Check out MoneyIsland.com — the new teaser site as part of BancVue. MoneyIsland version 1.0, which expands significantly on the existing CentsCity beta version, is set to launch at community financial institutions nationwide in September 2010.
Skill-Life has been chosen as one of 32 companies to demo at Finovate 2009, which showcases “the best new financial and banking technology innovations from leading established companies and the hottest young startups.”
These companies will be showcased to an audience of senior financial/banking/credit union executives, influential press, industry analysts, venture capitalists, bloggers, tech companies and entrepreneurs. A few of the organizations already committed to attend include: Bank of America, Citibank, WSJ, Microsoft, HSBC, Wells Fargo, American Express, Dow Jones, the Financial Times, E*Trade Financial, SunTrust, ANZ, Capitol One, Financial Insights, Discover, Sybase, Cardinal Venture Capital, Intuit, Consumer Reports, DataMonitor, Canaan Partners, The Economist, BusinessWeek, and Aite Group.
Skill-Life will demo our CentsCity product and will introduce an expanded set of features to our current beta while on stage at Finovate this September 29th. More info appears on the Netbanker blog, the text of which is also included below.
Finovate 2009 Demoing Companies RevealedBy Eric Mattson on August 5, 2009 |
The demoing companies selected (that we can reveal so far) are:
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These companies will be showcased to an audience of senior financial/banking/credit union executives, influential press, industry analysts, venture capitalists, bloggers, tech companies and entrepreneurs.
A few of the organizations already committed to attend include: Bank of America, Citibank, WSJ, Microsoft, HSBC, Wells Fargo, American Express, Dow Jones, the Financial Times, E*Trade Financial, SunTrust, ANZ, Capitol One, Financial Insights, Discover, Sybase, Cardinal Venture Capital, Intuit, Consumer Reports, DataMonitor, Canaan Partners, The Economist, BusinessWeek, and Aite Group.
We’d love to have you join us at the fall event and watch the future of finance/banking unfold onstage. If you register today you’ll save $200 via the very-early bird ticket discount. Please note that those prices expire on Friday August 7th at midnight.
From Tuesday (7/21) to Thursday (7/23), we will be conducting private testing of the CentsCity Beta version. CentsCity is a fun online world where tweens learn financial skills and earn real-life rewards!
We are presently looking for a limited number of people to test drive the product. If you would like to give us feedback on CentsCity before we launch publicly, please let us know by responding to this message.
Best,
Skill-Life, Inc.
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Skill-Life, Inc.
CentsCity — http://centscity.com/ — Learn Money, Earn Rewards!
1739 East Carson St. #323
Pittsburgh, PA 15203
Phone: 412-871-3713
It’s been a long time coming. In fact, it was just about two years ago when we wrapped up the Echoing Green interview process — a process that would lead to our first significant investment in CentsCity. Since that time, we’ve developed countless storyboards of the CentsCity experience, three game design documents, and, of course, our proof-of-concept last October, which until recently we would use for live demos.
In July, Skill-Life, Inc. will officially launch our CentsCity Beta! For the first time, kids and adults will be able to experience the virtual world for themselves and interact with our CentsCity Passport.
We’ve spent much of the last month scoping our latest design of the CentsCity experience and will again be teaming up with 360Kid. It’s amazing how far along this thing has come — how much more dynamic, distinct, and significant our Beta will be versus what we initially conceived. Here’s our chance to make the impact that we have long set out to achieve — building young people’s financial savvy and life skills to afford them greater opportunities as they grow older.
Over the next two weeks, we will be sending out our first newsletter keeping folks up-to-date on the latest news and counting down to our Beta launch. A CentsCity.com splash page will be live this week for new subscribers.
On Thursday, we held a focus group session with youth from the Lower Northside of Pittsburgh, PA, at Jefferson Recreation Center. The site is a program location for the after-school program YouthPlaces, which also helped us organize a focus group with adult after-school providers on last Wednesday. YouthPlaces, led by director Lori Schaller and supported by Director of Education Tyra Good, continues to be a major supporter and partner as we move forward.
The focus group with the youth was remarkable in too many ways to count. Too often, we’re cooped up in our office like mad scientists or on the road pitching potential investors and partners. It’s easy to lose sight of the certainty that kids are the ultimate judge of what we do. If they don’t like the product we’re developing and become more financially savvy as a result of it, then our product and our business have failed.
Well, I’m happy to report that we seem to be very much on the right road. We’re in a bit of stealth mode right now — so I can’t get too deeply into particular responses the youth had to different features. It’s more than fair to say that some of their comments and reactions caught us by surprise. Kids are funny that way, you know. We spend so much time debating a particular point that their words immediately put to rest in a way that goes almost entirely against the grain. We were particularly pleased with how well this group, which ranged in age from 15-18, responded to the look and feel of the experience. Even more, we gave a short assessment of the youth’s financial skills after taking them through a “quest” on Checking vs. Savings Accounts and wouldn’t you know that it seemed as if they had learned a thing or two.
On Monday, we have a focus group scheduled with teenagers at YouthPlaces Beltzhoover site. We’re also presently setting up focus groups with youth from the Pittsburgh Project and Mount Lebanon School District. We’ll try to get in all on video and share a few pics down the road.