I start up Memeorandum/Tech and see that VC’ing is causing a lot of conversations to start, so is Jeff Jarvis’ comments about the inadequacies of the conference model.
Now, I used to be a conference schmuck. Er, planner. And I’m involved with Mix06‘s implementation and promotion.
First, about costs of conferences. Jeff has his economics way wrong. Turns out that if you wanna do a 40 person conference you can do it for free. I was at one yesterday (the Entrepreneurs 27 event was free for everyone — someone even donated a few snacks. Both presenters and attendance was free. Awesome, right?)
If you wanna do a 400 attendee conference you can do it pretty inexpensively. Gnomedex was done for about $100 a person for years. Many other 200 to 400 attendee conferences are low-cost.
But, wanna do a 1,000 attendee conference? Costs per attendee start going up exponentially.
Why?
Because there aren’t many places in the world that you can hold a 1,000 attendee conference. Even in San Francisco there are only a handful of places that can do that (I know, our VBITS conference started at the Marriott by the airport, moved to the Hyatt, then to the Marriott downtown, and now it’s being held at the Moscone Convention Center.
Now, do you have any clue how much we paid for a hotdog lunch? How about around $30 per attendee. How much for a Coke? $5. How much for an urn of coffee? $1,000.
These were not negotiable.
Oh, and you had to guarantee you’d sell a certain number of hotel rooms. Don’t sell those rooms out? You might be in the hole for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Everyone keys in on the successful 2,000 conference events. But you don’t remember the baths we took on conferences that we had to cancel.
Oh, and you can just rent a normal projector for a 200 person event. But remember at the PDC where we had thousands of attendees? We had 32 projectors, each of which cost more than $120,000 (Dylan has photo and info here on those). You don’t just rent these at your local Best Buy.
Not to mention about promotion. Even at Mix we’ve already spent quite a bit of money on that. Ads in Wired Magazine aren’t free. Getting an audience is tough work and doesn’t happen by accident.
If you make money at conferences it’s really rare. At Fawcette the conference business did make a bit of money over the years and when that happened it subsidized other things like magazine editorial (without a magazine Fawcette would probably have never sold out a conference in the first place).
Now, onto editorial.
Even at Mix we’re trying to put into play a lot of the things Dave Winer pioneered with the BloggerCons. But, holding a conversation with 200 people in a University setting is a whole lot different than holding a conversation with 2,000 people in a Las Vegas conference venue. It’s not going to be easy to get audience participation and that’s even if everyone brings a laptop and joins in the various chat rooms and blog networks that we put into play.
Regarding content, I don’t like panel discussions either. They always sound better when you’re planning a conference than they actually turn out. Why? Because it’s hard to pitch a real idea out to the audience and really chew on it for a while. I watched Gary Flake give a talk to search champs. He setup the idea, pitched the idea, then explained it in the course of an hour. It was wonderful.
But, if we had a panel on “live labs” it would have sucked. Why? Cause getting five people to work on an idea just wouldn’t have worked.
Panels can be entertaining, though, if you have something where people disagree about. Then you might be entertained and you might learn something. Might.
Anyway, back to the point. What we need to do is figure out how to keep event size at about 400 people. If we do that, then we’ll be able to keep the economics at a great level per person.
++++++++++++
Back to VC’ing. Rick Segal wrote a followup to all the VC talk out there. I love Rick’s thinking and am glad he’s getting some focus on the funding part of the industry.
It’s interesting, some of the anti VC points (and anti blogging points) I’ve heard lately are “you guys have created another bubble.”
Listen, the event yesterday was with young entrepreneurs. They didn’t pay anything to be there. I didn’t pay anything to be there. There was no lockout, no exclusivity. That sure doesn’t seem like a bubble to me. The thing that’s changed is the word-of-mouth network is far more efficient. In the old days you’d never have heard about a meeting like this. Today everyone around the world was dragged into that room. I love this new world. I don’t have to attend conferences anymore to hear the best ideas or see the newest products. I do notice that eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, and Microsoft were there to build relationships with new businesses and see if there’s some talent there that’s hireable.
Where did the Rolling Stones come from? They didn’t just walk on stage and become popular. They started in small rooms. Er, bars. High school auditoriums. And such.
Another criticism I saw of my post yesterday? That ideas aren’t what’s needed. I hear this all the time “ideas are cheap, implementation is expensive.”
Oh, really? How many of you thought up RSS? How many of you thought up Flickr? If ideas are so cheap, where’s the new ideas? I don’t see that many being put out there. And, inside big companies I get to see idea generation at work. They simply aren’t there.
What IS cheap? People who tear down ideas. I see that all over the place. “That idea won’t work because…”
But I don’t meet many people who have consistently awesome ideas. They ARE valuable. Companies like Microsoft pay those guys big bucks for a reason. There aren’t enough of them.
