sure, but it's super hard to get participation above 5% with that approach

Thanks Josh! What if we enable participants to create attendee list and allow everyone to edit the list freely (in a wikipedia way)? So that organizer no longer the only one who has control to the list.

Things that worked well — attendees loved our product. We did a good job at keeping the product simple and we used lots of tricks to auto-import their picture and bio from facebook, twitter, linkedin, gravitar, etc. That part worked well. Including faces in emails worked well for driving engagement. We tracked who got clicked on the most frequently and used their faces (ie. hot girls & VCs') in our emails. Every event organizer has an ongoing nightmare that no one will show up their event. If you promise them a way to sell more tickets (especially early) you'll grab their attention.

The domains are for sale — we have eventvue.com & vue.me. Contact me offline if you're interested.

Just got your tweet. Just would like you pick your brain on lesson learned in the event space. What worked and didn't. I did read your post-mortem. Do you have any more tips on what did work? Any details that did help you gain traction on events.

We are providing a similar service but it is free and tackling all events. Just would like to pick your brain some more considering you have 3 plus years experience in this space.

Also do you have any plans with your current domain name?

Thanks!

Joe

We've been appreciating your transparency over here at BusyEvent. Isn't it funny how the term "Old Guard" can hold such stature and wisdom? The problem with the old guard of the event industry is they typically live up to their name guarding the way things have always been done. In the 5 years we've been growing client relationships, we've discovered the difference between vitamin and pain killer (love that) can be more in how you market the product than the actual product. Decisions are made so quickly that a simple check in the box is all some people need. This frantic pace for the miracle pill has stirred a new energy in our group to develop simple tools to solve the simple problems we keep encountering. We need to be less consultant and more easy to use. We need to stop jamming in one more feature because we can and ask ourselves, does this tool need instructions?

Many thanks on sharing your wisdom. You are right about nobody getting rich in this part of the industry. Hopefully we'll be smart enough to keep it simple and continue to grow the balance of our trust bank account with more and more folks who get a good value for their time and money. Thanks again and all the best!

Definitely something we considered. The problem is you need the full attendee list (or at least the majority of it) for a product like EventVue to be valuable. The only person who has control of that list if the conference organizer. Even if you give the product away for free, it still takes to much time/effort to get in touch with organizers to convince them of the value of the community. They view the attendee list as their biggest asset and aren't typically willing to give it up without a lot of persuasion. Other companies have since tried going straight to the attendee like plancast, but their challenge is getting a high enough participation level from attendees for it to be interesting.

I'm working on a new startup. It's totally unrelated to the events space. Expect to hear more on that soon.

Maybe we can get you as an advisor and then I can open up my books to you. I'm really curious to see what you're up to as well and if there's anything I can do to help.