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Greg Palmer looking sharp on a Wednesday morning. (Source: Finovate)
Breakfast is the it-place at 9am. Founders and funders speed-dating around high-tops to open IMPACT… to resurrect a dwindling Friday morning.
The first wave of flights for Europe left the night before; the West Coast wave starts by 3pm. The New Yorkers and conference producers stick around for content, then that’s it.
IMPACT was tacked onto Finovate, when Finovate might as well have been a wrap: At the mega-Marriott in Times Square, a panel talked CX and agentic AI.
Had a third of the rows in the general session been spirited away?
Then IMPACT committed a conference sin: The hour and a half that I caught was polished, with a gold-plated panel. I’m sure the five other people watching would agree:
The agenda said Access NOT included with FinovateFall pass. The thinning Finovate-only crowd, with three options they already paid for, were forbidden.
That silence stuck as I left early for a crucial stop in Koreatown for bibimbap, wondered what I missed, then took the train to JFK.
Finovate fought Stablecon head-on for sponsors, speakers, media, founders, and investors. It ran the same week in Washington, DC. To a West Coast payments executive: “Are you going to Finovate?” … “Stablecon this year.”
Stablecon is a year old.
Sibos is around the corner; Money 20/20 is in a month, as it has been forever. Everybody is at Fintech’s Woodstock, almost. To an East Coast executive at a consulting firm: "Are you going to Money 20/20?” … “No, not for the first time in eight years.”
Sponsors are flocking to Fintech Nerdcon in November (a VC firm is sponsoring??); the Chosen would rather be there. Fintech Meetup (“what Money 20/20 used to be”) for the first time opens its doors wide to the press next year. Money 20/20 sold itself to Informa in 2024.
A conference is a social and commercial system that its creators can’t control. Its product is density. Without density, conferences die.
It monetizes the belief that anybody and everybody who matters will be there, in New York or Las Vegas (or Miami or San Diego or Toronto; London, Lisbon, Amsterdam).
Bankers, vendors, and startups go for business deals, peripheral parties, to see and be seen. That’s why vendors pay for booths and to put people on stage. When Fintech celebrities show up for free, the conference is on top of the world. Just the old guard? … The spiral starts.
Finovate lost its Wednesday momentum by Thursday afternoon; the star power was gone when Alex Johnson left for a meeting in the city, or the airport.
I must have spoken at Finovate at least seven times as a C-list fintech analyst. More than keynotes, panels, and fireside chats, it has been a place to see old friends, warm up connections, get sales leads and take home free pens. It’s ground zero for my personal brand.
Finovate is up against conference tribes with clear reasons for being, feeding a flywheel that drains events with less density driven by purpose. IMPACT lacked density. Attendance was suppressed, two floors above a conference that had already withered for this year.
See you at Money 20/20, as usual. The scale-driven density is overwhelming. Then Fintech Meetup, for the first time, next year. After five years, it’s the fintech networking event to be at. A conference that happens for its own sake is imperiled.
Fintech Notebook missed Stablecon (the future of payments, backed by Nik Milanovic) for Finovate. It wasn’t a bad bet, but it felt different. FN is sadly not on the shortlist for Fintech Nerdcon, Simon Taylor’s new hot spot, where operators and builders congregate.
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