Quick, tell me again how you’ll make a search engine better than Google’s. You got an idea? Write it down. If it really is a better idea it’s valuable. Yes, its value will only be exposed if that idea gets turned into an algorithm and put into a search engine. So, you do need implementation, I’m not arguing that, but Google started with an idea for a better algorithm. Let’s not forget that. People often do. To me, the idea is just as brilliant as the implementation.
Yeah, selling the idea is difficult. But, it’s not impossible. Just start a blog and explain why your idea is better than Microsoft’s or Google’s. If you can do that then let me know and we’ll figure out how to proceed.
Anyway, I’m off to travel back to Seattle today. Have a good one and keep the conversation going.
Who makes the million buck projector? I’d like to see one.
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Who makes the million buck projector? I’d like to see one.
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Jake: I’m not sure. But they were impressive. Sorry, I had my facts wrong. They were $125,000 each.
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Jake: I’m not sure. But they were impressive. Sorry, I had my facts wrong. They were $125,000 each.
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Wow. I used to do 20,000 person events on smaller budgets, with better food and projector deals, etc. Because yes you CAN rent those kinds of projectors. In my mind, it’s once you get over about 2500 people that an event gets hard, because the scale of infrastructure you need is that much greater.
With less than 2500 or so people, food and bathrooms are easy, cleanup is fairly easy, etc. After that, though, you need multiple food tents, multiple bathroom areas, etc.
I’m not saying you guys did anything wrong, because I don’t know the situation, just letting you know that the barriers you’re running into aren’t the same ones everyone runs into.
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http://www.dylangreene.com/1/284_PDC_Photos has more on the projectors used there.
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Wow. I used to do 20,000 person events on smaller budgets, with better food and projector deals, etc. Because yes you CAN rent those kinds of projectors. In my mind, it’s once you get over about 2500 people that an event gets hard, because the scale of infrastructure you need is that much greater.
With less than 2500 or so people, food and bathrooms are easy, cleanup is fairly easy, etc. After that, though, you need multiple food tents, multiple bathroom areas, etc.
I’m not saying you guys did anything wrong, because I don’t know the situation, just letting you know that the barriers you’re running into aren’t the same ones everyone runs into.
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http://www.dylangreene.com/1/284_PDC_Photos has more on the projectors used there.
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A lot of people snarking are not (A) starting up their own gigs via bootstrap, nor are they (B) getting the VC cash. Classic armchair-quarterbackism. Rock on.
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A lot of people snarking are not (A) starting up their own gigs via bootstrap, nor are they (B) getting the VC cash. Classic armchair-quarterbackism. Rock on.
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Jeremy: if you wanna have a conference in a hotel venue that has nice amenities, it’s expensive. 20,000 person things? Those aren’t conferences. They are expos or something else. Not something where people sit in a chair all day long and listen to ideas.
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Jeremy: if you wanna have a conference in a hotel venue that has nice amenities, it’s expensive. 20,000 person things? Those aren’t conferences. They are expos or something else. Not something where people sit in a chair all day long and listen to ideas.
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How many of you thought up RSS? How many of you thought up Flickr?
You are painting yourself into a corner.
RSS is just syndication, and not very mainstream successful at that, just ask Pew Research. Pointcast had it beat years and years ago, on seemingly half of all corporate desktops. 90% of the population will still go huh, per RSS. As even my tech-phobic sister who couldn’t tell you what “feeds” are or much less how to use them or what an “aggregator” is, BUT she can still recall Pointcast (to her that was the old Internet). And Flickr is total implementation, anyone can think up a photo-sharing slash social-site, and many upon many have, but only a few really have sticking power. Why? It’s in the implementation and the marketing.
And “tearing things down” is not cheap, you have to know what works, to know what doesn’t. You wouldn’t build a highrise skyscraper, without first knowing what DOESN’T work, laws of physics and all that, same thing in market economics. Accepting everything carte-blanche, willy nilly, is the road to disaster. It’s far easier to accept everything, bet on all tables, without having to deal in the hard issues of choice and demographic research. Critics and the skepticals, are great filters for the mountian heaps of scams, ponzi schemes, stock schemes, and pure overhyped vaporware. As they say in Journalism, “You say your Mother loves you? Prove it.”
Ideas are nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nadda. Need that repeated? Action is only what makes ideas real. Example: Hollywood is FULL OF IDEAS, but the really good scripts are few and far between, and then a good idea, with a good script still needs a good implementation (Directing, Casting) and then even a good implementation, needs good marketing. It’s complex. The idea is but the spark, the seed. A Microsoft example: you have tons of R&D guys coming up with nothing but ideas, how much works it’s way down into a successful product or even workable code? Not very much at all.
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How many of you thought up RSS? How many of you thought up Flickr?
You are painting yourself into a corner.
RSS is just syndication, and not very mainstream successful at that, just ask Pew Research. Pointcast had it beat years and years ago, on seemingly half of all corporate desktops. 90% of the population will still go huh, per RSS. As even my tech-phobic sister who couldn’t tell you what “feeds” are or much less how to use them or what an “aggregator” is, BUT she can still recall Pointcast (to her that was the old Internet). And Flickr is total implementation, anyone can think up a photo-sharing slash social-site, and many upon many have, but only a few really have sticking power. Why? It’s in the implementation and the marketing.
