IRC Connection...

Michael and I talked Friday night... seed sponsors, locations, dates, timing, formats, 3rd party conference organizers... we talked about a little of this and a little of that. A hotel sized conference... vendors, booths, investors, users, customers...

Let's hook up this week on IRC and start to drill down on details. Anybody who wants to join us, leave a contact email in the comments and I'll send you the connect time and place. Not being coy, just haven't finalized it with Suw, Michael and Wendy.
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Usual questions apply

I guess what we need to do is put together a document outlining what we are intending to do.

Questions I think we need to answer:

- What is the event? What is it about? What's the focus?
- Who's the audience? Who will attend?
- Who are the (preferred) speakers? What are they speaking on?
- Where will it be? Potential venues? What facilities will they need?
- When will it be? We've already posited a date, but is that doable?
- How will we promote it?
- What will the budget be?
- Who might sponsor? What will they expect?
- Who will organise it? What tasks need to be done? Who will do them?

I'm sure there are other questions - please add to the list!

Where are we now?

I've traded a few voice mails and have a sense that the engines of this great vehicle are coughing and sputtering... may catch and roar to life, or may die with a few pitiful hacks, coughs, wheezes. But let's keep it going for a bit.

Michael, can you hear this? What's next? Suw?

Supernova/Skype anyone?

I'm going to be in San Francisco from 8th til 23rd June for Supernova, so if anyone is in that area and wants to meet for a drink and discussions, feel free to email me.

Otherwise, might it be an idea to organise a Skype conference call to discuss where we are at and who's doing what? Always so much easier to talk than type.

Reserve the week of October 17, 2005

The first Blog World Expo is planned for that week in Toronto. Anybody know a good reason why not? Maybe Bill Gates plans to give away free money that week in Chicago? Or what?

Right now this date is written in pencil on a sticky-note. We're looking for stone-cutters to assist in transcription.

Thoughts

Afternoon all. Or morning/evening or whatever it is wherever you be.

A few observations.

Sound crass, but I think "if you build it, they will come" works here. The time is absolutely right for this idea. In the past year there's been an absolute explosion of blog tools vendors, vendors adding bloggy bits to their roadmaps, blog indexers, feedreaders, and sundry bloglike bollogs - makes darn good sense to gather them all under one roof and let the love happen. We're prolly no more than 3 months away from Gartner Group adding a "Senior VP and Group Director, Blog Research". Frank's timing is impeccable.

I think we should be getting ready to launch this thing more publicly within about two weeks, with a target date for some time in early September.

To the question: "How do we earn the right to produce this show?", I'd say - you just did. Simply by having the idea, the right is yours/ours. Funding will have to come from external sources, but I don't imagine too many problems raising enough sponsorship to make this thing work. Worst case scenario: year one should be, at minimum, break even.

As for format, I can imagine Blog World Expo as a kind of Showcase or Demo style event. The focus is on tools, technologies, products, applications - with none of this "what is a blog?" bollocks. For those of you not familiar with the format, Showcase (in its heyday) was a combination of a level-playing field trade show floor, a gong show-like 6 minute product pitch program, and an entertaining, irreverent pundit platform.

No matter how big the vendor, everyone had the same kind of 10-by-10 booth space - none of these huge, two-storey, dry-ice/lasers/booth babe temples of ego. And every vendor also had the opportunity to pitch their product to the entire audience in a series of strictly timed live product demos. A panel of geek-celeb judges would then comment on and rate each batch of pitches, with sappy prizes handed out for the killer pitch of the hour/the day/the show.

The other thing about Showcase was that it was an absolute magnet for investors - one of the things we might want Blog World Expo to be. It might cause your butt to pucker, but if we want to make a stack of dough with this, we've gotta get the money into the room. The money ain't gonna come from the penniless startup vendors.

Let me know what you think of that kind of format. We can still draw in the big $$ from the likes of Google, Microscrote, et al - but I think we all want to see lots of the little, nutty innovators there too.

Gotta run out now to bring Charlie out to his mate's house (they're rehearsing for the school's lip sync contest. Two 7-year olds doing Good Charlotte's "Anthem". Sheesh. Dug out some old photos from 76/77 recently and showed the boy what his Dad looked like as a punk the first time around. Feeling old.)

More later.

Vendors

These people no doubt will need booth space at Blog World Expo.

What it is all about... after midnight

What follows is a comment I've promoted to a post. It reveals my perspective that we can create an elaborate event, a tradeshow called Blog World Expo, that many people will benefit from the event, and that we are at a point where other people's perspectives need to be shared so we can find that common vision that will describe

WHERE WE ARE NOW and WHERE WE WANT TO BE

When we know where we are now and where we want to be, then we will be able to address the simple stuff... namely, how are we going to get there?

***

Okay. Here's the deal. Wendy needs a J.O.B., Michael is seeking a position, and I want to be rich, RICH I TELL YOU, RICH BEYOND YOUR WILDEST DREAMS!

Oops. Sorry. Serious business at hand here.

Think Comdex. Think Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey. While the world has little need for just another blog conference, there is a compelling need for more circuses.

Let's agree that we are are planning an event broader in scope than the blog conferences we have experienced, that there will be costs associated with creating the event and that the wonderful thing about capitalism is that it provides a way for us to recover the costs and earn a profit!

No, not the Willie Sutton thing.

So I guess I should ask... what would you expect to see and do at a three and a half day World Blog Expo? What would you most want to do? What would you like to learn? To teach? Who would you like to meet? What would you like to eat?

What would your company pay for the best insights into Content Management? Syndication? How much would it be worth to you as a supplier to pitch a tent in the center of the caravansary?

Do you belly dance?

How do we earn the right to produce this show? is chutzpah alone enough for success?

pls allow me to introduce myself...

I am RageBoy on my better days, clocke on my worse, and CBO between-times. There's a good chance you know me better than I know myself -- a terrifying thought on several fronts.

Not sure if it's appropriate to invite intros from whomever is joining in this, but having never really stood on ceremony much, I invite y'all to take this as an invitation. As the Who once (now famously) said: who are you?