DIY Days, a roving conference for those who create, comes to Philly on Aug 1

Feel less guilt about the Indienomics blog, as my time is going directly to an independent media conference this weekend. If you are in or close to Philly, consider checking out DIY Days this Saturday. It’s free and interesting 🙂

Events roundup

Spring (er.. snow… for the New Yorkers) is in the air…. it’s open season on open conferences!

1. Open Everything NYC

April 18, UNICEF House @UN

True to it’s “open” nature — and much like an unconference — this event is pretty much unplanned and up to the attendees. I’m a little skeptic of how productive these sessions are, so I’ll check it out, especially since the United Nations is sponsoring and hosting. What does the UN have to do with free culture and the open source movement? This statement from the website gives me a clue…

Let there be no confusion, Open Everything is not a tech conference. There is much more to ‘open’ than technology, part of the goal of the event is to bring the less known aspects of ‘open’ to the attention of the general public.

2. Open Video Conference NYC

June 19-20 @NYU Law School

Okay, it’s a conference at a law school, so all the big conversations will revolve around legal and cultural dimensions of online video.

However, this indie-nomics minded gal is interested in the “secondary programming” on DIY video creation and programming. I like to see how people can bring their creative expressions to life with $0 budget and a laptop computer.

In Nina Paley’s case, it took her 5 years but she created something that may not have existed had it gone through normal film studio production barriers: Sita Sings the Blues is an animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana… and set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw.

“Dear Audience,
I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and show Sita Sings the Blues. From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes.”
– Nina Paley

3. Ultra Light Startups: Monetizing Online Video

April 2 @For Your Imagination

Exactly what the title says. If you’d rather get straight to the $$$ and skip the philosophical discussions about free culture, this is your event!

Topics:

* How to most effectively monetize online video and what revenues to expect.
* What are the most valuable online video properties right now? What content/audience niches are they serving? What are their revenue models? What technology are they using for marketing and distribution?
* What online video ad units are the most effective? Linear (Pre/mid/post-roll) vs. Non-linear (overlays, skins, etc) vs. display ads (alongside an embedded player). Interactive vs. non-interactve ad units.
* What are the most commonly used standards for video metrics. What determines the prices of video advertising and what are the ranges being paid now?
* What are the different video advertising networks and what differentiates them?
* What non-advertising revenue models have been tried for online video? Subscriptions/memberships? Product placement? Affiliate marketing? Live streams? Syndication? Which have been the most successful?
* What are the main video hosting/sharing websites and relative advantages/disadvantages of each for monetization?