And “tearing things down” is not cheap, you have to know what works, to know what doesn’t. You wouldn’t build a highrise skyscraper, without first knowing what DOESN’T work, laws of physics and all that, same thing in market economics. Accepting everything carte-blanche, willy nilly, is the road to disaster. It’s far easier to accept everything, bet on all tables, without having to deal in the hard issues of choice and demographic research. Critics and the skepticals, are great filters for the mountian heaps of scams, ponzi schemes, stock schemes, and pure overhyped vaporware. As they say in Journalism, “You say your Mother loves you? Prove it.”
Ideas are nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nadda. Need that repeated? Action is only what makes ideas real. Example: Hollywood is FULL OF IDEAS, but the really good scripts are few and far between, and then a good idea, with a good script still needs a good implementation (Directing, Casting) and then even a good implementation, needs good marketing. It’s complex. The idea is but the spark, the seed. A Microsoft example: you have tons of R&D guys coming up with nothing but ideas, how much works it’s way down into a successful product or even workable code? Not very much at all.
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Insert any random Web 2.0ish New Agey wild-crazy MLMish loony-buubleish quasi-scam unworkable idea, yet anyone dare saying the ‘Emperor has no Clothes’ in Hugh’s worldview translates into armchair-quarterbackism. Hear no evil, see no evil, no evil. Just beeeeelive. Hope springs eternal, eh?
But I have the eternally perfect comeback for Hughisms: “Excellently observed, but let us cultivate our garden.” 🙂
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Insert any random Web 2.0ish New Agey wild-crazy MLMish loony-buubleish quasi-scam unworkable idea, yet anyone dare saying the ‘Emperor has no Clothes’ in Hugh’s worldview translates into armchair-quarterbackism. Hear no evil, see no evil, no evil. Just beeeeelive. Hope springs eternal, eh?
But I have the eternally perfect comeback for Hughisms: “Excellently observed, but let us cultivate our garden.” 🙂
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I hear this all the time “ideas are cheap, implementation is expensive.” Oh, really? How many of you thought up RSS? How many of you thought up Flickr? If ideas are so cheap, where’s the new ideas?
You’ve got to be really careful here. You are calling RSS and Flickr ideas. They are implementations. The idea of electronic syndication has been around for a long time. I used an excellent electronic syndication system in 1982 which was private and run by Batelle Institute. It was funamentally the same idea as RSS. I’ve taken a few good ideas of my own (and others) and brought them to market. I know the difference.
Here are some good ideas:
1. A better blogging search engine.
2. A higher yield wheat to reduce starvation
3. A way that music be available to anyone, on any medium, in any format they want it, yet protect the rights of the artists.
Memorandum is an incremental step toward #1. Norman Borlag, building on the work of Orville Vogel, did what many thought impossible and implemented #2. And sadly, nobody has done #3.
Sometimes implementations sound like ideas. The “Million Dollar Home Page” is a good idea. Try to do it yourself, and you’ll see the difference between idea and implementation. I dare you.
So, implementers, great thinkers, those who can understand and overcome the myriads of constraints on markets and technologies…. yes, we need those. And yes, we need people to “tear ideas down” because it’s the best filter to stop wasting our time with pointless ones.
I would tone down the “ideas are great” rhetoric and focus a bit on “practical implementations of good ideas are great”. The former is vapid.
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I hear this all the time “ideas are cheap, implementation is expensive.” Oh, really? How many of you thought up RSS? How many of you thought up Flickr? If ideas are so cheap, where’s the new ideas?
You’ve got to be really careful here. You are calling RSS and Flickr ideas. They are implementations. The idea of electronic syndication has been around for a long time. I used an excellent electronic syndication system in 1982 which was private and run by Batelle Institute. It was funamentally the same idea as RSS. I’ve taken a few good ideas of my own (and others) and brought them to market. I know the difference.
Here are some good ideas:
1. A better blogging search engine.
2. A higher yield wheat to reduce starvation
3. A way that music be available to anyone, on any medium, in any format they want it, yet protect the rights of the artists.
Memorandum is an incremental step toward #1. Norman Borlag, building on the work of Orville Vogel, did what many thought impossible and implemented #2. And sadly, nobody has done #3.
Sometimes implementations sound like ideas. The “Million Dollar Home Page” is a good idea. Try to do it yourself, and you’ll see the difference between idea and implementation. I dare you.
So, implementers, great thinkers, those who can understand and overcome the myriads of constraints on markets and technologies…. yes, we need those. And yes, we need people to “tear ideas down” because it’s the best filter to stop wasting our time with pointless ones.
I would tone down the “ideas are great” rhetoric and focus a bit on “practical implementations of good ideas are great”. The former is vapid.
