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A week from today, I’ll begin my career at SF Fire CU.

I can’t express how much I’m looking forward to being part of this team – one I’ve long admired from a distance.

If I’m a little hard to find over the next week, check any McDonald’s playgrounds between Austin and San Francisco.

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• Categories Explaining Myself

for the past three years has meant:

Learning banking;

Listening more than talking;

Ignoring twitter;

Creating for fun, not fans.

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• Categories Explaining Myself

if Walmart succeeded at doing it, how bad would it really be for the consumer?

Hat tip to Colin for his post here.  I remember the protests within the banking industry well.

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• Categories FI nerd stuff

Robbie got it right:

Changes to the member business lending cap. That’s a game changer. A partnership developed between FSCC, CUSC, PSCU, Fidelity, etc that enables all credit unions to become shared branches automatically. That’s a game changer….

Daily life at a credit union isn’t glamorous and fun. It is trying to find a way to help a teller do a process 1 minute faster. It is about finding a better checking product to match up with the maturity of your credit card portfolio.

I hope these points don’t get lost in his post. (BTW, I would argue that daily life on the CU side of the desk is, indeed, fun.)

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• Categories FI nerd stuff

On Banking Kismet, George highlights Apple’s e-Wallet application patent submission covered on Patently Apple.

See the aggregation discussion in part 2 of the story:

Types of Accounts: As illustrated by the screen 120, the presently stored accounts may be organized and displayed in accordance with certain categories. For instance, the account information screen 120 may display a first listing 122 of presently stored credit card accounts, a second listing 124 of presently stored banking accounts, a third listing 126 of presently stored non-cash accounts, as well as additional listings 128 of other accounts, which may include charge cards or loyalty cards associated with a specific vendor or retailer.

I could easily see PFM eventually seamlessly integrated into the payment device itself.  It’s one thing to have PFM tools after a purchase to analyze what you’ve done and to help you make decisions about what to do next in managing your finances.  What happens if that guide is built into the device through which you’re paying?

Regarding the wallet becoming fully digital, it’s not if but when (cliche alert!).

And if not from Apple, who?

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• Categories FI nerd stuff

Reading children’s books aloud is therapeutic for one who reads corporate email all day.

Giving gifts is so much better than getting gifts ever was.

Watch every word you say. And how you say it.

Today’s toddler will treat touch interfaces like we treat keyboard and mouse.

Exposing a child to exotic foods young makes her less picky as she grows older.

Never change a diaper on a bed.

You can never spend too much time with your children.

Limit TV, but make sure to record Word World on PBS. Best show ever for kiddos.

Parenting manuals are like business books: one book will directly conflict the next.

I’d rather stare at a finger painting from my two-year-old than any museum piece. (And I took enough Art History in college to know van Eyck from van Gogh.)

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• Categories Explaining Myself, Improvement

DJ and the Bear has quickly turned into one of my favorite blogs.  As Mark McSpadden would say, it’s a five on the nerd scale (if you remember that, you’ve been around CU blogs for a while).

From a great post today called “The Orphan Decade” where DJ discusses lessons that should’ve been learned:

Perhaps the one area in which more lessons were there to be learned was in financial institution arena.  Since money makes the world go around, it’s vital to keep that money flowing.  Yet, we came within a hair of witnessing the upending of the entire financial structure.

So, we should have made progress on getting away from the “too big to fail” mentality which almost destroyed the system.  We should have made progress on derivative market reform, especially regarding credit default swaps. We should have made progress on reforms in accounting and loss recognition on bank balance sheets.  We should have started to deal with long-term solutions for Fannie and Freddie other than throwing in the towel and just having the Treasury and taxpayers take on the burden of the mortgage business.  We certainly should have learned that bankers will always shoot-for-the-moon when given access to virtually free money for funding.

Yet, nothing has changed.

The lessons were there for the learning, but we (collectively speaking with the government) seemed be paralyzed by the initial shocks and then were inept at developing and implementing any future vision.  With global investment bankers now emboldened by the “miraculous” recovery and the lack of governmental demand for changes and protection, the opportunity for reform is slipping away.  This means the opportunity for the next meltdown is around some corner ahead.

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• Categories FI nerd stuff

I’m the SVP of Information Technology for SF Fire Credit Union, and I live in the Bay Area.

Technologist, speaker, writer and web guy.

Find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. more easily than you can in person.

BTW, my views are my views alone. Don't assume that I'm speaking on behalf of my employer.