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I am part of a community that completely energizes me, makes me believe that there are good people in the world and that makes me want to be better. Over the course of four days in September, my co-workers and I were transported into the world of self-proclaimed “money media nerds” at FinCon, the Financial Influencers conference, where people share thoughts, best practices and update one another on the latest trends. FinCon is THE annual event for the financial media community. What FinCon is really about is trying to help people and each other. Whether it’s helping someone understand how to invest, how to plan for retirement, or in Experian’s case, help others understand and learn more about credit and financial empowerment, we are all a part of this education ecosystem.  Of course, none of us attending FinCon do this alone. We have our co-workers, our peers and our mentors that help guide us and work alongside with us to work toward a common goal. Personally, I love that the company I work for cares about financial education, cares about consumers and empowers our team to go forth and make those long-lasting connections at FinCon. The energy at FinCon is contagious and you tend to build up a kind of super-human strength that gives you the ability to go without sleep indefinitely and miraculously have meaningful, educational conversations even though your body is on auto-pilot. It’s been a few weeks — I’m caught up on sleep, my feet have healed from the blisters and I’m not on a sugar high from eating a dozen Ally white chocolate covered Oreos — so I thought it would be a good time to give you my top three reasons why I think this year’s FinCon was so fantastic and why we want to do it again and again: The Expo hall rocks: Everyone can learn something from someone else and FinCon is no exception. This place is filled with some very smart people and smart companies. The Expo hall is a great investment for a company that is interested in sharing tools, services and thoughts with the FinCon attendees and as a company. We find a lot of value in setting up a home base for a few days at the conference and it gives people a place to find us. This year’s expo hall was full of energy (and great swag like yoga mats, selfie sticks and cocktail flavored jelly beans to name a few) and we at Experian found it to be the perfect backdrop for recording podcasts with a large number of FinCon experts. We loved helping these bloggers/writers share and deliver their unique content to an even broader audience. I Heart inspiration: You don’t have to look far at FinCon for inspiration. The keynotes, the sessions and even just hallway conversations can spark an idea, create a new passion or give someone the confidence they need to try something new. One guy was even inspired to wear money-print pants. For real. Anyway, the keynotes moved people. Carl Richards reminded me why I love to do what I do and motivated me to be better at it. Grant Baldwin made a huge impact on people by discussing balance for a successful life and how just saying no isn’t as hard as you think. One source of my personal inspiration at FinCon was watching our Social Media Guru, Mike Delgado, constantly drive content via Periscope with our Director of Public Education. They were ”Scoping” from sun up to sun down and it caught on like wildfire. By the end of the conference, everyone was feeling the love for Periscope and viewers were sending hearts in droves. This kind of sharing and helping people, as well as one another, happens so organically at FinCon. Winning isn’t all that matters, but it sure feels good: Part of the FinCon tradition is the Plutus Awards, which is an annual awards ceremony that celebrates the best in personal finance. It was amazing to see so many bloggers recognized for their hustle and run up on the stage to accept their awards. We also couldn’t be happier that Experian was honored with a Plutus Award for Best Use of Social Media by a Brand (for the second year in a row—whoop whoop)! The nomination means so much to Experian as a company, and to be chosen as the award winner is a true honor for us. This is just a small snapshot of what FinCon is every year. There’s so much more. We’re already thinking about next year’s conference in San Diego and are excited to start planning and connecting with our FinCon family. If you want to know more about how to connect with us and join in our weekly conversations with consumers, see the links below: Join our #CreditChat, hosted by @Experian_US on Twitter and Blab.im with financial experts and consumers every Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern time. Participate in our daily #CreditScope hosted by @Experian_US on Periscope Mon-Fri. Tune in to our podcasts on SoundCloud and iHeart radio. Visit Experian’s help site for answers to common questions, advice and education about consumer credit Ask credit questions on Experian’s Facebook page at https://facebook.com/ExperianUS and Experian’s Credit Education Blog.  

On September 28 in New York City, Experian and Cloudera Cares hosted a panel discussion about how Big Data can be used in a variety of ways as a force of good.  The panel included Adam Fingersh, Senior Vice President, Products and Marketing for Experian, Mike Olson, Co-founder, CSO and Chairman of the Board at Cloudera; Board Member at DataKind, Dr. Richard Bonneau, Associate Professor of Biology, Computer Science and Faculty Director of Bioinformatics, New York University; Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Vlad Dubovskiy, Data Scientist, DonorsChoose.org.   As part of the discussion, the panelists shared their thoughts about how data is being used to improve the quality of life for people around the world. During the discussion, Fingersh pointed to the impact of Data for Good in the Healthcare space.  Highlighting how Experian’s data and technology guides hospitals, physicians and patients step by step through an increasingly complex healthcare process. Specifically, this enables health institutions to validate their patients’ identifications and help determine payment plans that can fit into a patient’s budget. To learn more about what was discussed at the event see the article from the Hub.

Experian is one of 25 data management organizations that will be honored at the 2015 Data Impact Awards in New York on September 29, 2015. The awards celebration, hosted by Cloudera, honors big data success stories and recognizes the impact data-driven technology can have on the organization, business, and society at large. The common link between each of these 25 Big Data success stories is CDH, the world's most popular open source Hadoop-based distribution and key component of the Cloudera Enterprise platform. The event will kick-off the annual Big Data conference, 2015 Strata + Hadoop World and a weeklong series of events as part of Data Week in New York City. Experian is a finalist in the category of “Data-Driven Transformation” for the launch and deployment of the Experian Marketing Suite. During the last two years, Experian made transformational decisions about their marketing portfolio to unify offerings in data, technology and services into a single platform that allows marketers to create rewarding and relevant customer experiences in any channel via any device. This transformation culminated in July 2014 with the launch of the Experian Marketing Suite, a cloud-based marketing platform that leverages Experian’s customer identity and recognition technology, consumer data (the largest in the world), analytics and interaction technology. Hadoop technology was a foundational element of the Experian Marketing Suite and in particular and allowed Experian to realize their vision of creating a platform that would put the data and technology into the hands of the marketers themselves, linking disparate and disconnected customer data from any difference sources at scale and then leverage that cross-channel intelligence in real-time.  “Nobody is doing what we’re doing with Hadoop today, especially at this order of magnitude. The Experian Marketing Suite’s Identity Manager is the first real-time linkage engine that accepts data, links information together across an entire marketing ecosystem, and puts it into a usable format for a solid customer experience.” – Emad Georgy, SVP Global Software Development, Experian Marketing Services "It has been fascinating to see the growth in Data Impact Awards nominations every year – both in terms of total quantity and in the maturity and impact of each story shared," said Alan Saldich, vice president of marketing, Cloudera said in a press release. "This year's applicants represent organizations of all sizes, across all industries, and spanning locations around the globe, but they all have one thing in common: they're using data to do something amazing. I'm continuously impressed and humbled by our customers, and am glad for this opportunity to showcase their achievements." Follow the hashtags #DataImpact and #StrataHadoop on Twitter and other social media channels.