I just got my Masters in “Bundle Dynamics”, or: Software Bundles Don’t Have to be Evil
I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog talking about different marketing techniques and for the most part, those essays or rants usually amount to “try doing this” or “please, stop doing that”. Today, I want to document something a little bit different.
Selling software commercially is something that prior to the last 2 years, I had almost no exposure to. I had worked in retail where we sold other peoples’ titles, shelving boxes of discs for anywhere from $0.99 jewel box bargains to hundreds of dollars for operating systems.
It was always interesting to me that people would walk into a store and buy a physical piece of merchandise in order to put it on their computers. Obviously, before bandwidth got fast and cheap, there wasn’t really the option of distributing yourself, but even still…LOTS of software gets sold on the shelves. Even funnier, there are now online places where you can buy boxes of software, have them MAILED to you, and then you can install them.
Let’s pause and think about how silly that is. That’s right. Pretty silly.
The other exposure to selling software I had was as a service provider: writing code to spec, and then someone else reaped the benefits of that ongoing.
These days, working with the crew at IndyHall Labs, I’ve gotten exposure to something completely different: independent software development and distribution.
Much like the music industry is experiencing, the tools are cheaper and the resources are more readily available for individuals to create, market, sell, and distribute their product, be it a 12 track rock -n- roll album or a useful piece of software, without the overhead of “mastering”, the complication of customers losing license cards, the struggle of controlling your shelf price, and more.
This week, the Multiplex team and I are experiencing something new and exciting for us, and that’s the inclusion in a software bundle being promoted and sold through MacUpdate.com’s promo property, MUPromo.com [ref link]. In short, 11 apps are sold over a 2 week period with buckets of blitz marketing, and each of the software developers get a small cut of the sales of each bundle. The remainder goes into covering MacUpdate’s expenses, and the rest is profit for them.
Bundles like these are increasingly common, and some other notable ones besides MacUpdate include MacHeist and MacZot. “Bundleware” is an old concept, a technique was often used to move old inventory. I’ve often used the lewd (but accurate) “Porno 3-pack” model to describe how it worked in the past: the vendor puts two “dud” flicks alongside a headline title, with a total price reduced to less than the total value of all 3 movies. Even if you don’t end up watching the duds, they got sold for more than zero dollars in revenue for the vendor.
What’s interesting is how MacUpdate and the others have successfully turned the bundleware model on its head. Most importantly, the new dynamic here that’s important to recognize is that the cost-per-copy of software trends to zero, since the software production costs are already sunk into the design and coding of the app. Since no copies need to be “mastered”, the cost to “produce” additional copies for sale isn’t zero (web host costs, for example), but it’s getting there. The largest cost that increases based on an increased customer base is customer support, which usually scales slower relative to the app’s sales.
So, with no “inventory” to worry about, bundle-dynamics leap ahead into something new, different, and pretty exciting. I want to talk about 4 key functions that I think have made this bundle work, and why we decided to be a part of it.
Dynamic #1: The Headliner
Not totally unlike the “Porno 3-pack” I mentioned before, most bundles end up with at least one headliner app. Many times, that headliner’s retail value is greater than the bundle cost itself, making the deal a no-brainer for most potential customers. What’s neat, though, is that the volume of high-quality independently produced apps available to bundle-designers means that there are often MULTIPLE headliners, where nearly every app has the chance to be a headliner for someone… allowing the bundle to cater to a wider audience.
In the case of MacUpdate, there was more than one headliner depending on who you are, what your interests are, and how you as a consumer perceive value.
Working down the promo page, headliner #1 was the “two bonus apps” for early purchasers… initially the first 15,000 bundle customers, and then later the limit was bumped to the first 20,000. There’s been some discussion on the bundle forum that maybe MU shouldn’t have moved that threshold, as some early-adopter customers feel that it “cheapened” the bundle for them. While economically the bundle value didn’t change, the value perception did and that’s important for someone who’s motivated by bargains, early adoption, and exclusivity. In this case, the cost to MacUpdate for providing those apps to an additional 5000 customers was zero.
Note: I’m not aware of the details of the deal between MacUpdate and the two “early bird special” apps, Jets n Guns Gold and CuteClips. It’s entirely possible that those titles only received a revenue share on bundles that included them, so they MAY have gained additional revenue with MacUpdate’s decision to move the bar. That’s pure and wild speculation, and a curiosity of my own.
The second headliner, that I believe many bought the bundle for, was the inclusion of two apps whose values individually exceed that of the bundle cost: Parallels and TechTool Pro are well known commercial use applications with extremely wide customer bases to begin with. Why would they lower their price-per-copy for this bundle?