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Excuse my typos. I know it’s Memeorandum, not Memorandum. 🙂 WordPress really needs a preview mode! I’m one of those “proofread, proofread, proofread” people. I hate this “click and taken your chances” stuff!
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Excuse my typos. I know it’s Memeorandum, not Memorandum. 🙂 WordPress really needs a preview mode! I’m one of those “proofread, proofread, proofread” people. I hate this “click and taken your chances” stuff!
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Scoble: An expo? No, they were conferences. Morning keynote, then 2 sets of morning workshops (about 10 tracts in each). Then lunch. Then an afternoon keynote / discussion, then 2 sets of afternoon workshops / panels (about 10 tracts of each). Then an evening keynote, followed by some open sessions.
It’s kind of a moot point. We found a way to do cheaper conferences, but our audience was entirely different than yours as well, and in a different country (maybe the market for high-end rental equipment is different in Toronto, where hundreds, if not thousands, of 10K+ person conferences are held each year).
Either way, Mix is still too expensive, though I may end up there anyways.
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Scratch that, can’t go to Mix, it conflicts with a conference I’m doing in Vancouver. Sorry.
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Scoble: An expo? No, they were conferences. Morning keynote, then 2 sets of morning workshops (about 10 tracts in each). Then lunch. Then an afternoon keynote / discussion, then 2 sets of afternoon workshops / panels (about 10 tracts of each). Then an evening keynote, followed by some open sessions.
It’s kind of a moot point. We found a way to do cheaper conferences, but our audience was entirely different than yours as well, and in a different country (maybe the market for high-end rental equipment is different in Toronto, where hundreds, if not thousands, of 10K+ person conferences are held each year).
Either way, Mix is still too expensive, though I may end up there anyways.
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Scratch that, can’t go to Mix, it conflicts with a conference I’m doing in Vancouver. Sorry.
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Christopher Coulter : “Ideas are nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nadda. Need that repeated ?”
Action can’t take place until the idea is proven or theoretically correct. The ideas[i] you have, combined with your patience[p] to live with the idea for a while, before going over board. Then a proven theory[t], followed by core design[d], need to factor in technological advancements in the industry[g] and finally prototype[y]. There only remains action[a], and reaction[r]. So…
((((((i*p)+t) +d*1.5)*1.7)*y)+(a+r*1.5))
So how does this equate? Ideas * patience, the multiplier is cause you have many ideas, weeding them out takes time. technological advancements only have a factor of 1.7 cause I figure a real idea takes about 2 years from inception to conception (rolling on all four wheels). I threw in a fudge factor for design. Also for reaction. The problem is you often get part way into the idea and never see the action. This of course is not for lack of trying, rather other ideas, technological advancements, or it’s just plain dumb (should have factored this one as well). Once you get to reaction (if your so lucky) rinse and repeat for new ideas, within the same space to keep ahead of competition (also not factored). Of course I’m just making this up for fun in order to make the point.
IMO it’s the ideas, the entire company depends on them, patents them etc.. Ever seen a company patent an action plan, business plan, marketing model, business model, accounting structure? Didn’t think so. If action and reaction where so important we would patent them instead of the underlying technology.
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Christopher Coulter : “Ideas are nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nadda. Need that repeated ?”
Action can’t take place until the idea is proven or theoretically correct. The ideas[i] you have, combined with your patience[p] to live with the idea for a while, before going over board. Then a proven theory[t], followed by core design[d], need to factor in technological advancements in the industry[g] and finally prototype[y]. There only remains action[a], and reaction[r]. So…
((((((i*p)+t) +d*1.5)*1.7)*y)+(a+r*1.5))
So how does this equate? Ideas * patience, the multiplier is cause you have many ideas, weeding them out takes time. technological advancements only have a factor of 1.7 cause I figure a real idea takes about 2 years from inception to conception (rolling on all four wheels). I threw in a fudge factor for design. Also for reaction. The problem is you often get part way into the idea and never see the action. This of course is not for lack of trying, rather other ideas, technological advancements, or it’s just plain dumb (should have factored this one as well). Once you get to reaction (if your so lucky) rinse and repeat for new ideas, within the same space to keep ahead of competition (also not factored). Of course I’m just making this up for fun in order to make the point.
IMO it’s the ideas, the entire company depends on them, patents them etc.. Ever seen a company patent an action plan, business plan, marketing model, business model, accounting structure? Didn’t think so. If action and reaction where so important we would patent them instead of the underlying technology.
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Robert, if ideas count more than implementation, the why didn’t Windows take off until 3.1, and really dominate until 95? Windows 1.0 had the idea. If ideas, not implementation count, then why update? Why change the UI multiple times if the idea counts that much more than the implementation, then why improve.
The PointCast point is excellent. It was a great idea, and still is, but it wasn’t until RSS that the implementation didn’t suck ass. How many revs did it take for Windows mobile to get to an implementation that sold well? Hmm…looks like a few to me. How many revs will it take for Windows to have a decent security implementation after it was deliberately broke in the initial revs of NT? Vista.
