BarCampMiami participants and topics

BarCampMiami will be held on February 28th from 4pm to 8pm, in conjunction with the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) Miami conference at the glorious Carnival Center of the performing arts. Since opening the registration last week, about 90 people have signed up. BarCampMiami attendees are entitled to 50% off the price of FOWA Miami and the first 100 get a free tshirt. The FOWA coupon code is available upon signing up for BarCamp.


What topics or services would you like to see presented? A few days after registration was opened, we added a question to the signup form on what types of topics people would like to see presented. Here are the answers:

1. Amazon Web Services  2. Free and Open Source for Geospatial

All kind of topics concerning web applications, mobile servcies, and maybe a little bit of semantic web...

Anything cool about web :-)

Blogging

Community building and publishing related. Monetization on community sites,  are subscriptions models dead?

development of mobile platforms

Entrepreneurship, Web Design and/or starting and promoting a startup.

ERP SOLUTIONS.

Flash Techniques and Animation.  XML integration and a bit of Animation/Cartooning

I will be volunteering with project management.

interface design

landing page optimization  profit models

Microformats

Microformats, APIs, state of the languages (Django, Rails, etc.), subscription/payment options

monetization of web apps and metrics.

New media. New technology. Art. Music. Software.

new technologies...

optimization

Photoshop Design to CSS

rapid app development, .NET libraries, AJAX, dynamically generating .swf files

Ruby on Rails development

Ruby, productivity tools, promoting a healthy technology community in South Florida, office ergonomics, does anyone still use Java anymore?

ruby, rails

Ruby, Ruby on Rails, electronics, robotics, graphic design.

SEM, Social network marketing

Server side and client side frameworks. Internationalization.

social networking, mobile, ventures

usability, information architecture

BarCampMiami presenters. The following people indicate they would like to present:

Alex Hillman Founder/Fearless Leader IndyHall
website: http://www.indyhall.org
blog: http://www.dangerouslyawesome.com
I'd love to present about coworking, if you'll have me!

Blake Macleod Business Development PeopleBubble
website: http://www.peoplebubble.net
I would like to give a demonstration of PeopleBubble, a web app we are developing.

Brian Breslin CEO infinimedia
website: http://www.infinimedia.com
blog: http://webpl.us
Yes. Leveraging the social graph for fun and profit.

Brian Oberkirch Founder Small Good Thing
website: http://brianoberkirch.com
Designing for Portable Social Networks

Chris Saylor Senior Web Developer TodobebÈ
website: http://todobebe.com
blog: http://justhack.com
Possibly on Globalizing Your Web Applications

Christopher Haupt CTO Collective Knowledge Works Inc
website: http://buildingwebapps.com
blog: http://blog.buildingwebapps.com
We just launched BuildingWebApps.com as a service to the Ruby on Rails focused development and design community. Behind the scenes, we are building tech to organize information for communities in niche knowledge domains. Would love to show it to folks and find out what new learners most wish they had (or could point new practitioners to to get them up to speed).

Edward Toro Developer Scrapblog
website: http://www.scrapblog.com
Maybe.  Intro to Adobe Flex? Agile development processes (Scrum)?  IdeaFestival Do-Tank meeting style?

Elliot Murphy hacker Canonical
website: http://canonical.com
blog: http://elliotmurphy.com
Distributed revision control for web developers.

Greg Pederson Director of Technology Nsightdevelpoment.com
website: http://www.nsightdevelopment.com
I can talk about using CSS positioning along with one graphic file that contains all the sites reused images to save space, download times, etc.

Gregg Pollack Code Monkey RailsEnvy
website: http://www.RailsEnvy.com
blog: http://www.RailsEnvy.com
I'd like to do a presentation on Intro to Ruby on Rails.  If there are too many people there already familiar I might switch to a more advanced topic like BDD/RSpec or ActiveRecord.
James Hoskins Software Engineer Avatar International. Inc.Undecided topic

Jason Perry Prime Mover Paint.itRed
website: http://paint.itred.org
blog: http://ambethia.com
Unsure, perhaps in the lightning round if there is one.

Joey Primiani Web Designer Freelance
website: http://www.joeyprimiani.com
blog: http://www.joeyprimiani.com
Yes, I plan to present new ways to visualize live analytics (other than Google Analytics) to get a better idea of what users like on the page. Or the latest (past two months) ajax libraries that include amazing ways for increased user interaction and experience.

