Welcome to our site

We’re a company based in Indianapolis, so we are very influenced by Peyton Manning. We don’t often win Super Bowls, but we do often call audibles.

Matt and I were preparing for our presentation tomorrow (March 18, 2008 at 9:45 a.m. PDT) and decided to change our presentation. We know the handouts are printed and nicely bound, but we felt it more important to make changes now and deliver a great presentation.

With my apologies to Diane and the rest of the staff at the California and Nevada Credit Union League, here are our slides for the presentation:

Download the notes in PDF here

Download the slides in PDF here

View the slides here

Enjoy!

Selco Community Credit Union, in Eugene, Oregon, launched the second GiveWith.Us site developed by Trabian.

Although it’s technically the second launch, Selco has actually been playing with us in the GiveWith.Us sand box for over a year now. Selco was a part of the Filene i3 team that worked with us to develop My Community Connection, the precursor to GiveWith.Us Рthe veritable IIe to the Macintosh.

Selco has been using MCC with success for a year and will also be working with us as we develop the front-page widget to compliment and cross-promote the site. So, to say Selco is launching GiveWith.Us is a bit of a misnomer. They’ve helped us upgrade the Firebird to KITT.

All that, and they are lucky enough to call the best college town ever home (sorry, it’s my list, and Madison, Boulder, Athens, Austin, Bloomington and the rest are all vying for second place).

Brent and I just wrapped up a presentation at a CUES conference in Boston (well, in Westborough, which is about 30 minutes from Logan airport, and about three hours if you take the route we did – Mass Pike to Rte. 30 to Absolutely Lost Lane and left on Where the @#$% are we in Wellesley).

What strikes me more and more about Gen-Y and marketing to youth is the notion that Gen-Y have the same goals as Boomers just as Boomers had the same goals as the “Greatest,” to build wealth.

I’m struck by how credit unions are focused on breaking out a marketing message to Gen-Y when in reality, they should speak to Gen-Y as they speak to their “grown up” members. Like adults.

Make products relevant, communicate them simply, and consider using new means of communication in a defined way. Boomers have blogs. Great blogs. Gen-Y needs IRAs.

CU’s need to see that we’re all on common ground, no matter how differently we sometimes communicate.

I’ve attached the slides (PDF download or view on the web), in case you want to look at them. Clearly, they’re better consumed in person.

For the first time since March, when we packed up and road-tripped the office from Plano, TX to Fishers, IN, every single member of Trabian is in the same town. In the same office. It’s incredible.

We’re all in town for the Partnership Symposium, the joint conference/bash we’re throwing with our buddies at Forum Solutions. The Symposium kicks off in less than two days, and we’re all pins and needles.

But this isn’t just about having every Trabian (it’s a noun too) in slapping distance. This week we’ll finally get to hang out – in person, for the first time – with friends like Ron Shevlin, Rob Rutkowski, and Matt Davis ‘The Credit Union Warrior’.

We’ve built some incredible relationships and learned to run our business together using the social web. But, once again, there’s nothing like real-life human interaction.

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.