adultmarketing

Trade shows are in a massive slump. Same faces. Crap seminars. Over-priced rooms, sponsorships, badges and everything else really.

For too long AVN and Xbiz made a killing selling insanely expensive sponsorships to BROgrams who just wanted to have a dick waving contest. Lucky them. They made a shit load of money. However, the model just is not sustainable as anyone that has been to a show in the last two years will testify.

The porn industry told all the organisers what they wanted to see after the first shit AVN Vegas. And how did AVN respond? By adding Dildo Peddlers to the summer show. Genius Dreadful idea.

So what can we do about it?

I propose an Unconference. We all want to get together for a variety of reasons. One is to network. One is to meet old friends/reinforce business relationships. One is to learn new things. One is to party. No one wants to pay 300 bucks to attend. No one needs to be bought sponsored drinks. No one wants keynotes that are VERY thinly disguised product pitches. No one wants round tables where no one is watching.

An unconference would remove all the bad things and keep all the good. It would revolutionise the way porn industry meetings happen.

No badge cost. No sponsorships. No money involved at all. One of the most popular unconferences is a camping trip. Awesome!

There are LOTS of different ways other industries have organised this, and how they work out what events to hold. Some are invite only. Some are free for alls. Some have invited speakers, some have a whiteboard and anyone that wants to speak can speak and it is up to the people there to decide what is popular by voting with their feet. See this image from FooCamp:

The most important thing is it removes the money from the event. Since we can all agree those days of shows in the 90s are over, removing the money from the show will FORCE it to change in a dramatic way.

The goal would be to bring together the adult industry in a way never before seen. What if all the hosting companies got together and talked about how they could make things better? What if shooters talked about the latest kit and techniuqes? What if all the coders sat down and shared knowledge and information?

What if we all had what Smiley from NSCash invented, a No Dinner Plans Dinner where anyone at the show that wasn’t on a big boring sponsor dinner could sit down and have a great time and then just split the bill at the end of the night?

Hey, I’m just throwing this out there. I’m so down for going if anyone else would be!

Further reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_Camp

http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2009/09/notes-from-foo-camp-2009-the-foo-filter-foo09.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp

http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/05/technology/business2_unconference0606/index.htm

This entry was posted Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.