By Matt Dean on June 25, 2008
Update: Mark brought up some interesting points in his comment (see below), and while the overarching message of this post still stands, I didn’t intend to discourage the use of open source software throughout a credit union. Mark and I will be discussing this issue tomorrow (Friday the 27th) from 3 to 5 EST in the chat with the ceo chat room if you’d like to drop by!
For the past six months our team has been hard at work rewriting the content management system that runs all of the websites we produce. While we still have quite a few improvements in store for our CMS, we’ve launched several sites on it in the past couple of months and are finally ready to wean ourselves off of the Red Bull.
Unfortunately, during the rewrite it became clear that we’re not ready to open source the CMS as we had promised earlier. A few of our clients have raised legitimate concerns about the vulnerability of a system whose source code is exposed to the public, particularly one without the developer base of software such as Linux or MySQL, and we certainly don’t want to put those clients at risk in any way.
While we have decided not to release our source code, we do plan to share snippets of code that we’ve found helpful and perhaps release some plugins that other developers can use in their Rails projects. We’re also happy to answer any Rails questions you may have, either via email at development@trabian.com or in a Campfire chat with your development team.
If you have any questions about this decision, please feel free to email me at matt@trabian.com or meet me in my daily Campfire chat between 3 and 4 pm EST on weekdays.
Thanks for your understanding!
By Doug Williams on April 23, 2008
I’m long overdue on this post. Apologies to our new friends in central Ohio.
Hopewell Federal Credit Union has recently deployed GiveWith.Us. The site, http://hopewellfcu.givewith.us will connect the Heath and Newark, Ohio communities with the credit union and provide a resource for non-profits and local groups to connect with volunteers.
We’ve been working with SELCO Community Credit Union in Eugene, Oregon, to complete the feature set for GWU to make it more user-friendly and easier to navigate. The final changes are near completion and will be rolled out soon.
Hopewell FCU, née Heath Federal Credit Union, then Newark Aerospace Federal Credit Union, serves Licking County, Ohio, east of Columbus. A little trivia for you from Hopewell’s website:
Just a stone’s throw from our main office you can visit the Newark Earthworks Complex of prehistoric Indian earthworks – better known to locals in the area as the mounds. These earthly mounds are unique and some say you can still find arrowheads around the surrounding mounds. The mounds form geometric shapes and some rise to impressive heights. Pretty impressive, considering the Hopewell mound building era began around 300 B.C. to 1500 A.D. There’s still debate as to what the Hopewell Indians used them for, but most historians believe they were created for burial and religious rites.
So, to Cammie and all the staff at Hopewell FCU: Welcome!
By Charlie Trotter on March 20, 2008
Our very own Matt Dean was included in a recent CU Times article highlighting five sassy young entrepreneurs. The article is titled Gen Y Entrepreneurs Shake Up CU Industry, Helping to Reveal Authenticity.
Here are two snippets from the article, which is chock-full of some great points and insights from the interviewees.
Matt had some great thoughts on CUs engaging young people without necessarily having to wear a backwards hat and drop hip-hop references.
“The best business decision a credit union can make is rekindling the focus on the membership and reigniting their evangelistic feel to encourage passion and empower younger staff, ... These are our future leaders; they need to be engaged. People are more willing to stick around if they feel that the value of what they are a part of is bigger than themselves.”
(Who knew he was so smart? Me.)
Creative Brand Communications CEO Jeff Stephens made some bang-on comments on the practice of a CU hanging it’s hat on better service over different service.
“It is a cliché. So you define this great customer service as knowing everyone by name, friendly, pleasant staff, being responsive to member’s needs, and those attributes are all good and positive, but those alone won’t differentiate that credit union. ... Being nicer is not different, and the more credit unions succeed at being nicer the more they all seem the same. You build a position only you can occupy.”
Amen, right?
I don’t want to spoil any more of the article than I have. Get over there and read it.
By Doug Williams on March 18, 2008
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!
By Brent Dixon on March 04, 2008
