Welcome to our site: Boston. Massacred. or: Social media and credit unions as disruptive actors

• "Boston. Massacred. or: Social media and credit unions as disruptive actors" by Doug Williams
  

  Thanks for all the great comments and advice – both posts and emails.

  Seattle is an outpost. Cell coverage and internet aren’t as ubiquitous as coffee and rain in the great northwest.

• "Boston. Massacred. or: Social media and credit unions as disruptive actors" by Randall Dixon
  

  Doug, I thought the presentation was great and I forwarded it to my team. Another good book I read recently on Disruptive technology was Michael Raynor’s book “The innovators solution”. Glad you guys got moved. Be sure and tell Brent his Dad misses him and I thought they had the web and cell service in Seattle. Recently we have been playing “Where’s Brent” You guys are hard to find now that you have become CU Superstars. By the way I offered my travel trailer to Brent if you want to do a Trabian Road show. But you have to provide your own decals.

• "Boston. Massacred. or: Social media and credit unions as disruptive actors" by Jim Bruene
  

  Love the post. Just don’t find too many people willing to criticize themselves online…increases your credibility tremendously.

  I looked at the deck…your examples were all spot on. I don’t know who the audience was, but personally I’ve heard the “disruptive technologies” thing many times…you probably don’t need to spend time proving that in a short presentation.

• "Boston. Massacred. or: Social media and credit unions as disruptive actors" by jason knight
  

  Doug,

  Thanks for the quote from Wade – I couldn’t agree with him more. I read your presentation…I get it:)

  I just wish that when you put on your tricorn hat you say: “wesabe is here and they want to work with you.”

• "Boston. Massacred. or: Social media and credit unions as disruptive actors" by Colin Henderson
  

  Doug … all I can say is hang on to that thought. I too sometimes feel I am being shrill when I talk about the changes that arise from elimination of interest spread that comes with social lending. Social lending is also social investing by the way. Banks lose twice… they lose the loan, and the deposit.

  I will read the deck tonight. But I will say most people can only process information based on their own paradigms … thats what makes them good at operating business day to day … but they will miss transformational change every time. Thats why you are there!

• "Boston. Massacred. or: Social media and credit unions as disruptive actors" by VSelfridge
  

  Sorry to hear the presentation didn’t seem to go over well… Sometimes its the timing of the message, not the message itself.

  I’ve downloaded the presentation & plan to read it tonight! :)

• Boston. Massacred. or: Social media and credit unions as disruptive actors
  

  The pain of a particularly difficult presentation fades away as South Station gives way to Back Bay and then Route 128 and I, for the rest of the day at least, get to leave the experience behind.

  The thing is, it’s not the Michael Scott-esque way I made the crowd look anxiously at the screen, their notebooks, the wall, anything instead of me…craning their necks and cocking their heads when they did make eye contact as they attempted to understand just exactly the hell it was that I was talking about. What bothers me most is that I didn’t communicate the value of social media. Peer-to-peer lending looms large. Advertising is largely ineffective for small credit unions. This is important stuff.

  Here is my presentation. I tried to wedge disruptive technologies and credit unions and social media into a 45-minute presentation. That doesn’t work. Not that they aren’t disruptive and shouldn’t actually be presented concurrently – they should – you need a whole day to explain it. And a couple of people.

  Or one blog post. If I failed at wow-ing them in the presentation, then so much the better. I’m giving you, gentle reader, my treatise on disruptive innovation, credit unions and social media. I’ll spare you the gory details about the hard drive industry and what makes disruptive actors what they are and get right to the point (that’s good advice).

  Social Media, by its nature, is a disruptive actor. It brings people together and when people get together, they do things. Sometimes productive things. Sometimes destructive things. But never no things.

  Social media will do to the financial industry what the iPod did to the music industry. It won’t sink it, but it will shakes its foundations. Credit unions are one of the few financial services industries with a real opportunity to ride the wave and not get caught in the undertow. Wade Lagrone of Zopa.com agrees.

  As internet people, we’re here to say that the basic credit union idea – people helping people – isn’t just friendly, or humane, or even a way to get good rates on financial products. No, it’s that we think credit unions are cool. And we think credit unions could be the first choice of an entire new generation of American consumers.
  
  Now all that sounds hard. And we know that the industry is getting older. And we know that banks keep getting bigger and spending more. But credit unions have something those guys don’t. They’ve got a soul. Only maybe in the race to match banks on features and rates, maybe that soul’s gotten a little lost. So our hope in 2007 is that credit unions can double down on what makes them special, what makes them cool.

  Credit unions are posed to take advantage of social media in ways no other sector of the financial services industry. The structure of individual credit unions allows it to make decisions to affect its membership. Although artificially limited, each credit union DOES have a limited market. In many ways this is a good thing. This small market, be it a SEG or a community, gives each CU a common vernacular with its membership that large banks do not have with their customers. Communicating about these issues via blog or podcast is pinpoint marketing. It’s relevant communication.

  A current example of who could use it is Continental Federal Credit Union. Trey has mentioned this on OpenSourceCU.com, but it bears repeating. The CU has a relevant message to communicate to a narrow segment of the financial services market (Continental FCU members). Using a blog – and it’s not too late to start one – to communicate the issues and solicit relevant feedback is an incredibly valuable way to help make members feel like Members, not just customers.

  With the flurry of activity on OpenSourceCU.com (the hottest topic to date with 38 comments and a huge traffic spike), just imagine if Continental had an active blog.

  In a sense, the entire open source movement parallels the credit union movement. It’s groups of concerned people that have banded together to take control of their environment, be it financial or computing. They’ve not just complained about it, they’ve done something. Credit unions are doers.

  I need a white steed and a three-point hat on my charge through the streets of credit union land:

  “Wesabe is here doing what you’re supposed to be doing.”
  “Social Media allows you to communicate relevantly.”
  “Zopa is coming.”
  “Zopa is coming.”
  “Zopa is coming.”

  Paul Revere would’ve been proud. Then again, he knew how to speak to Bostonians.