Inkling Marketss Adam Siegel needs salad leaves to relieve tension.

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salad-leaves

If you listened to that &#8220-lecture&#8221- at Kellogg, send me an anonymous e-mail to cfm &amp-&amp-AT&amp-&amp- midasoracle **+DOT+** (-com-), and tell me how it went and whether Adam has convinced you of the usefulness of enterprise prediction markets.

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Lets boycott the $400 vendor conference on prediction markets.

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I renew my boycott on the $400 vendor conference on prediction markets.

As I said many times, do not pay anything (not even $4) to listen to vendors&#8217- marketing message &#8212-and to illuminated academics bought by these vendors.

They all exaggerate the usefulness of the prediction markets.

And beware that phone-booth conference organizer who hides under a female account and a &#8220-legal assistant&#8221- account on that e-mailing list.

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The San Francisco conference on prediction markets

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I previously wrote that that San Francisco vendor conference is not worth the $400 they are asking. However, in all honesty to my readers, I shall notify that they have just made one (small) change that goes in the right direction. World&#8217-s #1 prediction market researcher Robin Hanson is now scheduled to talk about combinatorial prediction markets (a very hot topic these days) &#8212-instead of stuff about how to quantify prediction market value (a too much theoretical issue for business people).

A vendor conference with no editorial line is unlikely to be the receptacle of the truth about enterprise prediction markets. Vendors (4 will be present) do oversell.

Open nights for some BetFair customers at HammerSmith

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Excellent.

Their HammerSmith office (in London, U.K.) is very awesome. It spreads on many stories. The waiting room is impressive. On the right, you have a glass wall that lets you see into the BetFair team who is monitoring the current state of their worldwide exchange.

1,000 times bigger than the InTrade-TradeSports office (located in between Dublin and Cork, Ireland).

I visited both &#8212-not that many people can tell you that.

People, dont pay real money to attend the San Francisco vendor mini-conference on prediction markets.

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I have gotten many e-mails from business people asking me whether they should attend the San Francisco vendor mini-conference on prediction markets in January 2009. My advice: Don&#8217-t go. Don&#8217-t pay a single cent for it.

  1. It is basically a vendor fair. Four software vendors are lined up. (I am told they have to fork over about $800 to take the stage.) They will over-sell the prediction markets and feed you with promotional material.
  2. The conference organizer is commissioned by some of those vendors. He is biased from the toes to the hair.
  3. Only an idiot would pay $300+ to listen to promotional material. Don&#8217-t. Never pay to listen to salesmen.
  4. One scholar will feed you with highly theoretical material, which you can get for free on Midas Oracle &#8212-99% of which you don&#8217-t need anyway.
  5. One scholar has never published anything on prediction markets &#8212-as far as I know (I could be wrong).
  6. One Robin Hanson fanboy and prediction market enthusiast will pump up the enterprise prediction markets. Never trust the overly enthusiast people. Never trust people who belong to one school of thought. Do trust, instead, the independent minds who use the scientific approach.
  7. Do listen, instead, to the thinkers who have nothing to sell you.

Live Stream Audio of the Third WorkShop on Prediction Markets?

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Live Steam Audio of the Third WorkShop on Prediction Markets?

UPDATE

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • The FaceBook profiles of the 2 most important men of the field of prediction markets
  • THE HUMAN GADFLY WHOSE OBJECTIONS ROBIN HANSON IS DUCKING…???…
  • Google now considers Midas Oracle as a major blog.
  • Horizon 2015: A long-term strategic perspective for the real-money prediction markets
  • Join our group at LinkedIn to have your “Prediction Markets” badge on your profile. It’s ‘chic’. (“Groups” info should be set as “visible”, in your profile options.) We are 63 this early Saturday morning —keeps growing.
  • If you have been using PayPal to fund your InTrade, TradeSports or BetFair account, please, check that horror story.
  • 48 hours after the launch of the “Prediction Markets” group at LinkedIn, we have already 52 members —both prediction market luminaries and simple people (trading the event derivatives or collecting the market-generated probabilities).

