Scenes from CUNA's Community CU Conference

Attendees learn a systematic approach to creativity.

October 26, 2011

Attendees at CUNA’s Community Credit Union and Growth Conference learned a systematic approach to creativity and discovered how to develop, refine, communicate, and implement new ideas, thanks to the opening keynote address from Doug Hall.

The conference runs through Oct. 27 in San Francisco.

Check out some scenes from day one at the conference:

	Before Doug Hall, founder/CEO of Eureka! Ranch, takes the stage during Tuesday’s opening keynote address, CUNA's Angela Prestil (left), director of sales culture development, and Amy Nigrelli, vice president of marketing communications, warm up with their own brand of innovative sparring.
What’s your CU’s growth objective? “We're looking for ways to strengthen our loan portfolio, including small business loans,” Donna Olsen, senior vice president, lending for Tinker FCU, Tinker AFB, Okla., tells Art Salgado, supervisory committee member, Del Norte CU, Los Alamos, N.M. Olsen and Salgado shared notes before the start of CUNA's Community CU & Growth Conference Tuesday.
	Behind desk from left: Marianne McCrary and Meghann Dawson welcome attendees to CUNA's Community CU & Growth Conference in San Francisco Monday. The conference features a legislative and regulatory update, a Mad City Money simulation with local high schoolers, and workshops on developing a sales culture and building a younger cooperative. A new session on the agenda is a Wednesday roundtable on Bank Transfer Day, notes Dawson, CUNA's manager of instructional design.
"I'm all in on CUs," entrepreneur and opening keynoter Doug Hall tells Community CU & Growth Conference attendees. But like a lot of successful businesses that start small and smart, "we get stupid." Develop a strategy for innovation to serve members. In fact, "you are their last hope—and right now, they don't know what they don't know." Innovation will require failure but learn to "fail fast and fail cheap," he says. Each failure gains momentum and increases your odds for success.