Cool Ideas: The World's First Flattrable Conference
from the forget-feedback-forms... dept
We've been using Flattr on the site for a little over a year now, and I'm planning to do a writeup about our experiences with the service shortly. If you weren't aware of it, Flattr is a very neat, extremely simple, way of monetarily supporting content that you like. As I noted in my initial writeup of the service, Flattr is very clever in how it gets rid of the traditional "transaction costs" problem of most micropayments system, in that each month you just have a set amount that you've already agreed to spend, and each Flattr merely divides up that pie by one more slice.It's been interesting to see the service evolve -- especially watching as it went from closed beta to open so that anyone can use it. If you haven't yet signed up, you should at least check it out. But one of the more interesting things in how it has evolved are the unexpected ways in which the service can be used. Take, for example, a fantastic looking conference taking place in Sweden later this month, put on by Media Evolution, called The Conference (which I had wanted to attend, but was unable to make). The conference organizers have set it up so that pretty much everything at the conference is "Flattrable." Like a speaker? Flattr him/her. Like an entire session? You can Flattr it through the app or directly via QR codes around the event. See someone ask a smart question? Ask to see their badge, and you can Flattr them directly.
As far as I know, this is the first time this has been done like this and, as with any experiment, you never know for sure how it will work out, but I think it's a pretty cool experiment and I hope that it goes well. I look forward to finding out from the organizers some of what they learn from the experiment.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: conference, flattr, payment, rewards
Companies: flattr
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
I'm exhausted just thinking how many grifters will PRESS me to "contribute".
Meantime, having to micro-TIP everyone in sight is bad enough.
I see booth-babes making small fortunes at shows when it's easy to reward them directly for revealing poses. But I doubt that any here will find it a drawback.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: I'm exhausted just thinking how many grifters will PRESS me to "contribute".
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: I'm exhausted just thinking how many grifters will PRESS me to "contribute".
It's a weird world where people won't pay enough at the door to support the speakers, and they are down to pretty much begging for cash to make it work out.
I can understand that people want some sort of control over what they pay and when they pay, but it seems that once again, they aren't paying for what they value, they are paying because it's some sort of cool system. The show itself with all those speakers, etc, should be worth X at the door, with no need to set up a begging system.
This sort of thing would make me wonder (a) are the speakers really pros, and (b) is the whole deal really worth attending?
It seems somewhat self defeating, and gives me the feeling that this is a really amateur show (even if it isn't).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: I'm exhausted just thinking how many grifters will PRESS me to "contribute".
It's a weird world where people won't pay enough for the meal to support their waiters and waitresses. Oh, wait, no it isn't.
People speak at these shows normally for little or no money. They don't expect to make money off of the show, they expect to make money from the opportunities that come because of the show.
If this idea makes the show feel cheap to you, how must you have felt before when you didn't have the option to pay the good speakers tips?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: I'm exhausted just thinking how many grifters will PRESS me to "contribute".
See? You don't have to have a tipping mechanism to say "good or bad", you can just not come back. It's the ultimate "tip".
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The Conference isn't a $1000 fee conference.
Therea are abunch of conferrences out there were people do attend and talk for free. That's wehre Flattr'd come in a s a great system.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
a few problems
1. not enough users (yet?) and, in case of flattr, only really used in Europe (especially Germany)
2. chicken-egg-problem. consumers wait for content, content producers wait for consumers (see pt.1)
3. not really integratable in other social networks. partnerships with fb, google+ etc. would be the best thing that can happen to flattr
So far, only already well frequented and well known content producers profit from flattr. That said I will continue to experiment with various forms of integration, like embedding a button in one of my free seminars.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
To all the naysayers
Flattr is already integrated decently with twitter, although I would love a tweet deck integration that would allow me to easily flattr specific tweets. The have great comment integration now and it's only a matter of time before you two cents will be worth two cents (or more), literally some annoying person will make a living a comment troll in the future. The really could benefit from a US based office and though I told them that it didn't seem to click, either way they're a rising star. BTW I've made over 60 euro from flattr in revenues as editor of www.punkrockpermaculture.wordpress.com
[ link to this | view in thread ]