John Rife CEO Interactive Expeditions
website: http://www.FindingAmerica.tv
blog: http://www.ALocalFolkus.com
Transmedia Story Creation:  Telling stories with today's tools - but as Ryan Price said above "It's not about the tools"

Joshua Hoskins IT Director OrlandoJobs.com
website: http://www.orlandojobs.com
I would like to, at BarCamp Orlando I presented on GoogleBase. I may do that again or something with Ruby on Rails and Integration.

Kevin Murphy Managing Director Statiksoft, LLC
website: http://statiksoft.com
blog: http://kevinnmurphy.com
Doing a talk on either django templates, or decoupling django apps.

michael galpert C20 A.viary.com
website: http://A.viary.com
blog: http://A.viary.com/blog
deskop software vs online software or something along those lines

Michael Montgomery President Montgomery Studios, Inc.
website: http://montgomerystudios.com
blog: http://michaelmontgomery.net
Yes. Possible topics include web standards or accessibility.

Michael Nunez Founder Suluta Corp
website: http://www.suluta.com
Monetizing your work online.

Nathan Rambeck Founder Rambeck Group
website: http://rambeck.com
blog: http://rambeck.com/blog
Building social networks with Drupal.

Ptah Dunbar Web Designer / Developer 
website: http://ptahdunbar.net
blog: http://ptahdunbar.com
no sure.. I could present a service if possible.

Ron Akanowicz Information Architect Softerware Consulting, PA
website: http://www.softerwareconsulting.com
I Haven't been asked, but could...

Ryan Price Drupal Developer Petentials.com
website: http://petentials.com
blog: http://ryanpricemedia.com
Podcasting is not about Tools

Sean Murphy Web Application Architect Statiksoft, LLC
website: http://statiksoft.com
blog: http://IamSeanMurphy.com
I'd be happy to present on either Comet, or improving user experience with JS form validation.

Tantek «elik   
website: http://tantek.com/
blog: http://tantek.com/
microformats lab - a hands-on lab for folks wanting either an introduction or help with adding microformats to their sites.

Tate Stickles Attorney Grossman Law Group
website: http://www.ecomputerlaw.com
I'd be interested on presenting on a legal topic relating to the interests of other attendees.  Such as protecting intellectual property, privacy, etc.

Tyler Hunt   
website: http://tylerhunt.com/
blog: http://blog.tylerhunt.com/
Possibly something on Amazon FPS.

William Couch Multimedia Artist Orlando Sentinel
website: http://orlandosentinel.com
blog: http://williamcouch.com
Possibly, about prototyping/generating Flash projects quickly for breaking news.

And myself, Alex de Carvalho Community and Marketing Dir. Scrapblog.com
website: http://www.scrapblog.com
blog: http://www.tapio.com
Object-centered sociality

More BarCampMiami participants. Here is the remainder of the participant list. Everyone is welcome to present:

Adam Teece Lead Designer Aberrant Designs, Inc
website: http://adamteece.com
blog: http://aberrantabsurdity.com

Alex Harris Creative Director Alex Designs LLC
website: http://www.alexdesigns.com
blog: http://www.alexdesigns.com/blog/

Alison Wadsworth Research Director Micstura
website: http://www.micstura.com

Allan Branch design/ui less everything, inc
website: http://www.lesseverthing.com
blog: b.lesseverything.com

Bruno Miranda Developer Ninja Todobebe
website: http://www.bopia.com
blog: http://www.brunomiranda.com

Carlos Granier-Phelps Social Media Strategist RED66.com
website: http://red66.com/
blog: http://technosailor.com/category/espanol/

cathy colmenares Sr Director, Integrated Marketing Todobebe Inc.
website: http://todobebe.com
blog: http://mitodobebe.com

Chris Campbell Co-Founder Wufoo
website: http://wufoo.com
blog: http://particletree.com

Cristopher Carillo Owner Tequesta Enterprises
website: http://www.linkspro.com

Daniel Dye 
Daniel Kirsch 
Danny Sanchez Senior Producer Orlando Sentinel
website: http://www.orlandosentinel.com
blog: http://www.journalistopia.com

David Moore Music Teacher Broward Schools
David Parmet Owner Marketing Begins at Home, LLC
website: http://www.parmet.net/pr
blog: http://www.parmet.net/pr

