As most of you guessed it in our small contest early last week, the theme and the name of our first conference, in the works for several months, will be “The Economics of Social Media”.
By social media we mean all the ways in which media, entertainment and information (MEI) industries are colliding with users as part of the mix. Another way of looking at it: Social media is a mix of genuine grassroots efforts to create media through community, and the industries trying to tap into the energy of crowds, community, and user creativity. (Wikipedia has a related definition here).
The one-day conference, planned for late-Feb-early-March in LA, will discuss the business, financial and economic aspects arising out of this, emerging business models and how that is changing the dynamics of these three industries.
Our definition or perspective on this is by no means definite...it is evolving as fast as the industry. We will continue to mold and shape the format of the conference with that in mind. In the true spirit of the theme, we’d like to hear your ideas for discussions, speakers, format, subjects ... anything on the editorial or business side that you think would make this the kind of event you expect from us.
So the first contest we had: the fourth commenter Jon Bischke was close—he mentioned social networking; our focus is broader—so he gets the free ticket. Jon, we’ll contact you soon. Also, a lot of other commenters also got it right in part or full, so it makes sense to do a random draw from those, and give away another free ticket. You’ll have to trust us on this one...we’ll do it when we open conference registrations next month, so watch out for that.
P.S.: The conference name is a play on our site’s tagline, “The Economics of Content”.