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our June 30 deadline has passed and we are 20 short

2009-07-01T04:29:00Z

Bummer – our June 30 deadline to reach 100 pledged attendees for Your Symposium has just passed. We tried. This crowd sourcing experiment was both a failure and a success. The failure – we did not reach our goal. We did not promote nearly enough. Our day jobs at FORUM Solutions got in the way – as they should. These are challenging times for credit unions and FORUM is no exception. A lot going on and FORUM Solutions is doing a lot of routine and innovative stuff to make a difference at FORUM Credit Union. I feel like I let down the people and companies that pledged their attendance and support. You all are so passionate about our little symposium and we love you for that. I apologize I did not promote more. Now, the success. We learned a lot about crowd sourcing and had fun while we learned. Hey, life is way too short not to learn and have fun. We feel like we can apply what we learned not only to future symposiums but also other projects. By experimenting with crowd sourcing we saved the money we would have lost by subsidizing the symposium with the attendance totals we would have drawn. Trust me, it is not cheap to host this event in the manner we do.

We will miss not seeing you in Indy this year. If you have any ideas on how to preserve the momentum this event had please reach out to us and let us know what is on your mind. We would love to host again some day and bring the brightest and most passionate credit union people together again.

sprout = another ignite idea implemented

2009-07-01T04:22:00Z

The new Sprout account at FORUM that goes live today (July 1) is another idea from ignite that is being implemented. Very proud of the ignite group and their ability to generate innovations that go to market.

13 days until deadline

2009-06-17T16:47:00Z

We need 27 more pledged attendees to move forward with the ‘09 Your Symposium. We could use more presentation auditions – lots of talk, lots of inquiries, lots of threats – not enough action.

internet banking collaboration & success

2009-05-23T03:58:00Z

Earlier this year, Vantage Credit Union purchased our internet banking source code. They went live a few months ago and earlier this week they shared these staggering numbers:

They had 9,102 active users when they converted and they now have 28,214. In full disclosure this may not be an apples to apples comparison as their former internet banking solution was account based and our internet banking source code is user based. Users can see all of their accounts with one login.
They had 6,500 bill payment users before the conversion and they now have 12,900.
e-Statements was 9,139 and now is 27,580 – this translates in to a $130k per year savings.
91% of their members are now auto enrolling in to internet banking.

Kudos to the Vantage team for their conversion (conversions are always difficult) and success. If you are a credit union that wants to take control of your own destiny with internet banking please reach out to us.

next in the series of Tim McAlpine symposium videos

2009-05-20T03:56:00Z

Yep, we received the third edition of Tim McAlpine’s symposium video to be a part of the Your Symposium agenda today. Another amazing entry. Take a look – enjoy, vote, pledge your attendance to see Tim and gang in person, and consider submitting your own video to be part of the action.

Oh, and Deandre, I have something that rivals Sonic – Frosty Boy in New Palestine. Treats on me as I already owe gen Xer Tim a pineapple whip.

Mira Award

2009-05-19T03:11:00Z

From the Inside Indiana Business – a list of Mira winners. We are thrilled to be included with so many innovative and entrepreneurial companies as well as individuals. This was the inaugural year for the excellence in corporate IT award so we are humbled to be recognized as the first winner. A team accomplishment. As we said in the acceptance speech – we thank TechPoint for the opportunity and we appreciate the support of our 100,000+ FORUM Credit Union member/owners who we love to serve.

symposium sponsor goal met

2009-05-11T13:07:00Z

We have met our goal of 10 sponsors for the ‘09 Your Symposium. We will happily take more if there is interest. Remember, if we can get more than 10 we will do the math and lower the price of admission to attend the event. We have 66 pledged attendees, so we need 34 more to green light the event. June 30 is the hard deadline. Most importantly, we need content providers. Going in to this crowd sourcing experiment we figured sponsors would be one of the more difficult objectives and that content providers would not be a problem. With so many creative, passionate and outspoken credit union people we figured the videos and proposals to speak/facilitate would be coming at us from multiple directions. Please help us out. Be part of the solution, the future, the change, the conversation, the event.

A big thank you to the sponsors listed on the site. We appreciate you taking a chance on the event and your trust in us. It means a lot to us.

symposium deadline is June 30

2009-05-05T16:08:00Z

We remain hopeful that we will reach our crowd-sourcing goals of 100 attendees and 10 sponsors. We need content providers so don’t be bashful as this is an opportunity that doesn’t come around very often. There may be potential attendees who would pledge participation if they knew more about the content. June 30 is the deadline for both pledges and content entries. We are ready to host if the demand is present to make this event a break even for us. We also want to make sure the event is worthy of your time investment.

symposium crowd-sourcing update - 63% & 80%

2009-04-27T13:27:00Z

Quick symposium update:

We have 63 people pledged to attend the symposium. We need 100 to make it happen. We are impressed that we have this many given the lack of videos for symposium content. More on that below.
We have 8 pledged sponsors. Thanks to Fuze Digital Solutions as they actually took two slots. We need two more to make the symposium happen. If we get more than 10 then we will do the math and lower the price of admission.

