FinCon 2015: A Smash Hit!
We’re always excited for FinCon, an annual event gathering personalfinance / investing bloggers with innovative financial companies. The event isin its fifth year and growing fast. This year we got doubly fired up, as the2015 event took place in our hometown of Charlotte, NC. We’re still buzzingfrom all the exciting ideas, conversations and meetings this event sparked andwanted to share some of that “sizzle” with you.
TradeKing really made our presence known at this year’sevent. We kicked things off in true Carolina style by hosting a pig pickin’with all the trimmings, washed down with craft beers by the Unknown BrewingCompany (where the party took place amid shiny brewery kegs). Local bluegrassband Deeper Shade of Blue with special guest singer Jessica Borgnisgot everyone’s toestapping, while we got loose with a few rounds of ping-pong and cornhole (alsoknown in other parts of America as bean-bag toss). The joint was jumping andabsolutely packed with FinCon attendees. As a party favor we sent everyone outthe door with a TradeKing-branded pint glass, stuffed with a Carolina Moon Pie.It was truly a pleasure to meet face-to-face with so many bloggers whose feedsand podcasts we’ve enjoyed virtually for so long!
Here are a few pics from the event, starting with FinCon’sextraordinary founder Philip Taylor (who goes by “PT”) with yours truly. That’sfollowed by a pic of Gary Silverstein, our VP of Marketing, along with a niceshot of me with Karen Kerley, Director of Client Experience & Content.
Karen was one of several TradeKing speakers at this year’sevent: she moderated a panel on financial community-building. Josh MacFarlaneconducted a landing page optimization roundtable, and Angela Arno participatedin a panel discussion on affiliate marketing. That’s in addition to twopodcasts we participated in: I was honored to speak with Joshua Sheats as hisfeatured guest on the Radical PersonalFinance podcast. BrianOverby spoke with Kirk N. Du Plessis on the Option Alpha podcast.
Below you’ll see pictured TradeKingco-founder and CFO Tom Desmond with Angela Arno, Performance Marketing Manager,with the TradeKing FinCon Podcasting Stage as their backdrop. I need to giveAngela a special shout-out here. She ran point on organizing everythingFinCon-related for us. It was an incredibly ambitious undertaking which shenailed, per her usual super-competent style. Thanks, Ang, for making ourparticipation happen at this amazing and productive event!
We rounded out our presence with a pro-networking session,attended by Stefan McVeigh and Angela, plus a killer tradeshow booth, ofcourse. That was manned by Kevin Delo, Dave Dusseault, Brian Overby, LaurenJeep, and Brent Jones, who engaged attendees about TradeKing LIVE and TradeKingAdvisors, handing out “slap-watch”-style USB drives pre-loaded with a TradeKingoverview deck. I was ducking in and out of the event, so unfortunately I didn’tget much chance to soak up the show atmosphere from our booth. But I did hearfrom several sources about plenty of interesting chats with attendees of allkinds.
Thanks to everyone for making this year’s FinCon truly asmash hit. See you in San Diego next year!
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[all images by Capture Photography]
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