Yesterday I attended Finovate 2008 and it was inspiring for anyone who’s been following the financial news lately. With all the talk of meltdowns and big companies going under and being bailed out, it was a refreshing change of pace to see all these start ups with exciting ideas and energy about how to change finance industry.

SmartHippo CEO George Favvas was among the 24 presenters of a 7 min. demo. George previewed some new features which will make their way to the SmartHippo web site later this month, and also took a minute to address the financial crisis and the role companies like SmartHippo can take in changing the financial industry to avoid future meltdowns.  While he was the only presenter to overtly address the crisis, it was definitely an underlying theme and pressing topic at the event.

If you missed the show, the Banktastic blog did excellent coverage of the show, from reviews of the demos to interviews with the presenters, oh don’t forget to check out the interview with George…

Oh yea, if you were following SmartHippo on twitter, you would have had access to my live coverage of the event.

UPDATE:

Here’s some more coverage of Finovate:

• The Consumerist did a fantastic summary of the presenting companies, including SmartHippo, in this post…
• If you missed the conference, organizer NetBanker also did a series of posts about each of the presenters.

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