After Dark VI: A sneak peek at what happened

Fintech Insider: After Dark is back, if you hadn’t been paying any attention to the slew of promo material we’ve been putting out then you missed your chance to attend the live recording, drink free beer, have a slice of pizza, and attend the most fun event in the fintech calendar. But it’s okay, I’ve got you covered with a quick roundup of what happened at the show, and you can hear the recording of both shows on today’s podcast at 4pm.

I’ll bring you a few behind the scenes snippets of what happened at After Dark VI and let you know all about the very special live-show only pieces we do for our fans.

After the first few rounds of drinks were drunk and the bar was closed, the first half of After Dark VI was ready to kick off. At the London recording we were in the WeWork offices in Aldgate Tower with an all-star fintech panel. The air crackled with excitement, and for a worrying moment feedback from the speakers, before the music hit and After Dark VI, the best live podcast in fintech, launched. David M. Brear, Simon Taylor, and Sarah Kocianski were our hosts, joined by Marieke Flament, European Managing Director and CMO of Circle, Simon Vans-Colina, Engineer at Monzo, and Daniel Hegarty, CEO of Habito.

It was a great experience and I’m glad I could be a part of it - Andrew Morris

A few hours later our lucky colleagues who had flown into Atlanta to do the same were starting the US show at Kabbage HQ. 11:FS hosts, Sam Maule and Doug Bobenhouse joined by three pairs of guests: Rob Frohwein, CEO of Kabbage and Shannon Johnson, Group President of Financial Institutions at Cardlytics; next up was Kathryn Petralia, COO and Co-Founder of Kabbage, and Andrew Morris, Chief Content Officer at Money20/20; rounding out the show we had Howard Bush, Principal on Industry Experiences and Banking and Capital Markets Lead at Microsoft and Ginger Schmeltzer, Owner and Principal at GDS Advisors, LLC.

After Dark Emoji Wall

Over in London the crowd trooped out in a ridiculous heatwave to get to the show, even our hosts were feeling the heat, David took an uber to get to work this morning instead of the tube. We had amazing shows in London and Atlanta with the liveshow-only features — the Fintech Wall of Emoji making a truly digital impact as well as the return of the rant bucket, themed to the Atlanta fintech scene. But don’t worry if you couldn’t make it, we have plenty of podcast content to keep you entertained and on top of what’s going on in fintech.

How did Atlanta compare with London? We can reveal all...#AfterDarkVI#fintechwallofemojipic.twitter.com/u5o6EpRKMC

The major news stories of the week blitzed onto the screen in true After Dark glory, the venue became standing room only at both venues as hundreds of fintech fans flooded the space.

People trying to guess the celeb-backed cryptos @FinTechInsiders#afterdarkvipic.twitter.com/A6ol0DM7Nu

— Robert Whitfield (@Synthetic_Man) July 26, 2018

After Dark in Atlanta

We loved getting stuck in at Atlanta, bringing out the local fintech scene in full force. It was great to see how much love there is in the city for fintech and how much heavyweight local talent was keen to come and be part of the After Dark experience. The heat wasn’t as much of a problem in Atlanta, there’s more aircon. As keen fintech fans will know, we’ve never been to Atlanta before, we were so happy to see how much everyone loved, our Producer Laura Watkins was especially happy.

It's always a gamble when you go to a new city but the team at Kabbage and the Atlanta audience totally smashed it. Everyone was super engaged, and the venue was standing room only at the back! - Laura Watkins

There are plenty of positive feelings about After Dark but our assistant producer says it best:

Fucking sick - Petrit Berisha

That means he loved it. And we all feel the same way at 11:FS, After Dark is our way to reach out to the amazing people in fintech who know how exciting the sector is and want to make a real impact. Find us on Twitter using #AfterDarkVI to get the latest on what’s happened and what people thought. You can also click here to see our Moment from the night with some of the best bits the audience captured in both cities.