Welcome to our site

As Brent noted before, this week all of our team members have traveled to Fishers, IN for The Partnership Symposium. This is the first conference we’ve been a part of hosting and it promises to be a great time.

We are co-hosting The Symposium with Forum Solutions. We decided to pool our resources which has led to an all star speaker lineup as you can see below:

• Lydia Johnson from Vancity ‚Äì “Lending Innovation”
• Jason Knight from Wesabe ‚Äì “Personal Finance Resurgence”
• Guy Messick from cusolaw.com ‚Äì “Using Collaboration to Transform Credit Unions”
• Tim McAlpine from Currency Marketing ‚Äì “Where Does Traditional Marketing Fit into a Web 2.0 World?”
• Our very own Trey Reeme ‚Äì “Credit Union Guide to Social Media” (with Shari Storm)
• Lisa Renner from Beyond Marketing ‚Äì “Trend Spotting”
• Robert Rutkowski from Current Issues in Credit Union podcast ‚Äì “When Does a Credit Union Need Legal Counsel & Truth in Lending Update”
• Ron Shevlin from Marketing ROI ‚Äì “Connect. Cooperate. Collaborate. Debate.” (lively session/debate with Denise Wymore)
• Shari Storm from Verity Credit Union ‚Äì “Credit Union Guide to Social Media” (with Trey Reeme)
• Denise Wymore the marketing guru ‚Äì “Connect. Cooperate. Collaborate. Debate.” (lively session/debate with Ron Shevlin)

Be sure to stay tuned to Opensourcecu.com for some live blogging action. Twitter will also be updated with thoughts from the Trabian team (and probably others attending the conference).

This conference will undoubtedly be a beautiful thing; knowledge will be shared, connections will be made, fun will be had. If you’re coming, we can’t wait to meet you. If you’re not coming we’ll do our best to share the good times via the web and remind you to put it on your calendar for next year.

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.

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.

At BarCampBank I confessed that blogging stresses me out a little bit. There’s always so much going on, so much to say, so many ideas that it can be overwhelming to sit down and tackle any one of them with clarity.

I was feeling this yesterday – I knew I wanted to write a post, but wading through the potential topics was, as they say, like drinking from a fire hose. So I gave up, grabbing a book to distract myself. I’m reading Chip Kidd’s novel “The Cheese Monkeys.” Here’s what I read:

“Always remember: Limits are possibilities. That sounds like Orwell, I know. It’s not – it’s Patton. Formal restrictions, contrary to what you might think, free you up by allowing you to concentrate on purer ideas.

As graphic designers you want the world as your palette. But beware: You can be crippled by too many choices, especially if you don’t know what your goals are.”

One of the most difficult but important challenges in creative work – whether it’s writing, design, media strategy, product innovation, or gardening – is narrowing the focus and creating self-imposed limitations.

In visual design, using a pen and paper before you even think about touching a computer is key. Photoshop has so many bells and whistles, it’s easy to get caught up in the ancillary aesthetics before working out the concept. Make sure your house has a foundation before you hang up curtains.

In our web design process, we limit ourselves and the client by starting each design with a site wireframe (for example: Filene’s initial wireframe). It is unimpressive to look at (a common client reaction is “What’s with all the grey boxes?”), but crucial because it is the underpinning of the entire design. This step forces everyone involved to focus on information architecture and usability before we worry about the pretties.

By the same token…

Social marketers: Think focused, initiated communities over huge vanilla communities.

Podcasters: Develop each episode around a predefined template (ex: intro, topic, break with contact info, topic, exit) to help keep it organized and easy to produce.

Web application designers: Build less. Limit features to only what is necessary.

Gardeners: I dunno. Good luck.

Earlier this week, I worked from a Starbucks (my second office) with one of my best friends, Larry Hooper. He’s a musician, and as I designed websites he worked on song lyrics. At some point, his songwriting transitioned into haikus about our Starbucks experience. I thought they were worth sharing. So here you go:

Hey Blue-tooth Talker,
you look like a crazy guy
talking to yourself.

People talking loud
At a table dead center.
Oh so important.

e-mail, myspace, aim
twitter, flickr, MSN
blackberry cell phone

Guy there on brown couch
posing very seductive.
Inappropriate.

Time to leave here now.
Goodbye Starbucks people
and expensive drinks.

Have a happy Labor Day, folks.