Quebec Filene Desjardins Take Away Points

A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to head over to Montreal and Quebec City with an amazing organization called Filene Research Institute. Filene is a non-profit, independent, think and do tank for the consumer finance industry. Basically, Filene works with credit unions and credit union employees to come up with innovative, useful ideas. In Quebec, we met in Montreal with a massive credit union called Desjardins. Desjardins was the first credit union established in North America over 100 years ago by Alphonse Desjardins. 

I filmed different meetings, locations, exercises and general fun for the week there. I enjoyed being a fly on the wall and watching the various types of work and challenges the people in the meetings were faced with. There were guest speakers, cool locations, amazing food and a lot of French language and Canadian-French culture. 

Aside from getting some great footage and shooting great interviews with our interviewees sitting in Kammok Roos, I had a few take aways that have left impressions and thoughts on my own work:

- Ideas are easy to come by and worthless, execution is difficult and can be worth a million dollars.

- Don't fall in love with your idea(s), they can drown you and you can fail to see the real value, or lack thereof, in them.

- Canada is a lot bigger and more mosaic than I ever thought it was. 

- It can snow in the middle of April.

- You'll never come up with new ideas if you don't change your routine, experiences and environment. 

There were more take away points for me, but those are the ones that take the forefront for me. It was a great experience and I'm enjoying the editing experience on this video. I'll post the video once Filene gets it posted on their site.

Cheers,
Matthew A. Hawkins