You talk about original ideas, yet you work for a company that’s never made money off an original idea. MS is all about beating people on implementation.
Learn your own company’s history Robert, it will save you a lot of lookin’ dumb time.
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Robert, if ideas count more than implementation, the why didn’t Windows take off until 3.1, and really dominate until 95? Windows 1.0 had the idea. If ideas, not implementation count, then why update? Why change the UI multiple times if the idea counts that much more than the implementation, then why improve.
The PointCast point is excellent. It was a great idea, and still is, but it wasn’t until RSS that the implementation didn’t suck ass. How many revs did it take for Windows mobile to get to an implementation that sold well? Hmm…looks like a few to me. How many revs will it take for Windows to have a decent security implementation after it was deliberately broke in the initial revs of NT? Vista.
You talk about original ideas, yet you work for a company that’s never made money off an original idea. MS is all about beating people on implementation.
Learn your own company’s history Robert, it will save you a lot of lookin’ dumb time.
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An alternative is to just say no to the $1,000 coffee urns or call out the rip-off artists. Or…maybe run an event sequentially for a week. Or maybe rent a football stadium if that works better.
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An alternative is to just say no to the $1,000 coffee urns or call out the rip-off artists. Or…maybe run an event sequentially for a week. Or maybe rent a football stadium if that works better.
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John: I see the disconnect. I don’t look at ideas the way you do. I look at them more as a combination of the idea and implementation. Gary made that point up above.
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John: I see the disconnect. I don’t look at ideas the way you do. I look at them more as a combination of the idea and implementation. Gary made that point up above.
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Expenses are high at healthcare’s HIMSS expo. An example:
In order to give the Otis Spunkmeyer cookies away in your booth, you have to rent the machine from the convention center. There is a $500 charge for the machine and a $100 delivery fee. In addition you must have a certified cookie attendant at $80 an hour for a 4 hour minimum.
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Expenses are high at healthcare’s HIMSS expo. An example:
In order to give the Otis Spunkmeyer cookies away in your booth, you have to rent the machine from the convention center. There is a $500 charge for the machine and a $100 delivery fee. In addition you must have a certified cookie attendant at $80 an hour for a 4 hour minimum.
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IMO it’s the ideas, the entire company depends on them, patents them etc.. Ever seen a company patent an action plan, business plan, marketing model, business model, accounting structure? Didn’t think so.
You need to read up on patents.
First, you can’t patent an idea, only an implementation of an idea reduced to practice. In addition, there have been “business methods patents” for a long time, and USPTO now distinguishes these as separate types of filings, although business methods have been patented for a long time as “process patents”. For example, 4,346,442 is a process patent by Merrill Lynch for a particular method of cash management. Many of these methods do not even involve automation, such as QA systems implemented by following specific paper-forms-based procedures.
Most of the things you describe, such as accounting structures, marketing models, business models can be (and are) patented regularly. Ideas, on the other hand are not. Only specific methods of implementing ideas.
Much of the patent marketing hype invites people to “Patent Your Ideas!”. This is just marketing drivel.
Of course, without ideas, there’s nothing to implement. So, don’t get me wrong… Wow, I love good ideas! But, most ideas end up being shot down, and the good ones usually take many implementations to mature. The biggest mistake is thinking that once you have a great idea, you’re at the end of the road. You’re just at the beginning.
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IMO it’s the ideas, the entire company depends on them, patents them etc.. Ever seen a company patent an action plan, business plan, marketing model, business model, accounting structure? Didn’t think so.
You need to read up on patents.
First, you can’t patent an idea, only an implementation of an idea reduced to practice. In addition, there have been “business methods patents” for a long time, and USPTO now distinguishes these as separate types of filings, although business methods have been patented for a long time as “process patents”. For example, 4,346,442 is a process patent by Merrill Lynch for a particular method of cash management. Many of these methods do not even involve automation, such as QA systems implemented by following specific paper-forms-based procedures.
Most of the things you describe, such as accounting structures, marketing models, business models can be (and are) patented regularly. Ideas, on the other hand are not. Only specific methods of implementing ideas.
Much of the patent marketing hype invites people to “Patent Your Ideas!”. This is just marketing drivel.
Of course, without ideas, there’s nothing to implement. So, don’t get me wrong… Wow, I love good ideas! But, most ideas end up being shot down, and the good ones usually take many implementations to mature. The biggest mistake is thinking that once you have a great idea, you’re at the end of the road. You’re just at the beginning.
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…At least when you have an idea you’re on a road, albeit the beginning.
With no idea you’re either nowhere at all or reduced to trying to improve on the implementation of someone else’s idea. Perhaps that’s a sort of “second-order” idea – “Hey, i have an idea – let’s make a spreadsheet program that works in Windows, since Lotus doesn’t”. Something like that.
And of course Windows 1 & 2 were malnourished implementations of someone else’s idea. 3.0, to a smaller and 3.1 to a larger extent were implementations of suffucient quality to be successful.
