It was Standing Room Only at our most recent Sept 10th SVMN meeting, with over 120 microfinance groupies attending (in a room designed for 100!).

Pictures & presentations by Kiva.org & Prosper.com are included below:

Kiva presentation by Premal Shah:

(fyi: the quality on the podcast recording was a little rough… if anyone can help do some soundfile editing, please let me know :))

thanks to Scott Mattoon for the following SVMN meeting recap:

The Silicon Valley Microfinance Network (SVMN) hosted an event Monday, January 9th featuring Janine Firpo, a technologist with direct experience in implementing a technological approach to microfinancing. Her talk focused on a series of market trials in Uganda for a system called Remote Transaction System, orignally developed at HP, which enabled an agent and borrower to administer a small loan remote from the bank. The market being explored by HP, and a central interest of SVMN, is the 80% of working people in the world who do not put their money in banks. One of Janine’s goals is to reach these workers - 1.7 billion of them - with technology, and enable them to participate directly in the world of commerce, extending their means and influence beyond their village to a sphere bounded only by the reach of the technological infrastructure.

(for more on Scott’s summary, continue reading 80% of the world is unbanked)

Here also is a slideshow of pictures from the meeting: