Making sense of the Money 2020 craziness – the Las Vegas 2018 edition

To each her own way of organizing for and experiencing Money 2020. I know some like to plan each day to the minute, making sure they are booked for meetings – no downtime shall be tolerated – and choose each of the sessions they will attend with great care. Others, and I have definitely been in this camp, like to wing it and let themselves be carried away by the ambient craziness.

I do like to meet at the venue, in so doing, aided by a pinch of serendipity and a splash of luck. No scheduled meetings for me. I have also not planned the sessions I wanted to attend ahead of the event, preferring the whim of the day to lead me. On this latter point, after having checked the agenda a few minutes ago I have decided to be more rigorous with my planning. Indeed, I was shocked, positively so, by the 18 topics at hand and the plethora of sessions for all four days. Have the Money 2020 organizers upped their game? I believe so given the number of very intriguing sessions I found while skimming through the entire agenda. Either that or I was not paying attention at all in 2017.

Without further ado, here is the short list of topics and sessions I will endeavor to attend – unless serendipity & luck force my attention elsewhere – from October 21 til October 24:

• General Session Keynotes:
• “The future of banking, fintech or tech fin”, moderated by Jim Marousco-publisher of the The Financial Brand on Monday 22ndat 11:15am
• “Gradually then suddenly, the unbundling of the bank”, with Anand Sanwal, CEO and co-founder of CB Insights on Monday 22ndat 11:35am
• “Hey Alexa, what’s next for voice commerce”, with Patrick Gauthierfrom Amazon on Tuesday 23rdat 10:50am
• “Meet Interstellar: tokens as the new form of value”, moderated by David BirchDirector of Innovation of Consult Hyperion, with Adam Ludwinco-founder and CEO of Interstellar and Jed McCaleb, co-founder and CTO of Interstellar. I mean, David and Adam are two of my favorite people in the world, so there.

• AI & Deep Learning: The entire track looks very enticing and is chaired by none other than David Shrier, Associate Fellow, University of Oxford; Lecturer & Futurist, MIT Media Lab; Founder & CEO, Distilled Analytics, so I know the quality of the content will be very high.
• Automation in Financial Services: hype of reality, on October 21 at 9:55am

• Blockchain & Crypto: This topic is chaired by Ian Khan, Filmmaker & Technology Futurist, Futuracy. I pored over every session of this track and I want to attend all of them. As simple as that. This topic will take place on Tuesday 23rdfrom 8:25am til 3:20pm. Lord give me strength!

• Startup Challenge:Well, I am moderating the Group 2 semifinal on Monday 22ndat 1pm, so it would be poor form for me not to attend. Enough said.

• The Fintech Revolution:chaired by John Rampton, Writer, Forbes; Founder, Wheelhouse Partners; and Founder & CEO, Dueand my good friend Chris Skinner, Author & Blogger, The Finanser Ltd. The entire topic looks very interesting and I had a tough time choosing my favorites.
• “Building trust with consumers, explainable AI & the future of underwriting”moderated by Jenny Surane, Finance reporter with Bloomberg on Monday 22ndat 2:40pm
• “RegTech Revolution” with Jo Ann Barefoot, Co-Founder, Hummingbird Regtech & CEO, Barefoot Innovation Group on Monday 22ndat 3:20pm
• “Digital Humans & the fintech revolution”with Chris Skinner on Tuesday 23rdat 10:20am
• “The Anthropology of Money”on Tuesday 23rdat 10:50am. There is no designated moderator for this one. Wink, wink, nudge nudge to my M2020 organizer friends, I would love to moderate this one. Paging Andrew Morris fromMoney 20/20

• Breaking news & Fintech views:chaired by Chris Skinner. I swear, that man shadows me everywhere I go. Again, I am listing two sessions for this topic, one of which I am moderating, and as such will have to be present, it goes without saying.
• “Cloud Banks”,moderated by myself, with the most excellet Scott Mullins, Head of Worldwide Financial Services Business Development, Amazon Web Services on Tuesday 23rdat 1:10pm.
• “Marcus by Goldman Sachs”with Omer Ismail, Chief Commercial Officer, Marcus by Goldman Sachs, on Tuesday 23rdat 2:30pm. I bet everyone and their sisters will want to attend this session.

• Banks & Personal Finance: chaired by David Poole, Director of Business & Brand Strategy, Publicis.Sapient
• “Open Banking: What’s been achieved? What’ the commercial case?”moderated by Philippe Dintrans, SVP & Chief Digital Officer, Global Consulting Leader, Banking & Financial Services, Cognizant on Monday 22ndat 1pm. Ok, so the first reason I include this session is because I am keenly interested in all things open banking. The second reason, which is WAYmore important is because the moderator, Philippe Dintrans is the homonym of Philippe Dintrans a French rugby legend and one of my childhood heroes.
• “Bank of the future”,moderated by Jason Gardner, CEO and founder of Marqeta, on Monday 22d at 4pm

It goes without saying that, although the above sessions caught my eye for a specific reason – whether some of the themes explored mesh with my own research and investment themes or whether I know the moderator and speakers will do a rocking job of it – that there are many other sessions worthy of your time. My humble curation is not an end all be all by far.

Finally, don’t forget to attend the pool part on Sunday night which I will co-host.

Incidentally, this is how James Wester thinks I will show up for the pool party:

That’s it for now and until my next post, happy readings and happy planning for Money 2020 Las Vegas 2018.