Conference Bay auctions from Singapore
From Singapore: Conference Bay, an eBay-style auction marketplace for buying seats at conferences worldwide.
Nothing new here, right? We all know about online auctions. The only innovation is applying a well-tested online transaction model to a different niche – in this case a potentially high-value niche that may provide real utility – and new buying power – for a global audience. It’s worth comparing this service to another crowd-sourced approach to aggregating event information: Yahoo’s Upcoming, which is full of Yahoo’s social media goodness – and lots of free events, too. You can add comments, people, maps, etc.. But at the end of the day (and more than two years after Yahoo! purchased Upcoming), it’s a big list to promote events – but not to directly sell or determine pricing for seats.
Insight: Innovation happens everywhere.
I should also note: the We Media/connected/story-telling culture helped me find Conference Bay. Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman’s blog mentioned Solana Larson and the Global Voices crew that came to We Media Miami, and this popped up in our Technorati tracker for the wemedia tag. Someone named Anne from the Phillipines who knew or knew of Ethan commented in his blog – and I followed the link to Anne’s blog, then read down not only to see some familiar names and interests, but, reading down to the next post, a link to Conference Bay.
