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At the start of the year, we promised big things. Here comes thing one.

We’re moving Trabian World Headquarters to Indianapolis. Well actually Fishers, Indiana. In less than three weeks.

We’ll be occupying some fancy office space at the FORUM Credit Union campus.

Why are we moving? First, we’re working with FORUM Solutions on some exciting projects. They’re a great company with a great culture, and there’s a ton of synergy when we’re in the same room.

Second, our lack of ties to Dallas: it’s where we happen to live. And starting March 1, that won’t be entirely true. Back in the day, our tagline was “Work anywhere” (creative code talk for “we work out of an apartment and that’s ok”). Our new VP of Business Development Doug Williams lives (and will continue to live) in NYC. Brent and Charlie will continue to call Dallas their home but will be staying for extended periods of time in Indy with the rest of the crew.

We’ve already been fielding questions like, “Are you going to start wearing khakis all the time?” and “Are you becoming a CUSO?” The answers are “no” (ok, well maybe some of us on occasion) and “no” respectively.

Picking up from Part 1 of my and Trey’s Seattle experience…

Thursday: Social Media with the KCCCU

On Thursday Trey and I spoke for the King County Chapter of Credit Unions at the beautiful Bell Harbor Conference Center. The KCCCU has even more enthusiasm than their name has C’s.

Trey and I gave two talks. The first was a half hour on the importance of knowing what people are saying about your business on the social web.

We opened up with several credit union member quotes from the blogosphere. Here are a few favorites (I’m not going to link to the actual posts, because I’d rather not deal with the drama. If you really want to know where they’re from, email me.):

“Dear XXXXXXXX (formerly known as XXXXXX XXXXXX Credit Union), I hate you.”
- Rebecca

“If you can get into First Tech Credit Union – do it.They are wonderful.”
- Greg

“XXXXXXX XXXXX Credit Union sucks. Their website is riddled with blank/error pages.”
-Becky

“I have been a member of BECU since 1970’s..it is the absolute best place to bank…they have great service are so much cheaper than a bank.”
- Linda S.

Our main point was that although business blogging is not for everybody, listening is.

The second talk was really a room-wide conversation. The whole lot of us sat around and chatted about:

• Peer-to-peer lending
• MySpace, and when it’s appropriate for a credit union (rarely, if ever)
• Using consumer generated media for ethnographic research
• Wikis
• Social sites like YouTube, Flickr, and LinkedIn
• Pretty much anything else they wanted to ask about. If we didn’t know the answer, we Googled it.

Afterwards we put on a bib and stuffed ourselves with seafood.

Friday: The Blogging Workshop

We spent Friday doing a blogging workshop for the Verity Credit Union bloggers. It was in this workshop that Verity’s Tina Hall gave us a seriously sweet “What Would a Unicorn Do?” folder.

Here are a few blogging best-practice highlights from the discussion:

• Keep your content scannable with short paragraphs and section subheadings
• When responding to negative comments, never make it personal
• Increase comments by asking open-ended questions and commenting on other like-minded blogs
• If you have writer’s block -
  • Do an interview (let the interviewee do the writing)
  • Don’t be afraid to pass ideas along from other blogs (attribution is key)
  • And when all else fails…use the Trey Formula.

For our last night in Seattle, the Verity kids took us out on the town. I met a food scientist. We were introduced to the Stout Float, which is a delicious stout beer mixed with ice cream. Every single person at our table was highly entertaining.

Like I said – the time of our lives.

I decided to pull a snippet from our blog this time last year, because it’s more relevant than ever:

Just wanted to take a minute to spread a little love out to all of our friends, clients, friends who are clients, and anyone else who might be dropping by to see what’s going on. We really appreciate all that you’ve done for us, and realize that without you we wouldn’t get to have jobs that we love.

Without you, we’d just be a bunch of rapscallions with no rhyme or reason. Thanks for the rhyme and thanks for the reason.

Schmoopiness complete.

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.

Trey and I just got back from an incredible trip to Seattle. I’ll be posting in-depth about the experience.

In the meantime, I want to share this video from the Digital Ethnography group at Kansas State University. It captures the power of this whole Web 2.0 thing in less than five minutes, and makes my toes tingle.

High five to Doug True for passing it along.