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Sibos Toronto - No 'Big Bang' kick-off
Guest blogger, Chris Pickles, head of industry initiatives, BT, says day one of the Sibos conference in Toronto has not resulted in any new or dramatic topics - it's all about the networking, with technology playing second fiddle.Walking into the Sibos exhibition hall this morning was like walking onto a carousel that was already turning. There’s no 'Big Bang” kick-off – everyone is already down to work and having meetings, attending workshop sessions or doing those calls back to the office to clear the decks. More than 7,000 people have registered to attend, so there are a lot of people milling about the different floors of the multi-storey conference centre and going up and down the dozens of escalators.
The exhibition floor is about four storeys down in the basement of the conference centre, with the parallel streams of conference sessions and open theatres spread over multiple floors and the Plenary theatre is in a separate building. Sibos always tests the strength of your legs, and this year’s is as tough as any.
So far we’re not hearing topics that are anything particularly new or dramatic. It’s the networking that counts – not the IT networking but bankers talking to bankers about banking. The technology takes second place.
Coming to Sibos from Europe, it makes you realise the lack of meaningful venues that exist in the European time zone for discussing how operations in the payments and post-trade securities sectors can benefit from different technology. Most conferences for these sectors are about “isn’t regulation a terrible thing”, “how did PayPal do it without banks” and “when will SEPA happen” - but there’s almost no discussion about how technology can be applied to make business operations better.
Sibos was in Amsterdam in 2010, and it looks like it won’t be back in Europe again until maybe 2016. That means that you have to take the maximum benefit from Sibos while you’re here each year, and make as many useful contacts as possible.
Date Posted:20th September 2011