First morning of Techcrunch50 and after a quick walk of the Demopit (those that didn’t make it on stage) I’m not yet startled by amazing new business models. Most of the same with a bit of spice here and there. Here is a summary after a quick lap.

The Usual Prospects

• Advertising – and everyone adds “It’s super targeted”, “It’s specific, locally targeted” or “We’ve got tags”. In this group but not particularly mind-blowing was Meaningz, 7ages,Lifemee and Pip.io. iAte was interesting in that it searches through Twitter and finds reviews of restaurants, then collates them and builds a reputation of them. No great business model yet, but looked like they were creating value.
• Freemium – you give it away and hope to charge a percentage of people a subscription for more features. (I’m not a fan) – Such as Problemator – where users pose questions and answers bubble to the top.
• Fee for service – you actually charge money (I like this more). A good example of this was Ask Your Target Market, which matches your survey to an audience and gives you a simple tool to analyse the results. The more focused the target, the more you pay. Love it. Trademarkia was also interesting, letting companies to IP searches for current as well as lapsed marks (e.g. Trademarks). They say that Google is actually the second Google.
• Licensing – charge money to use the technology. A good example of the this is Tucoola, which has methodologies in the area of Early Childhood Development and lets companies plug it easily into games. This helps them actually be good for the kids, as well as being fun. It also includes analysing the impact such as music exposure, literacy, hand-eye coordination.
• Micro-Payments – charging small amounts of money for tiny transactions. Two examples here, firstly Tapjoy, which touts itself as an alternative to the iPhone App Store, but allows smaller fees for applications, e.g. 5 or 10 cents. They say that Apple is OK with it. Hmmm. Second was Cloudmach which has a browser-based virtual world, which I believe can be embedded anywhere which will be selling virtual goods, e.g. 1 cent for a hug, 5c for a kiss.

So that’s just a first look at the business models being touted here. I hope to see a few more interesting ideas. Don Dodge is on stage asking the ‘What’s your business model?” question to Penn and Teller’s iPhone app, so it’s still firmly in the investors mind – of course.

Techcrunch50 has now officially started. Jason and Mike on stage, talking proudly of Mint which one the first Techcrunch40 back in 2007 that just got acquired by Intuit for $170m. Onto the second pitch – Story Something, which is personalised books for the digital space. Looks like they are looking to the iPhone for monetization too, which might become a new usual suspect.

Barcamps are awesome because everyone sets the agenda and participates, not just a small group that the organisers have picked. So go to BarCamp Sydney 5 this Saturday, June 27th, 2009.

Long version

Recently I attended the Future Summit event in Melbourne (thanks Steve). A very important topic (the future of the planet) and a very qualified audience (people from academic, government and corporate who care about and work in jobs that heavily impact the future).

500 attendees.
2 days of time together.

What was the result?

About 100 hours of talking/discussion/debate.

Doesn’t sound bad does it? But that’s 1 hour for every five attendees? Hmmm. Why so low? It’s because it was run in the old style. Pick people to talk to the audience, the audience listens. It wasn’t all bad. There was a night cap session that was open and there was a lunch on the second day where you could pick your table based on interest and thrash around some ideas. Both of these sessions were great.

But overall, the summit was a few people talking to a lot of people. What’s wrong with this? It assumes that the most knowledgeable people are on the stage. The reality is that for most events, the people in the audience have as much to contribute to the issue at hand as the people on stage.

It also doesn’t take into consideration that with so much media available so quickly, it is actually very hard for the person on stage to say something which the people in the audience haven’t already heard.

So what could have they done? Even half talk, half open discussion would have produced;

500 people x 2 days x 6 hours of discussion = 6,000 hours of discussion.

OK, it’s not mathematically perfect but you get my point.

And that’s why Barcamps are awesome. The agenda, the formats, the discussion, the themes, the everything is decided by those who turn up. It ebbs, flows, explodes, dies, rocks, rolls and *is* because of the people. All you need to do is get some space, get some coffee and get good people there and the rest takes care of itself*.

And that’s why they are important. There is no filter between what ‘the people’ care about and what gets talked about. It’s about as raw as you get.

So get along to BarCamp Sydney 5 this Saturday, June 27th, 2009. It’s open, but there is a big push for stuff on the Future and Government 2.0.

But come prepared. Barcamps are a full-contact sport – not for spectators. If it’s your first time at Barcamp – you have to present! (not really, but you should and I like the Fight Club reference…)

I can’t wait. See you there.

You can browse through the last BarCamps here at BarcampSydney home or just by searching and finding things like these pics.

* By ‘takes care of itself’ I mean it takes a good chunk of work from a lot of people (specially JodieM and Ajay) and some healthy sponsorship from good companies.

It’s November 15
9-6 with end of year party to follow.
UNSW
Roundhouse

RSVP Here for Barcamp Sydney 4

Blog is here, but not updated yet

Plus we need sponsors.

If you can throw $250 into the kitty to make it rock and roll, then do it. It makes you feel good and you join an impressive group Google, , Future Journeys and of course Pollenizer.