We need your help with two things:

Got something on your mind to share or even that you just want to discuss? Please consider submitting a video to lead a session at the symposium. Afraid of the process to submit a video – don’t be – look at our video we posted to explain the symposium. It doesn’t have to be Oscar worthy – just have fun and tell your story. If you want to be involved and won’t do the video then submit a slide deck – be creative.

Help us spread the word – we only need 37 more pledged attendees and two more sponsors and we will green light this event. We have heard from so many people that they really want this event to happen as it is more important than ever to gather and discuss how we can improve the financial lives of our members.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to FORUM Solutions if you have any questions. We appreciate your support.

TechPoint Mira Award Finalist

2009-04-16T19:11:00Z

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FORUM Solutions is honored to be considered as a finalist for a 2009 TechPoint Mira Award in the category of Excellence in Corporate IT. The Mira Awards are considered the premier award recognition for technology companies and individuals in the State of Indiana. We will find out on May 16 at their gala event if we won the award. We are blessed to be considered among so many prestigious past winners and 2009 nominees. We like the entrepreneurial spirit that permeates the Mira award program. We try to uphold intrapreneurial concepts at FORUM Solutions. This recognition is a reflection of the team we have at FORUM Solutions – collaborative teamwork, innovative spirit, can-do attitude, and passion about what we deliver on a daily basis.

we need your advice on the symposium

2009-04-09T13:50:00Z

A quick update on Your Symposium. We have 25 pledged attendees of the 100 we need and 6 of the 10 sponsors. Here are the questions in whcih we could use some help:

We are disappointed that we have not received any video submissions to conduct a session at the symposium. Last year we had wonderful entries from Ginny Brady, Andy LaFamme, Gene Blishen, and Matt Davis. We thought we would have seen some by now and especially from an Indiana ignite or Filene i3 group. Plus, we are also encouraging companies who serve credit unions to submti videos. Is the video thing too intimidating? So the question we need help with is should we continue to seek out videos or begin putting together an agenda? We worry that we might not be getting some pledges from interested people because they don’t know for sure what will be on the agenda. It is the chicken or the egg thing perhaps? We are fortunate to have Dr. Manning set to speak at the symposium about his responsible debt relief initiative. Plus, Denise and George hosting – it doesn’t get any better than this.

Are we nuts for even trying to host the symposium this year given the slashed travel budgets? We are a glass half full type of team so we want to push on because we think now is exactly the time we should be gathering to talk about ideas to improve how we serve our members. Plus, this is a cheap date as they say with a low cost of entry and an easy location to get to with affordable accomodations.

Please help us by answering these two questions in the comments or you know how to reach us directly.

symposium updates

2009-04-01T04:56:00Z

random updates about the ‘09 Your Symposium

Could we be the only credit union conference (exluding BarCamps) to have two GonzoBankers speaking on the same stage – Gene Blishen and William Azaroff? Congratulations William on just being named – you deserve the attention.

We need 100 pledged attendees and 10 sponsors to make this event happen. We have 22 pledged attendees to date and 3 sponsors. We need your help in pledges and in spreading the word to make this event happen.

Some questions we received on the symposium – check out the q & a

Your Symposium: Keynote Speaker

2009-03-31T15:41:00Z

Big News! We are very excited to announce that this year’s keynote speaker at Your Symposium will be Dr. Robert Manning. You may recognize Dr. Manning’s name from one of his appearances on Good Morning America, or the CBS Evening News, or his Responsible Debt Relief program, or his work on the documentary, “In Debt We Trust.” I could go on and on, but you get the idea…the guy has a lot going on right now and we are honored to have him speak at our Symposium. If you would like to learn more about Dr. Manning, check out one of the following websites.

www.creditcardnation.com
http://centers.cob.rit.edu/cfs/drManning.php
www.responsibledebtrelief.org

credit unions = simplicity = golden?

2009-03-18T15:31:00Z

Interesting article from Paul Johnson at Forbes entitled In Business, Simplicity is Golden. As I was reading it I was thinking credit union.

financial institutions on Twitter

2009-03-16T12:47:00Z

Jim Bruene has a new post on his netbanker blog that is a detailed recap of the use of Twitter by financial institutions. Jeffry Pilcher and Lisa Randolph also add value to the post with their comments.