Month: July 2007

Collaboration on a Car Operating System

At our recent BarCampBankSeattle event, we had quite a few discussions around core processors and opportunities in the marketplace.  Hopefully we’ll have some more posts about that in the future, but here is some related news from the far east.  It appears that Japanese car manufacturers also see an opportunity to have an in-car operating system and Toyota, Honda, and Nissan have all joined forces to create this dedicated operating system.

These car makers see that the current offerings can’t meet their demands, so in a true, collaborative effort, will put their money and minds together to create the perfect product they need.  CU’s have an opportunity to do the same.

The original Engadget article is located here.

We need a .NET developer!

Pretty self explanatory title, but…

FiLinx, a subsidy of MaPS Credit Union, is looking for a developer to help build and deliver cutting edge financial web applications to credit unions across the nation.

Must have a BS/CS degree or at least 4 years experience with .net (vb/c#), ajax, css, etc. Must have strong proficiencies with Visual Studio 2005, MS SQL Server, Team Foundation Server and Sharepoint.

To apply, please visit: https://www.mapscu.com/Employment/HowToApply.aspx

BarCampBankSeattle Rocks!

Today was the first long day at BarCampBankSeattle and it was pretty amazing.  We’ve got people from all over the blogosphere here sharing and learning.  Jesse Robbins, all the Trabian guys, Brad and Mark from the Garland Group, Tim from Currency Marketing, and Jason from Wesabe just to name a few.  We’ve kicked around an amazing amount of ideas, but I wanted to get down a few that came in our last group conversation of the day.

  1. Here’s a simple incentive plan to make the CU goals align with giving the most back to the members: Assuming you have a well run credit union getting 1% ROA, send 50 basis points to the members in an annual dividend, 25 to staff incentives and 25 to reserves.
  2. Starting a credit union is hard.  Why?  With 8500 credit unions or so we have plenty of expertise to help out.  We need to create an online forum of CU experts to help assist people wanting to start a credit union.  If we could even get just 20 executives from CU’s across the nation from different capacities, we’d have a great resource to help others start CU’s and further the movement.
  3. CU’s can’t get secondary capital to start up, but other CU’s can give them deposits to help them start up.  CU’s could contribute to a startup fund that simply deposits dollars into a new CU.

The ideas are rough, but just wanted to get them out there.  Looking forward to tomorrow but as it is almost 1 AM, I’d probably better call it a night!

UPDATE- How could I forget William and Gene?!?!?

FIS Data Leaked

FIS, or Fidelity Information Services, had an employee steal confidential consumer information and sell it.  FIS has their official press release here.

What would happen if a CU employee decided that their member data was worth something and sold it?  How would or should a CU react in this instance?  FIS’ press release reads like it came from marketing, went to legal, and then back again.  Should CU’s issue press releases on their web sites, in their monthly newsletter(s), in a blog, or all of the above?  Are blogs appropriate avenues to communicate this type of sensitive information with your membership?