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…At least when you have an idea you’re on a road, albeit the beginning.
With no idea you’re either nowhere at all or reduced to trying to improve on the implementation of someone else’s idea. Perhaps that’s a sort of “second-order” idea – “Hey, i have an idea – let’s make a spreadsheet program that works in Windows, since Lotus doesn’t”. Something like that.
And of course Windows 1 & 2 were malnourished implementations of someone else’s idea. 3.0, to a smaller and 3.1 to a larger extent were implementations of suffucient quality to be successful.
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Gary, your right thanks for the correction, I realize it’s not just the idea but the implementation that gets a patent. I was not aware of the possibility to patent an business type (accounting etc..) implementation. I really do need to read up on this stuff (just wish I had the time) or (could find a way to stop time). Anyway my apologies. Thanks for the link.
Indeed, the road is long.
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Gary, your right thanks for the correction, I realize it’s not just the idea but the implementation that gets a patent. I was not aware of the possibility to patent an business type (accounting etc..) implementation. I really do need to read up on this stuff (just wish I had the time) or (could find a way to stop time). Anyway my apologies. Thanks for the link.
Indeed, the road is long.
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Robert, if you see ideas as also containing the implementation, then you can’t see a problem with people saying the implementation counts at the same level as the idea, because your statement agrees with that.
You can’t have an implementation without an idea, and an idea without a usable implementation is useless. Look how long it took the mouse to go from an idea to a functional implementation used by, well, everyone. Object – Oriented Programming the same way.
We’re still waiting on a good implementation of a car that uses a renewable fuel source, the idea’s been there for a LONG time.
Etc. You can’t say “Oh the idea counts more than the implementation” and then say “I count the idea as the idea AND the implementation”, they’re rather contradictory.
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Robert, if you see ideas as also containing the implementation, then you can’t see a problem with people saying the implementation counts at the same level as the idea, because your statement agrees with that.
You can’t have an implementation without an idea, and an idea without a usable implementation is useless. Look how long it took the mouse to go from an idea to a functional implementation used by, well, everyone. Object – Oriented Programming the same way.
We’re still waiting on a good implementation of a car that uses a renewable fuel source, the idea’s been there for a LONG time.
Etc. You can’t say “Oh the idea counts more than the implementation” and then say “I count the idea as the idea AND the implementation”, they’re rather contradictory.
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John: the thing is my idea of an idea isn’t as global as your idea. Heheh. Flickr, for instance, contains hundreds of ideas. The idea that you should be able to tag your photos, for instance, and have those tags show up on Technorati. It was the first one I’ve seen to put that idea into action.
That’s what made Flickr different for me. Now, is it the idea, or the implementation that matters? Both, in my view.
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John: the thing is my idea of an idea isn’t as global as your idea. Heheh. Flickr, for instance, contains hundreds of ideas. The idea that you should be able to tag your photos, for instance, and have those tags show up on Technorati. It was the first one I’ve seen to put that idea into action.
That’s what made Flickr different for me. Now, is it the idea, or the implementation that matters? Both, in my view.
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Tagging metadata onto photos is FAR older than Flickr or Technorati. What you’re seeing is a useful implementation (Flickr using technorati tags as image metadata) of an old idea (Image metadata).
Maybe if you stopped thinking of the world as being only two years old?
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Tagging metadata onto photos is FAR older than Flickr or Technorati. What you’re seeing is a useful implementation (Flickr using technorati tags as image metadata) of an old idea (Image metadata).
Maybe if you stopped thinking of the world as being only two years old?
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Any “ideas deniers” here?
Show me a success and I’ll bet you’ll find an idea in there somewhere.
Even things like the notion of “implementing something good that someone has done before, but do it better” is a good idea.
And sometimes, just saying something like that will get this response:
“Do you know, that is the first time I’ve heard anyone suggest that, I think it might just work, if you can get people with the right kinds of experience to run it”.
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Any “ideas deniers” here?
Show me a success and I’ll bet you’ll find an idea in there somewhere.
Even things like the notion of “implementing something good that someone has done before, but do it better” is a good idea.
And sometimes, just saying something like that will get this response:
“Do you know, that is the first time I’ve heard anyone suggest that, I think it might just work, if you can get people with the right kinds of experience to run it”.
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“Make a web search better than Google” is an idea. It’s easy, It’s not even innovative. How to do it may technically be “an idea” but it’s the difficult bit.
Oh, and plenty of things are easy to think of, but the “how to make money” bit keeps a lot of people from actually turning the idea into a real product. If you don’t know how to turn your neat idea into a successful product then the idea is worthless.
It seems that some people have worked out how to make money out of large conferences: rent stuff to suckers.
I’ve always wondered why people think they can learn more in a 2 day “conference” than they can by just chipping in the cash to fund one guy writing a book. Really, a thousand people chipping in $200 each would keep an author living pretty well for a year while writing the book, then they can all get a free copy before it starts being sold. And it would be cheaper for them all, as well. The educational value sounds like an excuse to hide the fact that it’s all about meeting and socialising with people.
