I spent the last two weeks back and forth across the country a few times.

At the moment I have one of those nasty head colds that crushes your spirit and makes you feel like you will be sore forever.

I was cramming in a Schwab event, meetings with Stocktwits customers, a new product launch, an ICON event in Palo Alto where I got to meet with Google’s head of Payments, Adam Nash of Wealthfront and Oron Yifat – the head of technology investing at Bank Leumi in Israel, and a catch up with team Robinhood.

With the pace of change in fintech, reading is not enough. At least quarterly I need to get out of San Diego and see what the hell is happening and talk to the founders and investors pushing change.

Forgetting Bitcoin and payments for the moment – cash and Visa still do everything I need, the increase in the amount and subsets of information, investment vehicles and toolsets for the American investor and trader is growing at a staggering pace. The opportunity I continue to see is helping people learn the language of the markets first and build and invest in products that unbundle, connect, and simplify.

I continue to believe strongly that The Bloomberg Terminal won’t be disrupted, but that every investor will be able to build their own social/ mobile terminal to invest for profit and joy.

This all has helped set the stage for our upcoming Stocktoberfest which begins next Sunday. It is the fourth and by far the biggest one. The event is being held at the great Hotel Del on Coronado (now owned by Blackstone…it seems to change ownership every year). I really had no plans to do a fourth Stocktoberfest, but the Amazon AWS fintech team came to me and said we had to take it to the next level. I am a sucker for a challenge when networking and community are involved.

This next week I will use my blog to set the stage for the speakers, topics and companies in attendance.