David Rhugnanan Web Desinger Trinity Effects Inc.
website: http://trinityeffects.com

Diego Sanz Web Consultant Sanz Consulting
website: http://brickellmiamicondos.com/real_estate/home/

Eduardo Henriques Managing Partner Micstura
website: http://www.micstura.com

Frank Deoleo 
Giannina Amato Team Leader Nobox
website: http://copywwwriter.wordpress.com/
blog: http://copywwwriter.wordpress.com/

Giovanny Gutierrez Dir. of Interactive Media Tinsley Advertising
website: http://www.tinsley.com
blog: http://www.giogutierrez.com

Guilherme Ambros Digital Solutions Director Wunderman, Young & Rubicam
website: http://www.wunderman.com

Gus Goodall Senior Designer British Army
website: http://www.armynet.mod.uk
blog: http://www.armynet.mod.uk

Gus Goodall Senior Designer British Army
website: http://www.armynet.mod.uk
blog: http://www.armynet.mod.uk

Jason Baptiste CEO Publictivity
website: http://publictivity.com

Jason Hawkins Video guy Make Film Work
website: http://www.makefilmwork.com
blog: http://www.solmi.net

Jennifer Cardew Graduate Student North Texas
website: http://www.twitter.com/jencardew
blog: http://www.anthroblogs.org/jcardew

Jordan Fulghum  Scrapblog
website: http://www.scrapblog.com
blog: http://blog.scrapblog.com

Jorge Perez Director of Marketing Alienware.com
website: http://www.alienware.com

Josue Rodriguez Web Developer
Judson Collier  Macteens Magazine
website: http://macteens.com
blog: http://judsoncollier.com

Justin Tarrants Biz Dev Government
Katie Novak 
ken scott UNIX network security admin prolexic
website: http://www.prolexic.com

Kevin Hale Co-Founder Wufoo
website: http://wufoo.com
blog: http://particletree.com

Kevin Wiesner 
Marco Castro CEO MTEK
website: http://mtek.tv

Marco Castro CEO MTEK
website: http://mtek.tv

Marco Castro 
Maria Bouza Project Manager dotCMS
website: http://www.dotcms.org

Maria de los Angeles Lemus Wily Wordsmith & Rogue Cartoonist Freelance
website: http://wilywordsmith.blogspot.com
blog: http://sexandthebeach.blogspot.com

Matias Blazevic Sr. Copywriter Y&R Brands
website: http://printpreview.wordpress.com/
blog: http://printpreview.wordpress.com/

Meagan Fisher User Interface Designer Helium Report
website: http://www.heliumreport.com
blog: http://www.iheartthe.com/blog

Michael Rose IT Manager
Naomi Butterfield Web Applications Developer ADS
website: http://www.techcfl.com
blog: http://rorblog.techcfl.com/

Nate Roise Founder Magnetic Properties
website: http://www.urbanhoming.com

Nathaniel McNamara Associate HIG Ventures
website: http://www.higventures.com

Nick Dominguez   
website: http://www.nickdominguez.com
blog: http://nickdominguez.com

Nicolas Scafuro Latam Search Manager Yahoo Inc.
website: http://www.yahoo.com

Pablo Godel 
Paul Kruger PHP Consultant Speeduneed Inc
website: http://miamiphp.org

Rick Bartl Managing Director, Marketing FedEx
website: http://www.fedex.com

Robert Meireles 
Roberto Bouza 
Ryan Campbell Co-Founder Wufoo
website: http://wufoo.com
blog: http://particletree.com

Stani Henriques Art Director Micstura
website: http://www.micstura.com

Steven Bristol programmer Less Everything, inc.
website: http://www.lesseverything.com
blog: b.lesseverything.com

Tim Spence Senior .NET Developer Scrapblog
website: http://scrapblog.com
blog: http://blog.scrapblog.com

Timothy Kersey   
website: http://www.twitter.com/entangledstate
blog: http://friendfeed.com/entangledstate

Zac Brown Programmer N/A
website: http://zacbrown.org
blog: http://blog.zacbrown.org

BarCampMiami is made possible through the generous contribution of our sponsors:

