Lessons Learned from Conference Season

It's been a few weeks now, and the sun is still shining over London. Coming off the back of our Game of Thrones-style infinite winter, where's it's pretty much just snowed for four months, I'm sure those of you in fair Britain enjoyed the long weekend of good weather just now.

It's also fair to say that we're knee deep in conference season now. Recently, in the UK at least, there's been FPL's EMEA event, TSAM, TradeTech, and Waters has its own events coming up, following the success of NATAS in the US a few weeks ago. Year on year, it's interesting to see how the tone of these events changes in terms of the discussions and the sentiment on display, and how it varies with each new calendar.

Then and Now
Last year, for instance, regulation was the hot-button topic, and there was a huge level of, if not anxiety, then antipathy, towards the process. 2012 had a great deal of change coming up, and people weren't sure how they would cope, either operationally or technologically. This year, regulation is still the prime talking point, but it's moved to a basis where it's happening and the structures are beginning to be put in place. Uncertainty, though, is still a big issue ─ while some people are clearing, the final structures of utilities such as swap execution facilities and their European cousins, the organized trading facilities, are still unclear. The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive review hasn't even been ratified here in Europe, and elements of Dodd-Frank are still in debate as well. The conversation is less about if these things will happen, and more about facing up to dealing with them, but it's hard to plan ahead if you don't know what's coming. Everyone is complaining about wasted effort. One executive at a US exchange group that I spoke to a few weeks ago expressed his frustration that he was having to task key staff with developing what might ultimately turn out to be useless projects, when they could be focused on something more critical. This is not an uncommon utterance, regardless of sector.

Other topics such as cloud, though, seem to be more settled. When I first started as a reporter for Waters a few years ago there was a huge debate around whether the technology was even suitable, but now it seems accepted that elements of it are. Big Data is an conversant phrase, and even the use of social media analysis has become more balanced in terms of the discussion around it, although fierce debate flares up occasionally. Meanwhile, the over-the-counter derivatives train rolls on mercilessly, and seems to be generating much of the serious efforts in financial-services technology this year.

Boomerangs
I remember having a conversation with an analyst at the end of last year, where we discussed what the big topics of 2013 would be. In-memory analytics is one area that's not received as much attention as we thought it would, although it's being looked at. The impending collateral shortfall and the use of optimization technology has proven to be an area of debate. Communications technologies continue to evolve with an enhanced roll-out of microwave technology, such as the London-Frankfurt route from NYSE (despite widespread predictions of a plateau in speed reduction), and the landscape continues to change in terms of the institutions that populate it, the vendors that service it, and the wider developments that affect it. Just look at the transaction tax conundrum, which most people dismissed last year but seems to have come back with a ferocious vengeance now, politically driven or not.

The conversation is less about if these things will happen, and more about facing up to dealing with them, but it's hard to plan ahead if you don't know what's coming. Everyone is complaining about wasted effort.

As we approach the halfway point of the year, it's interesting to see if forecasts about how the year pans out are proven to be accurate. It seems that crystal-gazing conjectures, like battle plans, rarely survive first contact.

As an aside, if anyone can actually tell me where the last five months have disappeared to, I'd appreciate it.