1. To live with the theme of Factory, renamed the blog and moved the posts to Fin Factory (http://finfactory.wordpress.com).

2. Renamed it for broader coverage from Insurance to Finance

See you around at Fin Factory

p.s. considered deleting the old name, but didnt as wordpress says it would not have freed the name.

Stephen Collins, a social media strategist, active blogger and founder of acidlabs and now after meeting him i can say a good chap to know. So here he was in Sydney @ E2EF conducting a workshop and tweeting about the event. I thought it would be good to catch up with him,  wasnt too sure if he will be able to find time to catch up, however after couple of twitter DM’s and confusions about time and venue we were able to catch up for a breakfast at central. This is one thing i really like about web2.0 community people out there really believe in Collaboration and conversations, they are happy to talk and explore … *Open* in true sense of the word. At least that is my experience so far with whomsoever i have met.

Breakfast Table discussion

I had no Agenda in mind, however there were few things i wanted to talk about. But then i thought lets do the Unmeeting! with the Chief trouble maker (That’s what he calls himself) of acidlabs. And true enough he was easy to get along with friendly, open, full of ideas, knowledge and passion. Then it was general chit o chat on varioud topics around web2.0, industry and obviously TED. I will now try to reproduce some of our interesting discussion. It wasnt an interview, so I am not quoting him and its completely based on memory and understanding (Trib, feel free to correct me if I am wrong anywhere!)

Why Acid Labs? – Acid burns and lab is a place where Ideas are worked on, acid labs is a place for burning ideas

Buddha – on the visiting card, presentation and other brand communications – Buddha signifies knowledge and personally he find Buddha’s knowledge to be most solid

Social media / E2.0 in Financial sector -  This is one topic, I was interested in from the point of view of my current involvement with the financial sector. And his views only echoed with what is generally true that most of the experiments are happening behind the firewall for internal collaboration and communications. B2C E2.0 is still in its early stages, there are couple of top companies experimeting with various ideas. Economic slowdown has effected that too, for focus is again on the core and non sexy things. Ideas presented to Financial companies for various projects however for them these are great innovations, but not for immediate investment, may be two years down the line!! Check Web2.0 Reality check by David Backley from Westpac at E2EF (Link). E2.0 Long way to go!

TED - I have always found TED talks to be very inspiring and engaging. Recently in Feb Stephen was at TED conference and he will be giving a keynote on his TED experience at hrfutures conference on 26th Feb. So it was worth talking about his experience there to listen to the great speakers in person. According to him it was awesome. Aura of the conference in itself was so very inspiring. Just imagine you are surrounded by people from varied backgrounds, all totally unrelated and yet everybody beleives in one tenet – Everything is possible, and can be achieved. People full of passion, enthusiasm and ready to take on any challenge forget about current credit crisis! It was super! way above his expectations For all you TED fans in India TED is coming to India this November at Infosys campus and later in march TED speeches will be available in many other languages. (Will be talking more about this on Idea Factory)

So much for the Wonderful breakfast. Thanks Stephen!

Thanks to the blogs, twitters and live journalists we have various options to check the buzz -

E2EF blog

Live Twitter

If you are like me, go follow it virtually

• part of Australian Insurance ecosystem – Insurance company, Insurance broker, Consumer, Technology vendor. I said Australia because that is where I am currently based out of.

• Passionate about collaboration, web2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and other upcoming technologies like social netowrking etc etc

• Interested in knowing more about Technology in Insurance companies  and how they are embracing above said emerging trends.

Though my love for insurance is relatively new (six months) but my love for Web2.0 is nothing new, I have been sharing my thoughts  at my personal blog for a long time now. However as my current job requires me to keep myself updated with the technology and technology trends in Insurance sector and to be on top of the technology needs of  Financial (primarily Insurance) space. I am starting this blog in a hope to share my knowledge with the relevant crowd, start a meaningful conversation with relevant people  so that we all can benefit from what they call as “wisdom of crowd”

Till the time buzz starts here, I inivite you to visit Idea Factory and explore other coversations.