IT Conversations Business Model
Doug Kaye of IT Conversations asked for some feedback on a business model for his site. Here’s a copy of my suggestions:
I personally find the variety of conferences available throughout the world incredibly interesting and would love to have the money and time to go to them. IT Conversations has presented a bunch of audio from conferences such as Bloggercon, Pop!Tech, Supernova, JavaOne etc. These audio presentations have allowed me to be exposed to the ideas presented at these conferences, without incurring the cost and time overhead of being there. The ability to virtually attend these conference/events could be used as a basis for the IT Conversations business model.
My business model suggestions as as follows:
- Combine the audio/video presentations for a conference or event as a package.
- Make the package as much of an “experience” as practical without the person attending the conference/event at the time. The “experience” should try to reproduce the feel of the conference for e.g. pictures/videos of the physical conference physical area, interviews with attendees between sessions etc.
- Charge for access to a conference/event package. Nothing ridiculous, say $10 to $50 depending on the event and the amount of content associated with it. It needs to be a no-brainer for someone interested in the content of a conference. I can’t stand an event organizer offering access to event audio/video content for many hundreds of dollars.
- Many conferences re-occur on a yearly basis. Make the content for a previous year freely available a number of months before the next conference. This keeps up the free content availability for new listeners/viewers and may help with interest in this year’s conference.
- Sell sponsorship for conference content and display the sponsor company’s info on the conference/event’s web intro page. If the sponsorship is sufficient, make the content freely available.
- If needed, recompence the conference organizers with a percentage of the income from sales of a conference’s content.
- Conferences often need to record the audio/video of their event for their own purposes. IT Conversations could provide this service for a fee. The advantage to the conference/event organizers would be to pass on that responsibility to someone else. IT Conversations could be built up as a brand that records conferences/events with integrity i.e. with zero commercial spin. By keeping with this approach, IT Conversations builds up a trust with its audience, which in turn represents value to purchasers of conference/event services.
- You still need to have a significant amount of free and worthwhile content to attract a new audience. The free content needs to include current/recent content. Having only archived old content as free would discourage new listeners/viewers. Keep series such as a The Gilmor Gang, The Law And IT, Memory Lane etc. as free content. I don’t believe people would want to pay for access to these regular shows. If these regular shows requires income for their content, then a sponsorship spot within the show itself is one way to go that is not too complicated organizationally.