Social Media Round-Up [November, 2018]

It should come as no surprise to those following social media that whenever there is a major industry event that I am attending my twitter account becomes a lot more active. Consider me late to the twitter party, but following encouragement from HPE I am posting tweets more often than I am posting anything else to anywhere else. Yes, you want instant communication then tweet! As they say, go ahead – jump right in! Have you noticed too the increased prompting when on other sites where you publish commentaries and articles you see the dialogue box open up asking you if you want to tweet about what you plan to publish? Certainly, if you are active on LinkedIn for instance, you cannot escape the questioning over your intent to tweet or even to post to Facebook.

This month I was part of a team creating a daily magazine during the SIBOS Sydney 2018 financial event. While SIBOS has yet to deploy massive jumbotrons, as does HPE at its big tent HPE Discover events, there is a group of folks monitoring tweet activity and retweeting whatever they deem worthy of retweeting. All in the name of fostering the appearance of “action coming to you from the exhibition floor” mostly, although some keynote addresses warranted a lot of twitter attention. Of course, without the jumbotrons highlighting tweets and maintaining a running count of who is posting the most tweets, as HPE does, some of the competitive nature of those tweeting lessens and that may be a good thing knowing as I do how many tweets written in the heat of battle make little sense after the event winds up.

It had to be a Sydney thing, of course, but when the daily magazine included I feature I wrote under the heading of Sibos 2018: Sydney’s ongoing pursuit of the ideal currency in which I featured rum and it’s usage as Australia’s first currency, it received more than the usual number of retweets. The three major articles that were carried in the daily magazine are now available online and can be viewed on the BankingTech web site:

Sibos 2018: How blockchain makes banks catch up with fintech
https://www.bankingtech.com/2018/10/how-blockchain-makes-banks-catch-up-with-fintech/

Sibos 2018: Sydney’s ongoing pursuit of the ideal currency
https://www.bankingtech.com/2018/10/sibos-2018-sydneys-ongoing-pursuit-of-the-ideal-currency/

 Sibos 2018: Can banking embrace AI to better foster trust?
https://www.bankingtech.com/2018/10/sibos-2018-can-banking-embrace-ai-to-better-foster-trust/

But of course the first article I wrote for SIBOS, some weeks before the event actually kicked off, amused the editor enough to have it published well ahead of the event commencing and it too caught the attention of others:

Are banks and bank branch offices headed to the toilet?
https://www.bankingtech.com/2018/08/are-banks-and-bank-branch-offices-headed-to-the-toilet/

Notice the pattern? While it wouldn’t be fair to say that a tabloid mentality is developing among those active on social media it does seem that the more outrageous a heading, the more attention it gains. Makes you wonder how adventurous we all should become when talking about NonStop, doesn’t it? Who’s up for posting the story, NonStop Stops Non-x86! Or, something like that! However, talking about outrageous headings, one that stirred up some attention on twitter around the same time as bankers were getting ready to leave the SIBOS event was commentary on a Gartner research note.

Blogger Chris Skinner (who I have referenced in early Social Media Roudn-Up updates to NonStop Insider), posted the following:

Gartner: you’re better than this

I got this headline today:

Most banks will be made irrelevant by 2030 – Gartner

Within 12 years time, 80% of financial firms will either go out of business or be rendered irrelevant by new competition, changing customer behaviour and advancements in technology, according to forecasts by Gartner.

And it really made me mad because it’s complete rubbish. I cannot believe who authorised this to be released at Gartner, a company that makes lots of revenue from banks, as it’s like shooting yourself in the foot, cutting your nose off to spite your face and sticking your middle finger up at your boss all in one go. What idiot wrote this?

To me, it’s just another of those sensationalist headlines that tries to beat the masochistic banker into waking up and shaking up but, to be truthful, I’m completely fed up with such headlines. I don’t believe them and it is not going to happen.

There are attention getting headlines, of course and then there are headlines that get too much attention. In general Gartner provides a valuable service to the community but on this occasion I am tending to side with the blogger. Serving financial institutions is a big part of the NonStop business and for many of the members of the NonStop community, there is almost daily contact between this community group and the HPE team. I see no evidence of four out of five banks disappearing by 2030 even as I see evidence that most of them are aware of change and the transformation occurring all around them.

But then again, perhaps the catchy and indeed somewhat outrageous headline achieved what the Gartner analyst wanted – a much broader conversation and perhaps in writing just these few words, I have become part of that conversation? If not with this commentary here then perhaps with my own catchy headlines as above, I am getting bankers talking as well.

And isn’t that what social media is proving exceptionally good at provoking – conversation when conversations need to happen? All that now needs to happen is for more members of the NonStop community to join me in these conversations so yes, pick a couple of twitter handles to follow and join me; jump right in!