As I mentioned before, all software being sold online has a near-to-zero per-copy “cost”, this becomes a marketing and customer acquisition play for the manufacturers of the software. It’s blitz revenue and TONS of visibility. While that visibility may not be causing people to learn about their software for the first time, it IS reminding potential customers that they still exist, and that’s a marketing expense worth measuring against the cost sunk into selling copies for a fraction of the retail price. Beyond the financial capital gained, I think there’s also some social capital gained by the larger software manufacturers since the smaller shops, like ours, appreciate the fact that their headliner title is helping us make some money. Software development culture is funny in the fact that many development shops make it a point to get out there, chum around with other dev shops at conferences, meetups, and other social gatherings. Big dogs like Parallels coming to hang around and help by pulling some weight, at least in my mind, is a gesture that doesn’t go unrecognized by the independent producers.
The third type of headliner is the “special interest” headliner. There were a couple of “categories” of apps in the MacUpdate bundle, and based on your own interests, those bundles might be the headliner for you.
Our app, Multiplex, was paired up with RipIt (also developed at IndyHall) and DVDRemasterPro as a trifecta of great tools for managing your movie collection with your Mac computer. Having been witness to the success of RipIt so far (and, we hope, the success to come for Multiplex), we know that there’s an audience of DVD collectors out there who want to do exactly the thing our apps were designed for: catalog their offline collection of DVDs, make it easy to recall and play on their media centers, as well as other devices they own that play video.
Given that Multiplex and RipIt alone are normally worth a total $53.99, that’s enough to make the bundle worth it. Toss in DVDRemasterPro, a $49.99 app, and you’ve got over a hundred dollars worth of software to help you with your DVD collection for half the price…and a bunch of other goodies as a bonus.
The point I’ve been trying to illustrate is that because all of these titles have a cost-per-copy approaching zero, there’s an incredible amount of flexibility in creating reasons for people to buy a bundle based on their own motivations. The bundle appears well rounded, but for enough people (over 20,000 at the time I’m writing this), there’s enough value generated for that person to justify the expense.
Dynamic #2: Urgency
The MacUpdate bundle runs for 2 weeks. While not an extraordinarily short period of time, there are constraints. “While supplies last” is a fallacy, because again, it costs next to nothing to generate more supplies. In order to keep demand high, new constraints besides inventory need to be placed on the bundle sales.
2 weeks is a time constraint that, while artificial, informs the customer that “after these 2 weeks, the apps go back up to their normal price…so get ‘em now while you still can!”.
The early bird special does this too, suggesting that if you’re one of the first batch of people to buy the bundle, you get extra stuff.
The MacUpdate bundle page does a good job of highlighting the number of bundles sold, and how long you have left to buy.
Regardless of how high the bundles sold number climbs, I think that there is something about competitiveness built in human nature that makes us want to “beat the timer”, and get our purchase in before the other guy. It’s a counter-intuitive dynamic, but one that helps make bundle sales successful.
The other component to the “urgency” aspect is the timeframe in which us, as developers, make money. The important thing to remember is that we calculate success not just on the number of copies sold, but by the amount of cash in the bank.
Think of it this way. There are two paths to a million dollars: you can sell an app once for a million bucks, or you can sell it a million times for a dollar. Whichever has the shortest and most sustainable path to your million is the road you should take.
Dynamic #3: Self Promotion
Probably one of the most important components to bundle success is each individual bundle contributers’ own self interests: I’ve dropped the price of my app to the floor, so I want to promote the CRAP out of myself for doing so and get as many sales as possible, while also gaining brand recognition for when the bundle is over.
With 11 apps’ developers working that angle simultaneously, MacUpdate gains a massive sales team, but so does each individual developer! My own self interests benefit the other bundle contributors. Their self interests benefit me.
Furthermore, MacUpdate provides affiliate opportunities for developers and non-developers alike. This post, you may have noticed, is sprinkled with links to MUPromo.com that include our referral code. That’s because we make a couple extra bucks on each bundle sale that we actually refer. If you’ve found this article interesting and were considering buying the bundle anyway, please consider buying with our referral code and help some indie software developers make a buck.
See what I did there? That opportunity isn’t just available to me as a bundle contributor, but to the properties helping promote the bundle as well (like MacRumors, Smoking Apples, TUAW, and more).
