A Look Back at Waters USA: Pragmatic Innovation

While other publications might be looking to taper things down during the time between Thanksgiving and the New Year, we still have plenty left in the tank, as evident by the stories released about the event.

Waters USA was full of interesting and engaging panels, covering everything from digital currencies to market surveillance, in addition to a high-level view of the entire industry from our C-level panel.

Persona

One thing that stood out to me was Bank of America's Alla Whitston's keynote address in the morning. Whitston, who serves as the firm's enterprise CTO for technology infrastructure, discussed Persona, Bank of America's platform for determining entitlements and offerings for its employees in terms of technology usage.

The Persona platform employs a horizontal services model, categorizing employees across the firm into one of eight identities based on various data collected about the employee. The process saves time and money for the firm, as there are fewer inconsistencies in figuring out IT service entitlements. Compared to blockchain technology or algorithms, Persona isn't the sexiest thing in the market today, but it's practical.

A few months ago, I was speaking with a CTO at a smaller firm who earlier in his career had spent time in a technology role at one of the big banks. His time there was short-lived, and he said one of the reasons was because of the amount of bureaucratic tape at the firm.

Case in point: The CTO told me that it took him two weeks to get set up with a computer when he first joined. Keep in mind that he had been hired in a technology position and had to go two weeks without having a computer, arguably the most essential piece of equipment for someone in a role with the IT department.

As crazy as it sounds, I can completely see how this could happen at such a massive firm. It doesn't surprise me at all with the number of managers in place and forms that need to be filled out for something like a computer to be distributed. Add allowances to different applications and tools and it's almost surprising that it only took two weeks.

Innovation

I also had the pleasure of moderating the final panel of the day, which looked at innovation. My fellow panelists (Faraz Mujtaba, Credit Suisse; Shekar Pannala, BNY Mellon; Elliot Noma, Garrett Asset Management) did a fantastic job touching on a ton of different topics.

One particular area that I found interesting was our discussion around monitoring the success and value of your digitization projects and assessing the risk and return value.

Pannala spoke about Digital Pulse, a big data analytics platform at BNY Mellon that allows the firm to get better insight and information on how to improve its processes and performance.

Solutions like these I find to be extremely important to the continued success of a firm. When I asked the panelists a follow-up question about knowing when it's the right time to pull the plug on a project, Noma said those types of decisions are some of the hardest he has to make in his role.

So while projects like Persona and Digital Pulse might not garner the most attention from the industry, there is real value in them, headlines or no headlines.

Food for Thought

• Waters USA was followed by the American Financial Technology Awards. In case you missed it, click here to see all the winners.

• I also had the pleasure of interviewing the great NBA basketball star Muggsy Bogues at the AFTAs. He told some fantastic stories and was a real pleasure to have as our guest of honor. If you're unfamiliar with his work, he's the shortest player in the history of the NBA. Check out this short highlight tape to get a full appreciation for what he was able to do in the NBA. Also, here is a picture of the two of us together.

• I spent a year in England after college, and therefore have grown to have a fond appreciation for the annual John Lewis Christmas advertisements. This year's, which has been around for almost a month now, isn't bad, but it's certainly not their best work. Maybe it's because it was the year I was there, but the 2011 ad will always hold a special place in my heart.