a concept, and so rewarding to see where Kate has nurtured and engaged the community of over 3,000 registered users. I am also heartened that we are the only socially responsible community in the running. Proves you can do well by doing good.

UPDATE: I added a link to where you can vote for ChangeEverything.ca for the People's Voice Award.

Labels: banking, changeeverything, corporate responsibility, credit union, drupal, facebook, innovation, media, social media, technology, vancity, web 2.0

posted on Tuesday, April 08, 2008

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Ready and raring to present.

I spent a big chunk of this past weekend creating my presentations for both Net.Finance 2008 and CUES Experience.

It's funny to look back at my initial presentation from last year's Net.Finance about ChangeEverything.ca. It was so full of words and clunky. I am relying mostly on images and my own storytelling now to get the message across. It's a big evolution, and I'm excited to see how it will go over.

My talk at Net.Finance will be Corporate Social Responsibility As Key Differentiator, which may be like speaking socialism to a room full of bankers. Hopefully I can at least make it funny and entertaining. I am pulling data from our experience at Vancity as a community-driven organization, proving the model that social marketing can break through the clutter, epsecially in our heavily commoditized industry.

At CUES my talk is called Credit Unions and Social Media: A Case Study, and will cover a lot of the same ground, but deal a lot more with social media and go into more detail around how ChangeEverything.ca works. I have the luxury of a 75 minute session, which is by far the longest talk I have given. It'll be nice not to be pressed for time, and be able to engage in a discussion throughout, rather than at the end, time permitting.

I'll take what I learn from them to shape my end of the year keynote at the Partnership Symposium 2008. I'm really excited about it. My talk is called Engaging with the Social Economy, and I'm just starting to wrap my head around what I'll cover. It will deal with how credit unions are uniquely positioned to use the banking platform to make our society a better and more equitable place.

Please let me know if you'll be at any of these events. I look forward to seeing you there.

Labels: banking, conference, credit union, CUES, innovation, netfinance, partnership symposium, social economy, social media

posted on Sunday, March 16, 2008

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Honestly, who cares about Twitter?

I often find it hard to explain the value of Twitter. The first time I tried it, like a lot of people, I didn't get it or get into it. It was only once I found my community (in my case a community of credit union thought leaders) that it resonated with me.

Now I don't have to figure out how to explain Twitter because the fine folks at Common Craft have produced a great new video that does that better than I ever could.

Ladies and gentlemen: Twitter in Plain English.

Labels: innovation, social media, twitter, video

posted on Friday, March 07, 2008

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Virgin Bank of Canada?

When it rains it pours. First IOU Central opens up as the first social lending platform in Canada, and now Richard Branson has announced, somewhat coyly, that he will be moving his Virgin Money brand into Canada.

All the problems and frustrations that people find in the mobile-phone industry they also find in the banking industry here. The banking industry is ripe for a strong competitor here.

All of this, and CommunityLend is still moving forward to their early 2008 launch. Makes me think that Canada will have a very different financial landscape before 2008 is up. Quite a game changer...

Labels: communitylend, innovation, iou central, social lending, virgin money

posted on Thursday, February 14, 2008

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IOU Central is Canada's first social lending platform.

For all my interest and excitement about social lending, I have not been able to use a social lending platform because there wasn't one available in Canada. Then, this morning, I read on NetBanker that IOU Central has launched, making them first out of the gate for Canadians.

I had heard that there was a group in Quebec working on this, but I had assumed my friend Colin Henderson would be first out to market with CommunityLend, which is launching early this year.

I'll give IOU Central a try and report what I find. As I've written before, my main question, one that is about to be answered, is: will Canadians who love to hate their five main national banks engage in social lending, or will we complain but stay put?

Interesting times...

Labels: communitylend, innovation, iou central, netbanker, social lending

posted on Wednesday, February 13, 2008

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Honoured to be featured in innovator podcast.

I am so happy to be included in instalment #3 of Currency Marketing's Credit Union Innovators Podcast series. I was honoured that Tim asked, and I hope the resulting podcast is informative and entertaining.

Enjoy!

Oh, and you can subscribe to the whole series via iTunes.

Labels: azaroff,