Ourscene: http://www.ourscene.com
FunAdvice: http://www.funadvice.com
Global Roaming: http://www.celtrek.com
Less Everything: http://www.lesseverything.com
RailsEnvy: http://www.railsenvy.com
The Boaters: http://www.theboaters.com
Myxer: http://www.myxertones.com
ServerGrove Networks: http://www.servergrove.com
DC Media Graphics: http://www.dcmediagraphics.com
infinimedia: http://www.infinimedia.com
Hyku: http://www.hyku.com
Victoria & Associates: http://www.victoriaassociates.com
Todobebe: http://www.todobebe.com
Scrapblog: http://www.scrapblog.com

And our partners!:

FOWA: http://www.futureofwebapps.com
RefreshMiami: http://www.refreshmiami.org

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January 15, 2008 in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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Discount Code and Pass for Web 2.0 Expo Berlin

Earlier this year I attended the excellent Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, where I ran into my friend Nicole Simon, a leading German blogger, podcaster and social media consultant. She has kindly extended the following offer to my readers.

Web 2.0 ExpoThe O'Reilly and CMP Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin on Nov 5-8, 2007, features the latest Web 2.0 startups and strategies. If you’d like to register, you may use this 100€ (100 Euro) discount off the conference or a free Expo Pass by using the code: MLVLBE64

The days preceding the conference, Nicole is organizing the BarCamp and PodCamp Berlin free events. And adjacent to Web 2.0 Expo will be the free Web 2.0 Open conference.

These events are great ways to connect with the European web community; unfortunately I won't be attending either this conference or LeWeb3 in Paris in December. Maybe LIFT in February?
That'll depend on the dates for FOWA Miami, which have not yet been announced.

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October 30, 2007 in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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Miami FOWA dinner and BarCampMiami


Miami Geek Dinner for FOWA Originally uploaded by alexdecarvalho.

We're looking forward to FOWA, which will be key to raising the web/tech profile of South Florida. We held a "geek dinner" tonight to welcome Mel Kirk from Carsonified, who's in Miami planning the next FOWA conference. I've posted some photos on Flickr.

Over drinks. we mentioned holding another BarCampMiami to coincide with FOWA. The date is yet to be determined, but it will be in February 2008. After a great first BarCamp-Miami, it's great to see momentum building for another one. Please sign up to attend or to help organize.

tag: 

October 29, 2007 in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

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BarCamp's third anniversary party

BarCampBlock was held this past weekend (18-19 August 2007) in Palo Alto, to celebrate the third anniversary of BarCamp. Over 600 people showed up to assist over 100 presentations and discussions on a wide range of mostly tech-related topics. Some of these were great, particularly the talk over "Opening the Social Graph" and "Social Network Portability". Here's a scrapblog of the weekend:

In comparison, the BarCampMiami I helped organize earlier this year was more of a DemoCamp, where local startups presented their services. There's BarCampOrlando coming up in the third week of September, and we'll be organizing a DemoCamp this fall at the University of Miami.

Thanks, Tara and Chris, for letting me work out of Citizen Space on Monday.

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August 22, 2007 in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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Scrapblog launched this morning!

I'm pleased to announce that after years of work, the team at Scrapblog, which I recently joined, has officially launched their awesome service!

From Carlos:

An exciting journey starts today, and you are in the driver’s seat! Scrapblog is live for the entire world. After over two years of hard work, we finally have a version online that is faithful to our vision. That said, what we are launching today is only as far as we could take Scrapblog on our own. Now, it is up to Scrapblog’s growing community to define where we go from here.

Shel pitches in:

Scrapblog works bets when shared with family and friends, and now is the time to start sharing. Anyone is now free to use it and anyone can create whatever they want with it.

And from David, our PR guy:

Whatever the designers and coders came up with, it’s nothing compared with what you, the community, will show us with what you can do with our tools. Go at it and enjoy.

However much work into getting this version out, it's just the beginning. Over the next few weeks and months, we'll be stabilizing the new version and ensuring our content delivery network is robust; we'll be adding new features to the Builder; we'll be creating and getting new themes; and we'll be improving the functionality on the site, to make it more social. We hope you'll check back with us regularly and most importantly, tell us what we're doing right and what could be done better. Our feedback email is feedback[at]scrapblog[dot]com

Thanks!

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April 2, 2007 in Starting up, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

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Great demo of Scrapblog!

