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.
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Filed Under: conference, flattr, payment, rewards
Companies: flattr


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  1. identicon
    out_of_the_blue, 17 Aug 2011 @ 4:50am

    I'm exhausted just thinking how many grifters will PRESS me to "contribute".

    That's the obvious next stage. Be a social environment where attention-whores demand money too. And mini-groupies eager to fawn on mini-celebrities will insist on a moment of attention.

    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 ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Aug 2011 @ 5:35am

    Re: I'm exhausted just thinking how many grifters will PRESS me to "contribute".

    You can just say "no", right?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Aug 2011 @ 6:18am

    Re: I'm exhausted just thinking how many grifters will PRESS me to "contribute".

    Ding! You hit the nail on the head.

    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 ]

  4. icon
    Chronno S. Trigger (profile), 17 Aug 2011 @ 6:37am

    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 at the door to support the speakers,"

    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 ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Aug 2011 @ 7:08am

    Re: Re: Re: I'm exhausted just thinking how many grifters will PRESS me to "contribute".

    If I pay for an event, I judge the event by the what they present. If I paid $200 for event access (pretty normal), I expect to get value for money. If I don't, I am unlikely to attend that event in the future.

    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 ]

  6. identicon
    maloki, 17 Aug 2011 @ 7:30am

    Think you need to think of it from two sides.
    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 ]

  7. identicon
    Marco Damm, 17 Aug 2011 @ 9:39am

    a few problems

    I have been using a flattr button on one of my blogs (Schnell Interkulturell) for some time now and I see a few problems for wider adoption:

    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 ]

  8. identicon
    Evan Schoepke, 17 Aug 2011 @ 1:31pm

    To all the naysayers

    First of all, I'm tired of hearing all the skeptics. First of all, flattr works, you just need to educate other people who visit your blog what the heck it is first. Secondly, flattr is succeeding and will continue to expand, just imagine if lady gaga had a Flattr account her social capital would instantly become financial capital and she would ever have to worry about "selling" albums again.

    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 ]


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