Some Assembly Required

Decision 2008 - for SXSW 2009, that is...

I previously mentioned here that I am in the process of preparing a panel presentation for the 2009 South by Southwest Interactive Festival. The panel discussion is titled Emerging Payments: How the MySpace Generation Will Pay  and is all about how GenY and Millennial consumers will drive adoption of the next generation of payment technologies, much like their parents did with plastic cards. Considering the audience at SXSWi, and their focus on design, media and social networking, understanding the market and technology forces surrounding how their target demographic will transact with them is a very relevant topic. It promises to be a fascinating discussion.

Joining me in this panel is Lance Gentry, a marketing guru with scads of experience in the youth centric arena. Lance is currently the Chief Marketing Officer at Mocapay, an innovative mobile commerce company. He previously worked on the launch of IZZE Beverage Company, and started his career in the film industry at Warner Brothers and Touchstone. We will be announcing other panel participants prior to the event.

Panel selection at SXSW is a democratic process. SXSW enthusiasts can vote for panels based on their interest level using an online tool. The SXSWi 2009 Panel Picker is online until August 29. I encourage you to visit the site and vote for your favorites. Even if you don't plan on attending, I would love it if you would vote for mine.

SXSWi 2009

Geez, didn't we just get over the flu we picked up there this year?

It's not too early to start thinking about SXSW Interactive 2009, which takes place in Austin March 13-17, 2009. Panel submissions have already begun, and are due no later than July 11. I got mine submitted over the weekend - watch this space for pleas to vote for my panel. I will also share an outline of what we plan to cover, but I'll need all the help I can get!

Startup Weekend

Next month I'm attending a cool weekend conference called Columbus Startup Weekend. The Startup Weekend concept is a 54 hour event that focuses on building new businesses concepts from ideas to reality by gathering people from a variety of technical, financial and business disciplines and utilizing some unique facilitation techniques to incubate ideas that could become new companies. Here's how it works.

I can't wait to report back on how it went.

Thoughts about the Amazon - Audible acquisition

Amazon announced today that they are picking up Audible.com for a cool $300 million. As a customer (and some might say a fan) of both companies I have more than a passing interest in how this will all work out. Clearly Audible has established itself as the market leader in the digital audio book space. It's also no secret that Amazon is looking to scale in all digital media in a big way. This transaction represents a logical tuck-in acquisition that complements Amazon's existing products in digital music and movies.

The more interesting question is how this will impact the brewing competition between Amazon and Apple's iTunes Music Store. Audible is the incumbent provider of digital audio book content on iTMS, and at the very least it represents a major step in achieving competitive parity from a "products offered" basis between the two. Beyond that step, one could envision the deal dynamics between Audible and Apple changing at some point in the future, now that they have another major channel for their products.

In terms of all media, digital audio books are a relatively small component (in the sub-billion dollar range), but reports indicate that over 25% of Americans listen to some form of audio books, and with the proliferation and low cost of digital players this is clearly a segment to watch. After all, if we listen to Steve Jobs we know that physical book reading is on the decline.