FPA Denver 2010 Live Blog: Day 1 Recap

FPA Denver 2010 officially launched today! I’ll be live blogging when I have a few moments to myself to keep you updated on the exciting developments in the financial planning community’s largest gathering.

Dan Ariely

Sessions started with an opening keynote session by Dan Ariely, a behavioral economics professor at Duke University and author of The Upside of Irrationality. He provided several examples of how framing, value positioning, and irrational tendencies shape all decisions we make in our lives, including those with money.

Ariely told the collective group of attendees that the profession needs to develop a system that better frames the decisions we all make when addressing spending and cash flow. Several of us in the audience wanted to stand up and tell Ariely about the First Step Cash Management System from The Planning Center in Moline, IL. I think Ariely needs to see First Step and provide his feedback on how the system addresses our irrational tendencies.

Exhibit Hall

Following Ariely’s keynote, attendees descended upon the Exhibit Hall where vendors were in full force demonstrating their products and services.

I spoke with Shawn Brayman of PlanPlus Inc., a provider of financial planning software that has been translated for use in over four languages. On Monday, October 11th, PlanPlus is hosting two conversational sessions at the FPA Denver 2010 held in the FPA Community Building. Here are the details about the sessions.

Session 1: Planipedia – 8:00 – 9:00 am Room 206

Session 2: Financial Planning in New Markets – 4:00 – 5:00 pm Room 206

I also saw a short preview of  Tamarac, Inc.’s latest integration solution for advisors called Advisor X (“X” not “ten”). Stay tuned as I get more information on Advisor X, but this tool looks like a serious contender to the integrations under development by Schwab, Fidelity, and TD AMERITRADE Institutional.