I’m soon headed to Amsterdam to keynote the SIBOS conference. SIBOS is the largest annual banking conference in the world, attracting around 10,000 attendees.

But what’s most interesting about this event is the innovation stream within the conference. It’s called the Innotribe and is focused on exploring and innovating the future of financial services.

This year the Innotribe will have an incredible “who’s who” of speakers from the tech sector coming to speak about topics like cloud computing, the Long Now, Smart Data and the Semantic Web, digital identity, mobile transactions, social media for financial services, and other hot topics. Innovation is just one track among many topics at SIBOS, but it’s bigger than many stand-alone technology conferences.

It’s going to be a fascinating week. For more background, here’s a promo video showing some coverage of last year’s Innotribe Labs. The Labs are meant to be fun, creative, and a place to think “outside of the box.” Here’s a powerpoint with more info.

In addition to the roster of A-list speakers, the Innotribe will have several Labs taking place in which participants will work interactively over several days to innovate together, culminating in a competition for the best breakthrough proposals. I will be helping to mentor the participants in the Smart Data and the Semantic Web stream.

If you are interested in where financial services are heading, the Innotribe is going to be the place to be.

The conference runs from October 25 – 29, 2010.

I encourage to participate in the Innotribe if you can make it to Holland for the event. Hope to meet you there!