eric rochow : social media handyman

Wow. I’ve always wanted to attend TED, but wasn’t enough of a luminary or had the $6K to attend. In the NY Times yesterday, an article by Bob Tedeschi on how TED is posting 100 of their talks online.

…TED is at the vanguard of a trend in the conference industry, where organizers have begun to exploit assets that in years past evaporated as soon as speakers left the stage.

“I’m so struck by it anytime I’m at a great event,” said June Cohen, director of media for TED, a nonprofit business based in New York. “That was so wonderful, but now it’s gone. It’s a shame they’re not captured and preserved.”

“Conventional business logic would tell you that in a community like TED you have to keep your commodity scarce and expensive to retain brand value,” she said. “But the same year we started releasing most of our content for free we raised our conference price by nearly 50 percent and still sold out in 12 days.”

True. I would still attend if I could. Right now I can’t, but I will watch TED online, and I’m not alone, 3 million have watched as of Januray. A good example of leveraging content beyond the immediacy of the conference itself.