- How scaleable are conferences? (How could we scale up Manifest?)
- What restricts conference growth?
- Size of venues?
- Audience and marketing ability?
- Distance people are willing to travel?
- How could we run conferences much more cheaply?
- Planning time is expensive; also reputationally expensive.
- How much time needs to elapse between conferences? (if we ran Manifest every 2 months, would people come?)
- Could imagine running it in other locations ala EA Global… How to franchise a conference?
- Why do virtual conferences suck?
- How profitable can a conference be?
- What are the most successful conferences and festivals?
- Burning Man?
- Anime Expo?
- YC Demo Day?
- WEF at Davos?
- Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour?
- What is success here (total value added? value captured? number attendees?)
- What’s different between:
- Party
- Meetup
- Conference
- Festival
- Convention
- Why are conferences kind of uncool now?
- Thesis: Going to a conference feels a bit like “make work”. The coolest people ship code instead of socializing.
- How many conferences can exist in an ecosystem? What’s the saturation point?
- Why do people enjoy going to conferences?
- Meeting other people
- Seeing the exhibitions
- Listening to talks
- Experiencing the crowds
Other lists
- Things conferences are kind of like:
- Snowball/avalanche: Once you have a few good speakers lined up, more people are excited to come.
- Markets in people: where we match up supply of speakers to demand of attendees
- There’s a magical quality to having lots of people; things that cater to people will spring up to serve them. (like cafes popping up in a dense city)
- Conferences that have helped me a lot:
- Hereticon (pitching Manifold, meeting Paul Gu & Andy)
- EA Global (I think? Met Aron?)
- Future Forum ❤️