And remember, at the end of the day, this is a promotional opportunity for MacUpdate. They not only make money on the bundles, but on ad-sales during the promo when more people are hammering MacUpdate.com to read more about the apps, their reviews, get their license keys, etc.
Which brings me to my final point, and the real reason I wanted to put together this piece
Dynamic #4: Developer Relations
In retail, there’s no usually relationship between the person selling to the customer, and the producer of the thing that the salesperson is hocking. At most, that sales person might get a kickback for selling one brand over another, but the sales person’s own brand loyalty and experience in what makes customers happy is usually what’s driving their sales suggestions.
Bundles have gotten a bad wrap. Most notably, MacHeist.
I’m not going to get into the gory details of their indiscretions, but the record shows that they’ve had their shit called more than once for abusing the “value” they provide for their customers to line their own pockets instead of managing positive relationships with the developers that are giving them the opportunity to run the bundle in the first place. As long as 3 years ago, John Gruber was outlining the issues with how this “great deal” for consumers was selfishly benefiting the organizers while giving bundle app contributors a raw deal. It’s also worth noting that in december of 2006, MacHeist sold ~14,000 bundles and our (well, MacUpdate’s) bundle exceeded that quota within it’s first 48 hours. This most recent Holiday MacHeist bundle sold over 80,000 copies, but also took to some “extreme viral” (read: spammy) techniques for getting bundle purchasers to send links to their friends.
We pride ourselves in quality products, quality customer service, and both of those lead to quality relationships with our customers.
This is where I want to highlight the great job that’s being done by the team at MacUpdate, and why we decided to participate in this bundle.
I spent most of the bundle-prep time working with Nate Houle, who manages the MUPromo.com site. Nate was easygoing, straightforward with their interest and offer, and most importantly, I didn’t feel like I was being sold a line like I did when I spoke with other bundles’ representatives.
Nate was clearly interested in working with us instead of simply swapping licenses for a cut of the revenue. At some point in our IM conversations (yes, the entire MUPromo deal was done over IM), Nate said something that made me extremely confident in the success of this promotion:
…we don’t bite the hands that feed us, without the indy developers none of us would have jobs…
That kind of attitude goes a long way, and I think that genuine appreciation for the developers that support your bundle says a lot about Nate and his team.
Even when the initial bundle sales load crashed our licensing servers for the better part of the day, MacUpdate’s COO, Misha Sakellaropoulo, and their Lead Developer Chad Harrison were extremely calm, helpful, and supportive. I was on IM at various parts of the day during the first two days of the bundle running talking to Nate and Misha, and at each turn, they were as excited for us as we were. That “togetherness” is more ethereal than some of the other benefits of the bundle, but an important one for us, since it’s such a core value of how our apps get built in the first place.
One of the things on my to-do list for the next week is to continue the developer relations plan and reach out to the other developers who are participating in the bundle, introduce ourselves, and congratulate them as well. I hope that the other developers are planning on taking that time as well, as this is a great opportunity for us to celebrate the fun of being an indy mac developer together.
An honest and hearty “thank you” to the MacUpdate team for showing us that bundles don’t have to be evil, and helping me get my accelerated masters in “Bundle Dynamics”.
Final Shameless Self-Promo
Yes, we’re extremely excited about being a part of this bundle and it’s success so far. There’s still 12 and a half days to buy, so if you do, please consider using our referral link. If you could help even more by spreading the word and using the same link [http://tr.im/IHLabsMUPromo] or [http://mupromo.com/?ref=6602], we’d really really appreciate it.
The best deal on Multiplex, RipIt, and 9 other apps!
Even if you already have license for RipIt, Multiplex, or both, you can benefit from the other 9 apps… and you can share the extra licenses with a friend. Who will soon be a very good friend indeed! The IndyHall Labs crew teamed up with the good folks at MacUpdate to present an amazing bundle of great Mac apps — worth over $500 in total — for just $49.99. But only for a short time.
Grab your bundle quickly! http://www.mupromo.com/?ref=6602 (please, use our affiliate code, it helps us a lot!)
This bundle also includes titles like MoneyWell, Posterino, and the wildly celebrated Parallels (you know, that thing that lets you run Windows INSIDE of Mac OS X)!
Why buy this bundle (besides your love for supporting great Philadelphia tech)? We’ve thought of a couple of reasons for you:
1) To justify finally snagging a copy of Multiplex to manage your ripped DVD collection: Whether you already own a copy of Multiplex or not, the other apps in this bundle are too good to pass up at this price. Even if you’ve got BOTH, DVDRemasterPro is worth the price and fits great in the RipIt/Multiplex workflow for getting your movies onto other devices like your iPhone, AppleTV, etc.
