Mark McSpadden

The idea has been burning a hole in my brain for the last 3 or 4 months, and I told my self if the thought persisted until June 1, I would share it with everyone else. So here goes.

(What follows is much more ‘stream of consciousness’ than business plan.)

I would like to start a credit union for Dallas area designers and developers. The goal would be to help members of this unique community buy the tools (and toys) of their trade.

I’m thinking about things like “Adobe Loans” or “Monitor Loans” and maybe even structured savings accounts for those that want save up for these and other toys.

One of the unique things about this group is that there is a large number of freelancers. (Can a copy of a 6 month contract help secure a loan? I don’t see why not.)

I’ve been looking into how to start a CU and honestly I’ve got a ton of questions like:

• Does it really matter whether I go for a State or Federal charter?
• How much in assets does the CU need in order to do…anything?
• Do I need a physical address?
• Oh yeah, how do you run a CU with 0 staff?
• Is this whole thing even feasible?

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg I’m sure.

If anyone is interested in imparting CU wisdom my direction, please do. I know many in the CU world have been talking about a new kind of credit union, I think it’s time to start seeing if that can be a reality.

Call me, email me, twitter me. (469.226.9488, markmcspadden [at] gmail, markmcspadden)

Note: To me this all sounds like a great fit for a credit union, but I’m also open to looking other FI models if they would serve this model better. (A prosper group may be able to achieve much of what I’m talking about.)

I was reading Jim Bruene’s Mobile Money and Banking today an I got into his most recent article about SMS Banking. I’m interested in the subject and probably would have just stored it away in my mental file, however, Jim was offering a $5 Starbucks gift card just for posting a “substantive comment.”

Having already been to Starbucks today (and $6 poorer for it) I thought I’d share my thoughts on the impact that cell phone service providers will have on the future of SMS and Mobile web banking.

Not long after I submit my comment, Jim emails me to get my physical address so he can mail me the gift card. This exchange struck both of us as kind of funny. We are talking about checking our bank balances and transferring money on cell phones, yet to get me a Starbucks gift card, Jim was going to have to physically go to a Starbucks¹, buy a $5 gift card, put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it, and send it half way across the country to my place. :)

Jim did point out that we’ve come a long way to get to the Starbucks gift card, but it’s pretty apparent to me that we’ve still got a ways to go.

¹ Starbucks does sell gift cards through their website that you can have delivered to anyone you want, however the smallest increment they offer is $15.

I was doing more normal feed scan on Tuesday, when I came across an article by Robbie Wright titled Making RSS Easy. Little did I know it would steal half of my week.

What Robbie and the world didn’t know is that at my day job I’ve been hacking away at a community site for bankers that is all about making industry specific information easier to find and use. With that in mind I started hacking away trying to aggregate FI feeds. The results are as follows:

• Six compiled FI feeds
• A splash page for Banktastic complete with Google Analytics
• A mailing list for the Banktastic Beta Launch
• A deadline for Banktastic Beta

The moral of the story: Don’t read Robbie’s blog :)

Day 2…wow…what a day. Started with a great session on banker to banker collaboration and ended with a monumental whiteboard of promise and hope. Sound a little dramatic…maybe…but then again maybe not. The amount of space it is taking up in my mind can only be explained by something that truly is revolutionary.

Even with the picture of that whiteboard almost tattooed in my mind, the thing that sticks with me the most from Day 2, is Jesse’s unwillingness to let the rest of us settle for the Jesse Robbins solution. There were several times in our afternoon discussion where I could almost feel the room waiting to let Jesse take this project and run all the way with it, filling us in where appropriate. However, much to Jesse’s credit, that was not the path that was taken, nor was it the path that was needed. What needed to happen was a room full people talking to a whiteboard, venting frustrations and forging solutions.

And now we sit with an even greater task ahead, continuing forward without sitting in the same room and staring at each other until someone speaks. I am excited about the road ahead, not just for the promise of an open source solution to an industry issue, but also for the collaboration that will occur between bright people and experimentation of the technologies that will best facilitate this conversation.

Day 1 of BCBS was a whirlwind and honestly wore me out. (Hence I’m recapping in the morning and not last night.) It was my first BarCamp event in general and I have to say, I’m sold!

But even beyond the BarCamp experience, being trapped in a room all day with people that eat, sleep, drink, and breathe the financial industry is truly unique. I said it last night and I mention it in the sidebar of this blog, passionate people are awesome! They are contagious. For all the talk about how bad corporate cultures can become in the presence of a few bad people, I have think that just the presence of one of these people in an organization is culture changing and if you were lucky enough to have two I would expect nothing less than earthshaking innovation.

Well it’s off to Day 2!

It’s official, Brad and I are on a collision course with the first BarCampBank in the US, BarCampBankSeattle!

I’ve got so much to do to get ready for this thing that it’s stupid, so the post ends here.

There are not enough exclamation marks in the world to follow that title. I’m so happy to finally have this app up and running and waiting for the world to embrace it.

Ok…so it’s really not targeted at the whole world…just the world of Financial Institutions and their Risk Assessments. (But that’s still a good sized world!)

Check out the full announcement at: blog.riskkey.com

I hope to follow this launch with several posts about my experience over the last month in trying to push this thing to launch. Should be some fun JS, RoR, and UI discussion!