7d56 Johnnie Moore's Weblog: Six Apart Rock

November 15, 2005

Six Apart Rock

Katherine Stone has a great post about the response of Six Apart, the folks behind the TypePad blogging package, to some problems in the last few weeks. They ask their users to choose for themselves (from several options) how much compensation they think is appropriate. Brilliant.

PS Sue Pelletier has a nice riff on this: "Wouldnt it be an interesting experiment to offer a conference, and people paid afterward for the amount it was worth to them?"

Posted by Johnnie Moore at 13:05 in Branding
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Eric Sohn says

Sue's a little wacky, isn't she? The reverse Dell model isn't particularly attractive if you're the one who has to lay out the cash for the meeting space, catering, marketing, etc. Of course, if you're holding the conference in your Dad's garage or a church basement...

Now, I could see you being able to gain refunds afterwards...although I'd probably insist that you fill out the session feedback forms, and that they had to reflect your level of satisfaction. Of course, the presenter's fee would also be at risk, which might prevent you from getting various speakers.

November 16, 2005 05:09 Permalink for comment

Sue Pelletier says

But Eric, think about it. As Katherine points out, Typepad stands to lose millions if the vast majority of its users go for the highest compensation level. And they have expenses to cover, too. Not so different than a conference, really.

While I agree that most events wouldn't consider such a thing, for the reasons you mention (In fact, in the post, my next words were: "It’ll never happen"), it'll be interesting to see how the Typepad experiment turns out--there are all sorts of new ways to do business, and we'd all be remiss to dismiss them out of hand.

Rich Westerfield has a great post about all this:
http://tsmi.blogs.com/tsmiblog/2005/11/pay_what_you_fe.html
David Gammel adds to the discussion here:
http://www.highcontext.com/hcarchives/2005/11/15/on-marketing-and-new-conference-models/
Rich responds here:
http://tsmi.blogs.com/tsmiblog/2005/11/pay_as_you_feel.html

I just love that there's some conversation around the idea.

And yes, I'm a little wacky.

November 16, 2005 16:07 Permalink for comment

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