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“Make a web search better than Google” is an idea. It’s easy, It’s not even innovative. How to do it may technically be “an idea” but it’s the difficult bit.
Oh, and plenty of things are easy to think of, but the “how to make money” bit keeps a lot of people from actually turning the idea into a real product. If you don’t know how to turn your neat idea into a successful product then the idea is worthless.
It seems that some people have worked out how to make money out of large conferences: rent stuff to suckers.
I’ve always wondered why people think they can learn more in a 2 day “conference” than they can by just chipping in the cash to fund one guy writing a book. Really, a thousand people chipping in $200 each would keep an author living pretty well for a year while writing the book, then they can all get a free copy before it starts being sold. And it would be cheaper for them all, as well. The educational value sounds like an excuse to hide the fact that it’s all about meeting and socialising with people.
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But there is no value in the idea. Patents are the closest we have, but that’s no protection against copycats in China. And there’s certainly no protection on the web.
Google succeeds because it executes. MS doesn’t execute outside it’s marketing dep’t. Google has 20% time to execute idle, experimental ideas. You guys are either greenlighted or no. The Xbox was an idea many people had, but J Allard executed. But there was no value before J Allard. Without value, there’s no point in discussing anything. Certainly not in terms of VCs. But I guess the world seems easier when your job is writing everything that pops into your head, no matter what.
It’s like in Ocean’s 12, when they’re discussing why they were referred to as ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ instead of the ‘Benedict Job’ and the demolitions guys says, ‘Without us, it don’t leave your ‘ead’
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But there is no value in the idea. Patents are the closest we have, but that’s no protection against copycats in China. And there’s certainly no protection on the web.
Google succeeds because it executes. MS doesn’t execute outside it’s marketing dep’t. Google has 20% time to execute idle, experimental ideas. You guys are either greenlighted or no. The Xbox was an idea many people had, but J Allard executed. But there was no value before J Allard. Without value, there’s no point in discussing anything. Certainly not in terms of VCs. But I guess the world seems easier when your job is writing everything that pops into your head, no matter what.
It’s like in Ocean’s 12, when they’re discussing why they were referred to as ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ instead of the ‘Benedict Job’ and the demolitions guys says, ‘Without us, it don’t leave your ‘ead’
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Gary, wow some great reading on your blog. Love it, esp. the Don Box post. Rare that I find a blog that doesn’t cause my blood pressure to boil over, so always a treat and a treasure.
I was all set to tear that “patent ideas” conceptualization from limb to limb but you did it for me, and undeniably much calmer and nicer. 🙂
Maybe if you stopped thinking of the world as being only two years old?
We should be so lucky, rather try the world as 2 weeks old, which is the average attention-span level of the A-List blogger typeset-casting.
they’re rather contradictory.
I know (another thing I was going to point out), but these weebles wobble and don’t fall down. Logic and irony is meaningless. If cornered quit the ‘naked conversation’, and move onto the next new new thing.
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Gary, wow some great reading on your blog. Love it, esp. the Don Box post. Rare that I find a blog that doesn’t cause my blood pressure to boil over, so always a treat and a treasure.
I was all set to tear that “patent ideas” conceptualization from limb to limb but you did it for me, and undeniably much calmer and nicer. 🙂
Maybe if you stopped thinking of the world as being only two years old?
We should be so lucky, rather try the world as 2 weeks old, which is the average attention-span level of the A-List blogger typeset-casting.
they’re rather contradictory.
I know (another thing I was going to point out), but these weebles wobble and don’t fall down. Logic and irony is meaningless. If cornered quit the ‘naked conversation’, and move onto the next new new thing.
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heh 😉 Ever been to a fan convention? It’s a community that deals with these issues frequently. Don’t think costumed folk with Spock ears roaming the hall; a literary con will have 6 hours of programming a day at least. I’ve been on the committee for a 1,000 person con and I ran a 200 person con on my own, on a shoestring and the edge of a nervous breakdown. There’s a 600-1,000 person con in the UK every Easter – it usually conflicts with the equivalent size con in Minneapolis. There are plenty of 1,000-person sites in hotels even in the UK – if you have the money to hire the facilities and the attendees to fill the hotel rooms. Larger cons are difficult; in the UK the Worldcon will be around 6,000 people and there are rally only 3 sites that can take it. US Worldcons are 7,000 and up and there are ten or more regular sites, including the San Jose conference centre. Academic sites are good value but dorms are usually single rooms, so you need a hotel deal too. After that marketing is your biggest outlay. And insurance can be pricey. Many venues will have some facilities like projection; you’ll pay for the specialist stuff but you won;t need it until you get to the scale of PDC. A 20,000-person event can be a convention; there were over 30,000 people at the Oracle event in Moscone the week after PDC and the majority of them were at sessions for most of the day. But there aren’t many sites like Moscone and you need very strong planning to make something that size work.