2) Fresh gear for your Applications folder: This bundle is full of apps for all occasions! From OS Virtualization (need to test in IE6 or run QuickBooks for Windows?), to designing postcards and picture frames for your relatives, to having some hard drive diagnostics and repair software on hand for “uh oh” moments, to blowing off some steam (by killing space monsters)!
3) Gift season is coming up! Ok…so the holidays are still a few months off, but there’s nothing wrong with Christmas in May! Go ahead and give this bundle as a gift. Trust us. We PROMISE you that the Mac Nerd you love will love you back.
So go ahead, act now (while supplies last), and help us spread the word about this great deal by sharing THIS LINK:
I thank you kindly, honestly, and deeply from the bottom of my heart for supporting our endeavors at IndyHall in bringing finely crafted Mac software to your desktop.
Green Eggs ‘n Spam
Around 4am this morning, a couple of draft posts that never were meant to see the light of day (at least not in the state they were in) found their way to published, and they (plus a couple other posts) had a bunch of spam links in the RSS.
Unfortunately, that was the result of a light hack sustained by this site.
I’ve gone through and cleaned everything up, including the removal of the spam links and the posts that weren’t meant to go live.
Sorry for the annoyance everyone.
What to ask for, and when.
I’ve been talking to a bunch of people recently about investment, taking money, and some misperceptions about why (and how) money was put together for the projects I’ve worked on.
While some more of those conversations will begin to surface here in the near future, I wanted to share a short quip (and to break the month-long dry spell that has been this blog).
I’m honestly not 100% sure where I heard this first, but I know I’ve heard it from more than one person and I think Josh Kopelman was the first person I heard say it out loud:
“If you’re looking for advice, ask for money. If you’re looking for money, ask for advice”.
Both are valuable assets, advice and cash. Which do you need first, or more importantly, which do you need now?
Something worth chewing on when the first thing you’re looking around for is someone with deep pockets to get your idea off the ground.
One foot in front of the other
I’ve identified three distinct phases to a community marketing plan. As much as I hate speaking in absolutes, I’m confident that they need to go in this order to be truly effective.
- Listen - Turn the bullhorn around. Social Media isn’t traditional marketing with a new set of tools. Despite the fact that these tools are effective for broadcast, they’re even more effective for monitoring and listening. You need to do that first.
- Engage - First contact. This one is critical. The line to be walked is a fine one, between jumping into conversation uninvited and actually introducing yourself. Again, it’s not the fault of the tools that they are designed to encourage brief messages. Most importantly, you need first contact to come from a human, not a robot.
- Share - Now that you’ve built up some social capital by listening and then reaching out in a relevant manner, your chance to help, share, or otherwise help the community member totally kick ass comes. Don’t blow it by sharing nothing but marketing material, share things that are truly helpful. Don’t be afraid to link off site, or even better, off topic. Continue to engage as a human, while sharing an experience with a community member.
Following these three steps will help you build honest, valuable relationships with your community members, customers, and frankly…make new friends.
This process isn’t just for business, it’s for real life.
Openness and Transparency
Are two words that have been bastardized into near meaninglessness (or at least misunderstanding) by marketing drones. Thank goodness Tara Hunt, in her brand new book (just released today!) “The Whuffie Factor“, has this to say:
Social media is like…
Via http://zygote.egg-co.com/social-media-roi/
I snagged this slide from one of the most valuable presentations about social media I’ve read online. Read it. Right now. It’s long-ish, but worth it. Thanks to Dave McClure for sharing it.
Here’s the deal: teaching people how to tweet on twitter.com, blog on blogger.com, or belch on belcher.com, makes not an effective social media campaign.
There is no silver bullet.
You need to evaluate business problems.
You have to know the right solutions to solve those problems, relevantly to the business in question.
And you need to design and execute against metrics to measure the success of your decisions.
It’s not simple. It’s not quick.
Which is why I find it so hard to believe how many “social media experts” are out there.
My sincere hope it that people read at this really well constructed deck and presentation content, and take it to heart, and put their “social media consultant” cards in a drawer for a day when you actually can provide value to the people paying them money. (And maybe use those spare “SEO consultant” cards you’ve got laying around in the mean time so you don’t have to waste money on new ones).
Important! - Membership Drive for Monday March 9th: IndyHall v2.0
Reposted from the IndyHall Blog:
As you may have heard by now, we’re considering moving IndyHall into a new, larger office on the other side of Market Street, 20-22 N. 3rd St and will be discovering some alternative uses for the community better suited for the space we will continue to occupy at 32 Strawberry Street.