Third Workshop on Prediction Markets, July 9 in Chicago

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The Third:

July 9th, 2008


1:25pm Opening Remarks

1:30 – 2:20pm: Session 1: Practical Applications and Experiences

Speaker: Emile Servan-Schreiber (1:30-1:45pm)

  • Keys to successful implementation of an internal corporate prediction market (Emile Servan-Schreiber)

Speaker: Todd Henderson (1:45-2:05pm)

  • Prediction Markets for Corporate Governance (Michael Abramowicz and Todd Henderson)
  • Predicting Crime (Todd Henderson, Justin Wolfers, and Eric Zitzewitz)

Discussion (2:05pm – 2:15pm)

2:20pm-3:10pm Session 2: Security Design and Theory

Speaker: Hajime Mizuyama (2:15 pm &#8212- 2:30pm)

  • Intra-Firm Prediction Market System Using VIPS for Demand Forecasting (Hajime Mizuyama)

Speaker: Stefan Stathel (2:30 pm &#8211-2:45pm)

  • Information Efficiency and Liquidity in Information Markets: A market-maker based approach (Stefan Stathel, Clemens van Dinther, and Stefan Luckner)

Speaker: Eiichero Kazumori (2:45 pm &#8212- 3:00pm)

  • A Strategic Theory of Markets (Eiichiro Kazumori)

Discussion (3pm-3:10pm)

3:10pm-3:30pm: Break

3:30-4:25pm: Session 3: Event Detection

Speaker: Todd Kuethe (3:30 – 3:45pm)

  • Identifying &#8220-Tipping Points&#8221- in US Presidential Campaigns: Evidence from Prediction Market Prices 1992-2004 (Todd H. Kuethe, David Ubilava, Benoit Delbecq, and Kenneth A. Foster)

Speaker: George Tziralis (3:45pm – 4:00pm)

  • Detecting Important Events using Prediction Markets, Text Mining, and Volatility Modeling (George Tziralis and Panos Ipeirotis)

Speaker: Abe Othman (4:00pm-4:15pm)

  • Time Inconsistency and Uncertainty Aversion in Information Markets (Ivan Corwin and Abe Othman)

Discussion (4:15pm-4:25pm)


Session 4: Comparison to Alternatives (4:25-4:55pm)


Speaker: Andreas Graefe (4:25-4:45pm)

  • Can you beat the market? Accuracy of Individual and Group Post-Prediction Market Judgments (Andreas Graefe and J. Scott Armstrong)
  • Group Decision Making – Face-to-face Meetings, Nominal Groups, Delphi, and Prediction Markets Compared (Andreas Graefe and J. Scott Armstrong)

Discussion: 4:45-4:55pm

Wrap-up: 4:55-5pm

Previous blog posts by Chris “GadFly” Masse:

  • PROF TOM W. BELL, PLEASE, DO SKIP THE PAGAN CELEBRATIONS, AND, PLEASE, DO RETURN TO YOUR DESK TO FINISH THE DRAFT OF YOUR COMMENT TO THE CFTC. THANKS FOR YOUR PRAGMATIC (NOT ‘ETHEREAL’) CONTRIBUTION TO “THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY”. (There is a hidden slam to Robin Hanson in this title. I wonder whether people will get the joke.)
  • The CFTC is going to close the comments in 3 days. We have 3 days left to convince the CFTC to accept FOR-PROFIT prediction exchanges (e.g., InTrade USA or BetFair USA), and counter the puritan and sterile petition organized by the American Enterprise Institute (which has on its payroll Paul Wolfowitz, the bright masterminder of the Iraq war).
  • TOM W. BELL: “Thanks, Chris. Thanks, too, for being such an effective gadfly. I might well have blown off the whole exercise if you had not kept blogging about how you were awaiting my comment!”
  • What to think of HedgeStreet’s comment to the CFTC
  • The freshest comments sent to the CFTC
  • “To someone like me who trades professionally and also ran for Congress a few years back, InTrade is a marriage made in heaven.”
  • HOW TO DESTROY INTRADE, TRADESPORTS AND BETFAIR: a betting application for FaceBook