This all makes me think of the discussions around the PDC videos and whether they should be free for more than 6 months. Is a convention or conference a money-spinner (rarely), something that has to break even (very possible and common for fannish conventions) or something that can be a marketing loss leader because of the anciliary gains?
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heh 😉 Ever been to a fan convention? It’s a community that deals with these issues frequently. Don’t think costumed folk with Spock ears roaming the hall; a literary con will have 6 hours of programming a day at least. I’ve been on the committee for a 1,000 person con and I ran a 200 person con on my own, on a shoestring and the edge of a nervous breakdown. There’s a 600-1,000 person con in the UK every Easter – it usually conflicts with the equivalent size con in Minneapolis. There are plenty of 1,000-person sites in hotels even in the UK – if you have the money to hire the facilities and the attendees to fill the hotel rooms. Larger cons are difficult; in the UK the Worldcon will be around 6,000 people and there are rally only 3 sites that can take it. US Worldcons are 7,000 and up and there are ten or more regular sites, including the San Jose conference centre. Academic sites are good value but dorms are usually single rooms, so you need a hotel deal too. After that marketing is your biggest outlay. And insurance can be pricey. Many venues will have some facilities like projection; you’ll pay for the specialist stuff but you won;t need it until you get to the scale of PDC. A 20,000-person event can be a convention; there were over 30,000 people at the Oracle event in Moscone the week after PDC and the majority of them were at sessions for most of the day. But there aren’t many sites like Moscone and you need very strong planning to make something that size work.
This all makes me think of the discussions around the PDC videos and whether they should be free for more than 6 months. Is a convention or conference a money-spinner (rarely), something that has to break even (very possible and common for fannish conventions) or something that can be a marketing loss leader because of the anciliary gains?
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How serious are you about $1,000 for coffee at Moscone in SF? Is that real or an exaggeration?
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How serious are you about $1,000 for coffee at Moscone in SF? Is that real or an exaggeration?
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Hey Scoble,
We in the identity community are trying to figure out the venue thing too. 1st key is a place that lets you bring in outside catoring.
We are also doing 75% open space at our next conference – so no planning for ‘sessions’ the attendees create them based on what is alive in the room that day. This is how you have a discussion with 2000 folks – not trying to have it all in one big room. You can also use process like Appreciative Inquiry where a whole room of over 5000 folks can have a meaningful conversatino ‘together’. I think we should have a conference for conference organizers to mull on options and issues faced by our crowd. Innvation is needed in this space and market needs are largely unmet.
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Hey Scoble,
We in the identity community are trying to figure out the venue thing too. 1st key is a place that lets you bring in outside catoring.
We are also doing 75% open space at our next conference – so no planning for ‘sessions’ the attendees create them based on what is alive in the room that day. This is how you have a discussion with 2000 folks – not trying to have it all in one big room. You can also use process like Appreciative Inquiry where a whole room of over 5000 folks can have a meaningful conversatino ‘together’. I think we should have a conference for conference organizers to mull on options and issues faced by our crowd. Innvation is needed in this space and market needs are largely unmet.
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A lot of Universities can host 2000+ people with little problem. They do it every day in term time after all.
If you MUST have big keynotes, way not do them with video links between rooms that seat 1000 people each. Or even use a big church that is close to the University.
The keynotes are never good enough to be worth the $1000 per person that they add to the cost of the event.
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A lot of Universities can host 2000+ people with little problem. They do it every day in term time after all.
If you MUST have big keynotes, way not do them with video links between rooms that seat 1000 people each. Or even use a big church that is close to the University.
The keynotes are never good enough to be worth the $1000 per person that they add to the cost of the event.
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Moscone uses SMG as their caterer. You can look at some real prices here:
https://www.cateringbysmg.com/site/do/orders/services
You’ll have to pick an event; the second page includes prices.
I couldn’t find a per urn price for coffee, but for 300 cup coffee service, it’s $1,650/day including an operator. They also have regular coffee at $46/gallon. $56 for Peets.
Food is $19.50 per person for sandwiches, and doesn’t seem to include drinks or chips, so $30 per person for hot dogs sounds pretty accurate.
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Moscone uses SMG as their caterer. You can look at some real prices here:
https://www.cateringbysmg.com/site/do/orders/services
You’ll have to pick an event; the second page includes prices.
I couldn’t find a per urn price for coffee, but for 300 cup coffee service, it’s $1,650/day including an operator. They also have regular coffee at $46/gallon. $56 for Peets.
Food is $19.50 per person for sandwiches, and doesn’t seem to include drinks or chips, so $30 per person for hot dogs sounds pretty accurate.
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Hail
What do you think about this? When it happens?
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Hail
What do you think about this? When it happens?
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“People who tear down ideas. I see that all over the place.”Unfortunately, this is a way of life for way too many.
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“People who tear down ideas. I see that all over the place.”Unfortunately, this is a way of life for way too many.Adult Toys | Doc Johnson | Sex Toys
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