We're very close to sending out our first invites at Scrapblog it hurts ... and our developers have had their longest week getting everything ready. It's really an amazing application, but then again, I would say that, wouldn't I, considering I work there ... ;)

But you can be the judge of that as well. Michael Pick and Robin Good at MasterNewMedia reviewed Scrapblog recently and made some great screencasts of Scrapblog, which I've embedded here:

If you'd like a preview invite, please comment below or email me privately.

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March 27, 2007 in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

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RefreshMiami March 2007 - tonight!

Between travel to Austin, my hard drive crash and the launch of Scrapblog, I haven't had the occasion to talk about RefreshMiami. The easiest is to post this e-mail, from Brian. By the way, I think this will be a great Refresh meeting:

Hey folks,

Your friendly organizer here, just wanted to give you all a heads up on the exciting stuff we have planned for [tonight], one of our biggest yet.

------------------------------


Speakers:


Paul Scrivens - CEO - 9rules.com

Paul will be talking how as the rise of independent content on the web climbs and the ability for anyone to make an impact on the medium it becomes more and more important to find ways to filter through the content. Everyone is given a chance to voice their thoughts on the web, but only some people are able to stand out above others due to the quality that they bring to the table.

----------------------------------------
Free Stuff!!!!
So we've decided whats better than great conversation, meeting new people, and having a good time? all of the above + free stuff!

Dan Rubin has graciously offered to giveaway a copy of Pro CSS techniques to one lucky winner tomorrow.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/159059732X/webgraph-20

Nick Dominguez has also offered to giveaway a few CDs from his record label Pop Up Records ( http://www.popuprecords.com )

Also the fine folks at Ad:Tech are giving away a 50% off coupon to the upcoming Ad:Tech Miami conference this june. Thats a $400 savings.

--------------------------------------------
When? Where? Why?
Wednesday March 21, 2007 7:00PM

University of Miami Wolfson Building
5100 Brunson Drive, Coral Gables, FL
directions: http://refreshmiami.org/address-directions/


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March 21, 2007 in Starting up, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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Getting ready to launch Scrapblog

This is another placeholder, I'll repost the Scrapblog slideshow I created when we open up our firewall again in a few days.

March 21, 2007 in Miscellaneous Stuff, Starting up, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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SXSW Customer Service is the New Marketing

Customer service is the new black. The Customer Service is the New Marketing panel at SXSW talked about how "online businesses that provide superior customer service are earning fanatical devotion ... Doing business online is anything but impersonal and an obsessive attention to customers *after* the sale is a killer advantage." The panel featured Thor Muller, Managing Dir, Satisfaction Unlimited, Heather Champ, Community Mgr, Flickr, Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com and Nick Wilder, Principal, 30 Boxes

Heather spoke in good detail about how Flickr manages their community:

  • They keep different channels of communication open with their members. They have a help link at the top and footer of every page, a help by email with a drop-down topic selector and links to forum topics and activity. Flickr's team can access this help and feedback system on the fly from wherever they are and they use a sitewide status message to let people know what's happening.
  • Flickr has three forums: Flickr Help, Bugs and Ideas - that provide immediate feedback on the mood of the community on any particular day. Community managers, including company founder Stewart Butterfield, monitor these daily to take the temperature of the community. About a million photos are uploaded every day, so a lot of people actively participate on the site and in the forums.  For example, the community recently flared up over Yahoo!'s decision to convert "Old Skool" Flickr users were not happy about this and within a few weeks of the announcement, 2,650 comments had been posted on the forum thread about the change.
  • Even as things get heated in the forums, Heather's mantra is to use a "soft pleasing tone of voice"; she even taped this sentence to her laptop, as a core principle to follow. The point is to cool things down by being level-headed at all times. She will let members be abusive to her, but never to one another.
  • When they know of a new feature or a bug, they will put a notice on the top of mebers' home page with a link to the discussion
  • Every Flickr empoyee is an active member of the site with their own photostream: they are who they say they are and you can see their profiles. In fact, the people who built Flickr really participated and actively engaged with the community
  • As an online service provider, you cannot assume nothing is going to go wrong ... but you can prepare for when things do. For example, on July 19th 2006, they had to take site down to fix a nagging issue. On this occasion, since they didn't know for how long the site would be down, they replaced the standard "flickr is having a massage" error page by a coloring contest with a way to win a free pro account. The contest details were on the flickr blog, which is run on a separate system and is not connected to the Flickr site. Within 24 hours, they had 1100 photographs. They gave away 14 pro accounts to the top entries as well as a 3-months pro account to all contest entrants. They did this because they didnt know how long it would take them to bring Flickr back up, so they wanted a way to engage with the community.
  • They remain honest, transparent and they 'fess up when they do things wrong, in particular Stewart
  • How do you deal with crazies? It's important to realize that people are very passionate about certain things and you have to remind yourself not to get angry and to understand when to step away and take a breather. The key is to have a firmly established community guideline, so that you can take the appropriate action when people step over the line. Sometimes there's "trout slapping" going on between members, and the community managers have to position themselves as referees: "step back from the abyss and if not, we'll lock down the forum". You can have people rail against you, but not against other people in the community. They only delete spammers out of the forums and infrequently block people from forums, if they're being real jerks. This action is not irreversible and gives people time to reset. According to Heather, it's good to wear "asbestos underpants" when dealing with hot topics.
  • It's important to hire the right people and their employees have been interviewed by 8 or 9 people. You need to find people with the same values. Also, everyone has to answer 10 to 20 customer care questions everyday to understand the interaction with the community. "We're all in this together".
  • Is there a cancellation policy? Flickr has a firm, no refund policy. Because a year's membership costs a mere $24.95, it's more expensive to deal with refunds, so they're not given. But you want to make sure people are there because they want to be there, not because you're holding them hostage, so it shouldn't be hard for users to cancel their accounts. In fact, every additional minute members spend trying to cancel their account creates unnecessary hatred, so the advice is to make it easy for members to discontinue their membership if that's what they wish.
  • Finally, it's important to subscribe to watchlist feeds to see what people in the blogosphere are saying about the company in blog posts and comments

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March 15, 2007 in Marketing-Advertising, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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SXSW: Turning projects into profit panel

I'm sitting at the "Turning Projects Into Revenue Generating Businesses" with Jeremiah Owyang, Brian Oberkirch, Adam Darowski, and Lionel Menchaca.

Jeremiah is live blogging this event as well here.

The speakers are:

Ted Rheingold, Top Dog, Dogster Inc, panel moderator


Tara Hunt  , CoFounder & CMOCitizen Agency

Gabe Rivera, CEOTechmeme

Shanalyn Victor, Owner/DesignerPixelgirl Shop

Ryan Carson , DirCarson Systems

Ted gave a 5-minute walk-through of the many ways people are making money online. Microsponsorship stands out as one of the truly new ways for people to cover costs and start making money online.

Ted: did you all plan to make money or how did it happen?

Shanalyn started Pixelgirl Shop as a free site but had to start a shop in order to pay for the hosting fees, that were exploding. For Tara and Chris, they needed to support their passion, the work that were doing, because rent is definitely not cheap in San Francisco.

Ted: did anyone study business before running a business?

Ryan encourages everyone to keep trying to get funding for side projects, it is doable.

Ted: how much can you find out on the internet or do you need to seek mentors?

Tara and Chris seek mentors to get new perspectives and may eventually hire a CEO to run the business. Shanalyn found that the "mentors" she found were thinking too small and she was shooting higher. Before your site is popular, people wlll forget about you, so it's a constant effort to get top of mind. Ted's mentor urged him to spend 50% of time selling, if not, "you're going to fail". Tara agreed: everytime you post to a blog, when you post pictures, when you travel and meet people, all these things keep you top of mind in the community.
In fact, you have to be part of the community you serve, and luckily it comes naturally to some. But you need to find ways to get involved, not really in a "selling" way, but in a "learning" way, with your peers.

Ted: how do you determine the pricing of what you're selling?

For Ryan, the only way to know is when you see people buying the stuff. The worst thing to do is to offer too much for free, because people will take it and not pay. So there needs to be a balance. Tara: do your research to see what the market will bear. Shanalyn had to raise the pricing of everything to lighten the amount of work she was doing fulfilling the orders. For Ted, it was about getting a first good sponsor. Once you have that, you understand where the floor is, and it makes it easier to get the next sponsor. But he's gotten the price point wrong many times and has had to adapt and experiment.

Essentially, the best pricing model is to open an excel sheet and figure out how much you need to make to quit your day job. 

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March 10, 2007 in Starting up, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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