Geoff and I called a Town Hall meeting on Tuesday, and had lots of positive response.
If you haven’t seen yet, some of those responses are posted online:
http://www.indyhall.org/2009/03/04/the-state-of-indyhall-march-3rd-2009/
http://technicallyphilly.com/news/indy-hall-to-expand-add-educational-element/
http://www.imouttaherethebook.com/2009/03/big-changes-coming-indyhall-raises-the-bar-again/
Now What?
What we need now is commitment from the community that we embrace, encourage, empower, and completely love.
Much like the membership drive we held in August of 2007 to open 32 Strawberry Street, we’re looking for member commitment to help us verify the sustainability of a move into this new office.
We’re turning to three core audiences:
- Our Current Membership
- Our Waiting List
- The Extended IndyHall Community
We’ve already contacted our current membership, and are working with our waiting list to manage upgrades and new members that have been waiting patiently for news about our expansion.
We’re looking to the phenomenal community of businesses, entrepreneurs, creatives, freelancers, startups, telecommuters and remote workers in Philadelphia, the people we consider the extended IndyHall Community, for their interest as well.
Open Membership
In fact, membership is re-opening at all levels immediately, and will become active on May 1st.
Now, what we need from you.
We’re looking for folks who haven’t had a chance to come meet the IndyHall community and experience our work environment now. If you’ve never worked at IndyHall, we’re certain that working here for a day will help you determine if this alternative office is the right thing for you. Normally, its $25/day for non-members to work here. For a limited time, we’ll be offering free dropin days for visitors who sign up for multiple months at any level of membership.
Space is limited, so you must reserve a desk in order to take advantage of this offer. You can contact us for information on how to make a reservation.
Not familiar with how IndyHall works? This website is admittedly outdated and needs a refresh. Our bad. More on that coming.
In the mean time, Full Time IndyHall member Jonny Goldstein put together this excellent video to explain who we are, what we do, and how it works.
Please don’t hurt yourselves
What we’re NOT looking for is for you to overextend yourself. Our decision is based on how sustainable this move is, so if your upgraded membership is not sustainable, it’s misrepresentative of the entire goal.
At the same time, if you have the ability to pre-pay for any number of months beyond the usual month-to-month commitment we offer to IndyHall, that will also help us plan for this move and have some cash in the bank to work with. While we haven’t decided to raise our membership rates, if you have the ability to pay ahead, we’ll honor that rate for the duration of your pre-payment.
Whatever upgrades we’re taking will go into effect on May 1st, which is our proposed move-in day for the new office.
Deadlines. Comin’ up fast.
This is going to happen very, very quickly:
Geoff and I are going to be making our decisions based on how many commitments are made between now and End of Day on Monday, March 9th.
Yes. That’s this upcoming Monday.
Finally, and maybe most importantly: you are our front lines recruiters. Nearly everyone who works at IndyHall was referred by somebody other than myself, which is what makes this community so strong. If you have friends, colleagues, business partners, etc that you think would benefit from working at IndyHall, let them know that we’re looking for new members to join our community. Encourage them to come work at IndyHall soon for a day and see if they like it. If you’ve got questions about how to go about this, please drop us a line. Share Jonny’s video above. Let them know about the free drop in days (and that they have to reserve!).
Thanks for enduring this lengthy post, and for your ongoing support of IndyHall. If you have questions, or simply want to let us know what you’d like to do, our door is open and so is our inbox.
Thank you so, so much. This is so much excitement, we don’t know what to do with ourselves.
Another Manifesto: The Cult of Done
My insanely talented (and insanely geeky) friend Bre Pettis, along with Kio Stark, drafted 12 bullet points that might help explain to you how, and more importantly why, I’m always working on something (and in most cases, more than one thing).
From Bre’s blog:
- There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
- Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
- There is no editing stage.
- Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
- Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
- The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
- Once you’re done you can throw it away.
- Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
- People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
- Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
- Destruction is a variant of done.
- If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
- Done is the engine of more.
This is “Agile” for everybody else. What are you getting done?
Some Presentations Coming Up - IndyHall Town Hall, Facebook Garage Philly, SXSW Interactive
I’ve had a fair amount of travel in the last 2 months, but really only one public speaking event of note. Starting now, things get crazy.
First up,
IndyHall Town Hall.
