Welcome to our site

We launched our first Give With Us site today for Verity Credit Union.

Give With Us was created as an extension of a partnership between Trabian and Filene’s i3 Group in order to facilitate a connection between credit unions, their members and the community at large.

Give With Us is a blog-style website which allows local organizations to post volunteer opportunities – either single events or ongoing events. It allows comments from participants, is RSS-enabled, and is integrated with flickr.com, a photo-sharing social media site that allows the credit union and organization to share images from events.

Give With Us leverages new technology to position the credit union as a conduit for change and goodwill in the community. It helps to establish a community around the credit union, something ingrained in the movement since its inception.

For more information on purchasing Give With Us for your credit union, contact Doug Williams or Trey Reeme.

The Filene podcast

Trey and I spent last week in Madison, Wisconsin with The Filene Research Institute.

We were visiting because in the very near future, Filene is going to kick off a podcast (Update: The first podcast episode is live here). We were fortunate enough to help them get it going.

Filene is an idea factory and one of the major innovation catalysts in the credit union industry (for example: later this week they’re hosting a colloquium on ‘large-scale credit union collaboration’). Their podcast will make for a fascinating listen for anyone in the financial industry.

Also, George Hofheimer, Filene’s Chief Research Officer and the show’s host, has a first-rate radio voice.

Podcasting tools

In setting up the podcast, we integrated several tools that came together to make a nice little podcasting system. If you’re looking to get into podcasting yourself, here are a few tools/services we used in their setup:

Evoca -

Filene’s podcast will be interview-driven, and Evoca is the perfect tool for recording conversations and managing audio files on the web. Evoca integrates with both Skype and your standard phone line, and allows you to record conversations straight to the web.

You can manage the audio files with albums and control if a file is public or private. Evoca also generates an RSS feed of your public audio files.

Also, it’s really cheap – $5/month for a bucket of 200 minutes of collective recording time, which renews each month.

PrettyMay -

PrettyMay is a Skype plugin, also for recording conversations. We chose this as the primary recording tool and Evoca as the file management tool because PrettyMay kept the audio quality a little better.

The interface is very easy to use. You click “record call,” and go. It saves the calls as mp3s on your computer. It also manages recorded conversations by timestamping and labeling who you were talking to.

Audacity -

Audacity is very awesome open source (read: “free”) audio-editing software. It’s great for adding music, editing out any unwanted dialogue, splicing together text to make interviewees say things they didn’t really say, and generallypolishing up your show.

This site has tutorials of some of the most fundamental things you’ll need to know to use it.

Trey is a convict, or how the story ends

Also, Trey should have gone to jail this weekend.

Friday, on our way to the airport to go home, Trey was pulled over by a police officer for speeding. As Trey cursed and I snapped pictures with my Macbook’s built-in camera, the officer ran his information in the cop-car. We braced for the ticket. We were pleasantly surprised when he returned and said “I’m going to let you off without a citation.”

“Thank you so much,” said Trey.

“Well, the reason is – because of how fast you were going, I’m legally obligated to arrest you, and I’d rather not right now. Now get out of here before I change my mind.”

I’d bet that’s the first time anyone has ever gotten out of a ticket by going way too fast.

The Symposium is coming together nicely – Colin, Denise, Guy, Jason, Lisa, Lydia, Rob, Ron, and Shari have all confirmed their speaking times – with Denise and Ron taking the stage one after the other. If you’ve followed exchanges on their blogs, you know it’ll be two can’t-miss sessions.

Tim McAlpine has been awarded the at-large speaker slot thanks to an outpouring of support from his fans. He sends the following message to Timvotees:

Speaking of registration, on the newly-minted FORUM Solutions website – disclosure: it’s a Trabian-built site, and we’re darn proud of it :) – you can register and pay online. Also, you can find the speaker schedule and transportation directions here.

By the way, I’m geared up for BarCampBankSeattle and collaborating there with some of my favorite FI bloggers. If you can make it, it promises to be, as Gene calls it, “intense, sort of like the Olympics of Seminars.”

We are very jazzed to report that the redesigned Verity CU blog went live yesterday at http://blog.veritycu.com. Thank you to the whole Verity crew for being such a real, intelligent, and hilarious group of people. This was the best kind of project.

There have already been several very nice comments, and Jim Bruene of netbanker posted a wonderful review here. Thanks, Jim!

Trey and I returned on Saturday from a week-long trip to Seattle. And let me be frank: we had the time of our lives.

To keep this post out of morbid obesity, I’ve broken it up into two parts.

Monday: We heart Verity

After almost two years of crushing on Verity (see figures a, b, c, and d), we finally get to work with them. We spent the day with Laurel McJanet, Terrell Meek and Shari Storm (who masterminded our entire Seattle trip) discussing the three social media sites we’re creating with them.

This includes:

• A redesign of their current employee blog, “Who Are V?”
• A financial literacy blog and podcast, and
• A social restaurant review site for their Passport program.

We also had dim sum, and I learned that I am not savvy with chopsticks.

Tuesday: Denise Wymore’s “Filene Feast”

Tuesday evening Shari, Trey and I headed over to Denise Wymore’s home, where she treated us to the “First Annual Filene Feast.”

Listen. This woman can cook. Her husband Mark is living the good life.

We ate with Carol Schillios, founder of Fabric of Life and the Schillios Consulting Group.

Carol is changing the world. Fabric of Life brings micro-credit, education, and affordable health care programs to developing countries worldwide. Her donation site says this about her current project:

Our project in Mali, West Africa, is helping begging girl-children off the streets and into their own businesses. To be able to break the begging cycle and attend the 18-month training, we support the students’ food and transportation needs for just $20 a week.

Carol is also hilarious, feisty, and came decked out in traditional African garb. It was a great night.

Wednesday: Credit Unions of Washington…word

Around a year ago, we made open and bitter fun of a Super Bowl spot put out by The Credit Unions of Washington. This became the start of a beautiful relationship. Instead of slapping us with a cease and desist, like we probably deserved, their then-PR Director Jamie Chase invited us up to speak at their annual convention.

One thing lead to another, and on Wednesday we ended up talking with them about how to integrate social media into their ‘07 campaign.

The campaign is all about narrative and untold stories. We proposed they use Give With Us, branded specifically to their campaign, as a way to ignite those stories in the community.

The jury’s still out on how this will play out, but we’ll keep you posted.

That night Shari took us to the Experience Music Project and Trey and I were like hyperactive kids in a very sugary candy store.

Check out photos from the trip on our Flickr page, and stay tuned for Part 2.

Update: Part 2 is here.