- $300 for a TechCrunch conference —featuring the top Silicon Valley people.
- $400 for a commercial conference on prediction markets —featuring one or two boring academics and a microscopic bunch of second-tier collective forecasting managers.
Obviously, the TechCrunch conference delivers —while the prediction market conferences don’t.
Completely agreed.
I think we should run our own, informal “conferences” every summer and winter in nice places. Kind of like family reunions… with the explicit goal being to generate useful interactions between entrepreneurs, academics and investors.
Tea,
You know what, I wanted to make that same point. I participated to a BarCamp in Sophia Antipolis recently, and I liked the “unconference” philosophy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp
The one thing we would have to get is to have a bunch of sponsors, including one that would lend us some real estate. It is not something impossible to do.
I’m in, if the real estate includes 18 flags. Sounds like a great idea. We could also have internet conferences (and afterwards play golf at our own local golf courses).
Paul, have you ever participated to a BarCamp? You should attend, at least one time in your life. It is a complete mess, but in the end it is satisfactory. We have all learned from others.
That reminds me of a book from Roland Moreno (the guy who invented the chip we have on bank cards), “La Theorie Du Bordel Ambiant” (the theory of the ambient mess).
The messier it is, the more creative we get.