By Ron Jooss
The economic downturn has changed the way we in the credit union business approach our work every day, and that includes those of us who put on conferences. Two months ago, if I had suggested a pay-what-you-can conference fee structure to our CEO, Fred Johnson, he would probably have told me to steer clear of anything having to do with marketing here at CUES. But when Fred made that offer to anyone interested in attending CEO Network 2008—Nov. 2-5 at the Four Seasons Hotel, Las Vegas—in the wake of the current economic disaster, it was viewed on our end as simply the right thing to do.
Creating content for conferences is also a challenge. A session topic that seemed like a home run in a planning meeting six weeks ago is probably still in play, but it may need to be tweaked a bit to produce the same take-home value for conference participants. I've been lucky enough to join my colleague Christopher Stevenson on the phone with two of our CEO Network session speakers to inquire how they intend to update their presentations to reflect the rough waters credit unions are currently navigating.
A lot of you have probably seen Ben Stein, our opening general session speaker on CNN talking about the economic crisis. He doesn't lack for either opinions or insight. I've presented a few of the ideas I took from our telephone conversation with Ben in this article, which provides a preview of his CEO Network presentation.
Christopher and I also spoke with Tom Gardner of The Motley Fool online financial information exchange sites. Gardner is a market maven. The success of "the fool" is a direct reflection of the passion and intuition he has for the market.
Unfortunately, Gardner's intuition does not bring good news for us: In the short term, he said last week, there's no convincing reason to believe the market will rally sustainably higher this year.
But he also had some good news: In the long term, the market will rise ... and today is a fine time to be a long-term investor.
He also shared some of the possible effects of the Paulson Bailout with Christopher. Here's a big one: Regulation of financial companies will assuredly intensify; capital requirements and balance sheet quality are likely targets for reform. Expect to see banks looking like utilities.
But, he noted, there's evidence that CUs are getting an uptick in new deposits. Given the high-profile bank failures, it looks like a flight to comfort.
Hopefully, plenty of you can find a way to join Gardner and Stein in Vegas to come up with more ideas for credit unions to find more reasons for optimism during a tough time.
Ron Jooss edits the General Management and Board sections of CUES' Credit Union Management magazine.
Read more in our economy archive.
