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05.15 The alarm clock rings. The taxi comes at 06.00 so better hurry. Everything is packed though. Breakfast? No. Where is my digipass? Can't find it! Need it to log in to remote mail. Found it the second time I looked in the"things"drawer.

06.00 In the taxi. 4 bags whereof one is the an on board bag with the precious Stetson, one bag with camera plus microphone (maybe, maybe I will have the time to record a podcast during the week and one for the computer etc. Got to get all 3 bags on board!

06.52 At gate F35 waiting and checking my mail and if someone have signed up for the Benche since 05.30 this morning. Have become obsessed - have to check all the time what is going on on the Benche.

07.56 In the air and the fasten seat belts sign has been switched off. Where is the breakfast? Or does SAS no longer serve breakfast in the economy class. Do not remember. And now they just announced that I will not get any breakfast - only business class. Can buy, but too messy. So, refocus on lunch, early lunch.

08.32 Preparing the Benche breakfast meeting tomorrow on the flight. Going through the presentation made and the story i am going to tell. I always have to have a story to tell, more important than the PowerPoint slides. Core of my story will be the word "your" in our tag line"your financial community". It is after all not the bank or the corporate you are working for that decides if you shall become a member of the Benche or not - it is you who decides this.

14.12 Finally some food. Eating alone at a very long table. Quick, got to get back to the stand. New potential members all over the place. Get stopped by a gentleman on my way back asking about the Stetson and just afterwords by two girls in a stand. They just got to know about the Stetson..... :-D

17.08 Starting to come to the end of the day. A lot of people here - should be 8,195 delegates according to the SIBOS admin office. I got a bunch of business cards in my pocket, all eager to become members of the Benche. As usual the Stetson have been a light house in the crowd. I can hear people whispering when I go by their stand. It is quite clear they know that the Sheriff is in town!

I know, I know - this has nothing to do with cash, trade or custody or for that matter any business what so ever. Well, the latter is not quite true since the topic is sometimes related to business travel. And even though I am a bit embarrassed to blog about this topic here is my confession.

I have problems switching the shower on when in a hotel.



It is ridiculous and a bit embarrassing admitting this, but it is the truth and I hope by blogging about it more people will step forward so we can unite in a global request for a more logic way of getting water out of a shower.

I mean how many times have I been arriving late to a hotel somewhere in the world and in then starting the day standing in the shower trying to figure out how the heck you turn the d...mn shower on. Of course I am also always in a hurry for the first meeting and always and I mean always some smart water pipe engineer have come up with a new intricate way of turing the water on. Most of the times I am clever enough to succeed in finding out how to get water in the tub, you know, getting water out of the lower tap in the bath tub (and then the jumping in the tub starts to avoid burning my feet). But how you then redirect the water up in to the shower that is another story. Maybe it is a hint that I should take a bath? Is it cheaper for the hotel if I take bath, instead of a shower, or .. no...? And honestly I do not have the time or patience to take a bath in the morning before the first meeting.

So then it starts, the fumbling with all the wheels, buttons, displays and what not to try to figure out the logistics. After the first minutes of desperate fumbling I usually take a deep breath, slide one half step back in the tub and take a thorough look on the mechanism on the wall. Than I start to pretend I am the water pipe engineer, try to think like him/her and start to do some reversed engineering in my head. And then I attack the knobs and buttons like a mad man. In principal always to no avail. So it usually ends up with a call to the reception asking (embarrassed) "Excuse me, but how do you turn the shower on?" They are of course always helpful, but I know that as soon they put down the phone they will start to giggle and tell the rest of the crew behind desk that room 435 do not even know how to turn the shower on. Humiliating!

I therefore propose that all hotels in the world must have showers with two knobs. One for hot and one for cold water and there should be a blue dot on the cold water knob and a red dot on the hot water knob! Than I will most definitely have no problems. I hope.

So who is the Benche for? Is it for the corporates, banks or institutions that we members are working for? Nope, at least not primarily. It is actually you who are reading this right now who we created the Benche for. In other words it is you as an individual and not your employer. At least not in the first instance. The idea is to give you and all your peers a platform to learn, share & discuss all matters related to the financial area.

It is at the Benche you shall be able to connect with someone who has dealt with the same issue as you have or is using a service or a product/solution you are thinking of buying. By adding the experience from others in to the file of information you are gathering, your discussions internally and with external partner/suppliers will be more initiated and a final decision will be more well founded. I am a true believer of that information from someone who has implemented or bought what I am about to take a decision upon, adds great value to my decision process.

Of course all of this is beneficial not only for you but also for your employer! So even though the Benche is primarily for you, it is also to a high degree beneficial for the employer. But, it is your financial community!

Hope to see you at the Benche Pub in Stockholm today!

Hakan,
Sheriff
the Benche

August has been quite a slow month on the Benche. mainly I guess due to that many hace had a week or two vacation. These last days though we have seen quite a change. Yesterday we had 667 visitors on the Benche, the second best visit number in the history of the Benche. Anad when writing this at 15.38 on the last day of August 2010 there are 278 visitors on the Benche and earlier today the figure was well over 300 (the number can be found at the bottom of the site). Today we have also had 9 new members, giving a total number of 4,226 members. There is one odd thing though. Not too many of the visitors are using the forums. Could it be that you are afraid of exposing your name and company on the Internet? Or could it be that most of the visitors are too shy to go "public" in a forum? Or is it that you have to write in English? If is the two first reasons I can for sure help you out. How? I can change your user name to an alias. Why not become King Kong or Wonder Woman on the Benche? If it is the language than I just say look at how I write. My old English teacher would most probably find a number of mistakes, but I am pretty sure you understand most of what you have read so far. And if it is King Kong writing, well, than you have all the excuses in the world if the English is not the best. So, you just let me know and I have you up and running as Road Runner or whatever in no time.

Just a reminder also - for those of you who are in Stockholm on September 7, see you at the Benche pub at Berns Salonger!

Hakan
Sheriff,
the Benche

So now the Benche 2.0 has been launched and there are some issues. For you who are still using Internet Explorer 6, the Benche has become a not very pretty site. Reason is that IE6 is a very old browser which Microsoft stopped supporting quite some while ago and as a consequence a number of sites no longer work or show the web page in a very strange way if you have IE6 installed on your computer.Since Microsoft no longer supports their own old browser, manufacturers of softwares for creating web sites do not put very much money or effort in to producing a software that can generate IE6 friendly pages any longer. And since the Benche 2.0 is now created with a new modern software, IE6 users have not had a pretty site to look at. The team is working on the problem and it seems as if a solution is in sight, so do not despair.

In parallell the team is also working on several adjustments such as the “Remember me”-button. Several of you have noticed that this button was gone after the downtime and as a result you had to log in each time you wanted to do something on the Benche. But, the button is back now.

The team is also receiving feedback re the new layout in general which is very much appreciated. And in this respect I really urge you as a member of the Benche to give me such feedback A.S.A.P so we can evaluate and see if it is possible make proposed changes before D-day, that is the coming Monday (March 22), when the cash community will be launched.

Give the feedback here in the comment field to this blog so everyone can see and contribute to the feedback.

Remember the Benche is as good as and will be as good as its members want it to be! It is after all your financial community!