From the IndyHall website:
We’ve come a really long way in just a year and a half. We’ve connected with so many new people in so many new ways, and welcomed lots of new friends to our community. The physical space, the clubhouse, for IndyHall has been at 32 Strawberry Street for 18 months and recently we’ve found ourselves running out of desks. Unlike a gym or an airline, who can oversell and bump users, we care about our members more than anything, and are going back to our roots to figure out how to deal with this issue.
Next Tuesday, March 3rd, we’ll be meeting at 32 Strawberry St at 6pm to discuss what the future of the IndyHall workspace is. Geoff and I have been working really hard to distill this issue into some key points, and talking to a lot of people about it. But we didn’t get here without everyone else’s hard work and we certainly can’t see how it makes sense to continue to grow without you.
This town hall meeting is open to all IndyHall members, but also the community at large. Are you on our waiting list? Don’t miss this meeting, we want you to come be a part of our next steps. Are you someone who’s been watching us all along and wants to see what our next move could be? You’ll want to be there.
Please RSVP on Facebook or by leaving a comment. We hope to see you at IndyHall. Bring your A-game. This is going to be a fun night.
This event is really important to me, and to the community, and I hope to see a lot of our supporters there.
Philadelphia Facebook Garage
The Stuzo Group is hosting the second Philadelphia Facebook Developer Garage which will focus on methods to drive sales and brand interaction for companies within Facebook. The Philadelphia Facebook Developers Garage will be held on March 9, 2009 from 6:00 to 10:00 PM at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse, 1426 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. This event is open to the public and attendees are asked to RSVP at: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=62898818432
Talking to Olivia and Gunter from Stuzo, I found out that the event is meant to be useful to agencies, developers and businesses alike. They’re going to be featuring case studies and presentations around Facebook Platform projects and businesses. There will be some news surrounding Facebook Platform (and I have to imagine Facebook Connect) from some folks from Facebook. The event is free.
Where do I fit in? Olivia and Gunter asked me to come in and be the closing keynote. The entire day will be very Facebook-focused, discussing techniques and tools, and they’ve asked me to come in and help zoom out after the day and talk about the large scope of social technology in business. I’m pretty stoked for this.
P.S. The venue at Del Frisco’s is a Bank Vault converted into a Wine Cellar. I hear it’s sick. The event will be worth coming to if only to see that, and let my awesome closing keynote be a bonus.
Watch out, Austin
It is nearly March, and that means SXSW is coming. This will be my 2nd year as a speaker at SXSW. I’m currently leading one core conversation and on one Panel.
Core Conversations:
Working Alone Sucks: Join the Coworking Revolution - Saturday March 14th - 11:30am-12:30pm
We’ll be holding a round table conversation with some leaders and members of the coworking community. If you’re a veteran, or a newb, this is going to be a great session to meet some folks and learn from them. Also, don’t miss the coworking meetup at the Hotel San Jose being organized by Julie Gommell of Launchpad Coworking in Austin.
Panels:
You may also be interested in… - Monday March 16th - 5:30-6:30pmDrew Olanoff from Strands asked me to join Mike Hudack from Blip.tv and Trevor Legwinski from Strands on stage to talk about how recommendations online are changing how we make decisions offline. I didn’t know how I’d fit into this panel, but now that I’ve seen some of the talking points, I’m pretty excited about it. Plus, I finally get to meet Mike.
Also worth checking out is my partner-in-crime Geoff DiMasi’s panel, “Building Regional Whuffie” on Sunday, March 15th from 3:30-4:30pm. The panel ALSO features some of my other partners in various other crimes, including Tony Bacigalupo (karaoke crimes), Matthew Wettergreen (Sriracha crimes), as well as Susan Evans (from Office Nomads) and Julie Duryea (from Souk).
And that’s all in the first 2 weeks of March. Holy shit. Here goes nothing.
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About
I'm Alex Hillman, the co-founder of IndyHall and a social technology and community developer living in Philadelphia.
I like technology, how people interact with it, and how it helps them interact with each other.
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Recently Written
- I just got my Masters in “Bundle Dynamics”, or: Software Bundles Don’t Have to be Evil
- The best deal on Multiplex, RipIt, and 9 other apps!
- Green Eggs ‘n Spam
- What to ask for, and when.
- One foot in front of the other
- Openness and Transparency
- Social media is like…
- Important! - Membership Drive for Monday March 9th: IndyHall v2.0
- Another Manifesto: The Cult of Done
- Some Presentations Coming Up - IndyHall Town Hall, Facebook Garage Philly, SXSW Interactive
Cluetrain-a-Day 2009