Ouch, HN drives a bit more traffic than I was expecting - site is flaky at the moment, sorry about that.
Lanyrd feeds: never miss out on a conference
21–30 of 44 posts
Re: Lanyrd feeds: never miss out on a conference
#22Did you read this post-mortem from EventVue? http://www.onlineaspect.com/2010/10/26/a-few-words-about-eve... It was on HN last week. The funny thing is, showing who is coming to a conference actually hurt their client! Because people tend to register so late... So double check your claims that you know who is coming.
I just read this and the post-mortem.
Whether by luck, or more likely experience, Lanyrd ventured into the event space quite differently from EventVue and all of the companies listed in the article. The emphasis on crowdsourcing to build up the database is, as far as I can tell, unique.
Most of the companies listed in the article want to build a private, ring fenced social network for each client & all the tools. This only really works if you already have an existing network, with incentives other than just the conference. For example the telecoms world has the TMForum, and their site is a private social network. Works for them. O'Reilly have their own tool too, as a big conference host, with lots of events and followers (&authors).
The value in lanyrd, to date, is not trying to enter that space. Personally I'm finding interesting content from events I would have loved to go to, but did not, mainly because a) I didn't know they existed or b) my interests were not in that space at the time of the conference! There are literally dozens of interesting use-cases which could or could not be monetized.
There are some great ideas in that article for Lanyrd to look into in terms of revenue generation though, especially with respect to tracking user referals/sign up flow.
Re: Lanyrd feeds: never miss out on a conference
#23I wish I could sign up for email updates, instead of dealing with feeds.
I'm still slightly surpised there has not been an optional "email address" field in the profile page, in preparation for the day this comes!
Re: Lanyrd feeds: never miss out on a conference
#24Did you read this post-mortem from EventVue? http://www.onlineaspect.com/2010/10/26/a-few-words-about-eve... It was on HN last week. The funny thing is, showing who is coming to a conference actually hurt their client! Because people tend to register so late... So double check your claims that you know who is coming.
I think Lanyrd's "tracking" feature solves this, because it shows which of your friends are interested in the conference right alongside those who are slated to attend and/or speak.
Re: Lanyrd feeds: never miss out on a conference
#25"... we were fed up of missing out on great conferences because we didn't hear about them in time. .." What else besides time determines your likeliness to attend a conference? The might/might-not attend space is multi-dimensional. You might also not attend because it is a long way away, too expensive, the attendees are stupid and nobody I know is attending and there are few sessions you like. I do like these kinds o…
Not sure what you're getting at here--Lanyrd lets you see where it is, who's attending (and which of those are your friends), the planned sessions, and the date/time.
"... who's attending (and which of those are your friends), the planned sessions, and the date/time. ..."
Didn't see that. I was trying to think of how the service could supply you with contrary data - reasons to not attend. If I want to try a new restaurant, I'll check for balanced critical reviews not just the facts.
Re: Lanyrd feeds: never miss out on a conference
#26Did you read this post-mortem from EventVue? http://www.onlineaspect.com/2010/10/26/a-few-words-about-eve... It was on HN last week. The funny thing is, showing who is coming to a conference actually hurt their client! Because people tend to register so late... So double check your claims that you know who is coming.
I think Lanyrd's "tracking" feature solves this, because it shows which of your friends are interested in the conference right alongside those who are slated to attend and/or speak.
It goes some way of solving that issue yes. Ultimately though the problem of "few people registered" is poor sales, and to a degree marketing, by that individual conference.
There is a reason why conferences (as opposed to trade show events) heavily discount early-bird tickets. Cashflow and the ability to market more heavily. Lanyrd makes marketing easier, down to the organiser (and ticket agent) to make sales work well!
Re: Lanyrd feeds: never miss out on a conference
#27Ouch, HN drives a bit more traffic than I was expecting - site is flaky at the moment, sorry about that.
I upgraded to a larger RDS instance and we're running fine again now.
Re: Lanyrd feeds: never miss out on a conference
#28With that name and tagline, I first thought this was going to be resources (like printable templates) for creating counterfeit conference badges. Badgester/Wikibadges.
We're a bit worried about our "the social conference directory" tagline, since we've had a few people think the site is only for social media conferences.
"the conference directory goes social"
Re: Lanyrd feeds: never miss out on a conference
#29Have you considered letting users subscribe to a list of topics, locations, etc. within Lanyrd and aggregating that into one feed?
update: wrote a blog entry about Lanyard with my thoughts http://www.allthingsrss.com/2010/12/07/track-conferences-soc...
Re: Lanyrd feeds: never miss out on a conference
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure what you're getting at here--Lanyrd lets you see where it is, who's attending (and which of those are your friends), the planned sessions, and the date/time.
"... who's attending (and which of those are your friends), the planned sessions, and the date/time. ..." Didn't see that. I was trying to think of how the service could supply you with contrary data - reasons to not attend. If I want to try a new restaurant, I'll check for balanced critical reviews not just the facts.
So far we've been quite careful not to address that kind of use case - we don't have comments on events, for example - partly because we don't want to discourage conference organisers and speakers from using the site but also because we want to avoid negativity becoming a core part of the community we are building.
We'd rather make the great events obvious than highlight events that aren't so good. People have a limited conference budget and we want to ensure they can pick the best, most appropriate events for their interests.