ETA 2011

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I was at the ETA show (Electronic Transaction Association) a few weeks ago. I wanted to blog about it earlier, but haven't had the time. It was a great experience! The show was in San Diego for the first time in years.

While I was there, I saw a monkey running around the trade show floor, sat in a Back to the Future Delorean replica, had way too many "bluetini's" (sponsored by American Express of course), and won $2500 in poker (a story for another blog).

Of course, I did a lot of business while I was there also! The great thing about ETA is that everybody from the industry is all in one place at one time. Well, not everybody, but a lot of key players are all in the same room at the same time. That is something that you really can't put a value on. Bank Cards, Banks, Processors, ISO's, gateway providers, terminal manufacturers, mobile technology, PCI compliance vendors, and so on.

There were great speakers this year - I really enjoyed listening to the keynotes specifically. Senator Chris Dodds spoke about the Durbin Amendment (I'll blog about separately) and Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), spoke about technology and mobile processing. Both very interesting topics, given by two extremely interesting speakers.

All in all, it was a great show. Can't wait for next year!

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