Open Space, which runs on Passion and Responsibility, worked again… BarCampBankSeattle was everything I hoped for. Thank you to everybody who created it!

I’ll be posting snippets from feedback as they come in:

William Azaroff, creator of ChangeEverything.ca, said:

“We need to be vigilant to ensure that credit unions don’t become, as Jesse put it, small shitty, inefficient banks. In the end, it was a great marriage of a discussion around banking innovation and the role credit unions can continue to play in the service of people and their money. I hope the conversation continues, because it’s exciting for me to see the next generation of CU leaders engaged in the credit union mission, who see it as a movement and believe in it passionately. Sometimes I wonder if the shift from Boomers to Gen X and Y will lead to a shift away from strong credit unions supporting their communities. We had an amazing blend of younger people, new to the CU world, and some long time champions of the movement - it was an excellent cross-section. This weekend gave me renewed faith.”

Gene Blishen said:

“Most agreed it was one of the best meetings that any of us has attended. It could not have been planned better. It was the “Wisdom of Crowds” in action. It was the start for some to put old dreams into action. It was just flippin” great.”

Frederic Baud, creator of BarCampBank, said:

“I won’t go into the details of all the awesome projects that could sprout from these two days; and I won’t try to imagine how cooperation over the coming months could happen online to carry all these projects to completion. I’ll just deliver this simple thought: I’m always amazed how gratifying this is to be exposed to intelligence and creativity.”

I am at FooCamp getting to hang out with a few friends and talking about technology, emergency management, and finance. I’ve pimped Swivel, BarCampBankSeattle, and Black Rock Federal where it’s been appropriate, gave a “FooCamp Survival Guide” lightning talk, and am giving a talk tomorrow on Designing for Disaster & DisasterCamp

Designing for Disaster & DisasterCamp

Date: Sunday, June 24

Time: 11:00 - 12:00
Location: jackal (tent)
Track:“Another F***ing Growth Opportunity”

The first part of this talk will cover a few (painful/entertaining/instructive) lessons I’ve learned from emergency management and humanitarian aid. We’ll then talk about how these apply to you and the technologies you design.

Then we’ll talk about DisasterCamp, a project to provide training and operational experience under realistic conditions… (AKA: “hazing the n00bs”).

I leave here tomorrow and fly out to meet the Swivel Team in Turkey for the OECD World Economic Forum.

BarCampBank

• BarCampBankSeattle announced (original post)
• Currently selecting date and location

Black Rock Federal

• Revised Field of Membership revised to be IgnitionNW
• Met with Credit Union executives, discussing possible partnerships
• Waiting on charter details from NCUA

DisasterCamp (New Project)

• Initiated new project which I’ll be talking about more about soon!

LimberMedia

• See Allegra’s Updates on the blog

Other stuff

• Will be helping Brady with Ignite @ Where2.0
• Considering entering GreaseBallRally 2008 with an ambulance or fire engine.



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Allegra and I will be at SFBeta Tonight in San Francisco representing LimberMedia and Black Rock Federal. If you read this and you’re planning on being there too I’d love to catch up… call my cell at 206.755.3739

-Jesse

Last night’s event was so much fun!

Many thanks to Allegra Searle-LeBel, Corprew Reed, Leah Papernick, Noah Iliinsky, and Benjamin Black for helping me with the talk.

The night began with about 200+ people crammed into the bar building popsickle-stick bridges and then testing jumping up and down on them. After all the bridges had been “tested”, things settled down and the 5-minute “Ask later” presentations began.

Bre Pettis (Make:) said “the audience was enthralled as the superstars of local start-ups, creative innovators, scientists, hackers, puzzle-makers, and regular folks doing cool things managed to dump their brains into five minute power-point presentations.”

We got a lot of positive response from the presentation, and we’re planning on doing it again at the next Ignite Seattle in February. Many thanks to Brady Forrest for creating such a cool event!

There should be videos of the event posted soon.