MIT Enterprise Forum of NYC 12/1/11 Symposium will Include FairPay

"Better Strategies for Monetizing Digital Offerings: 
Thinking Out of the Box while Looking across Industry Silos."

[Update: see event report with video and slides.]

That is the theme of the session that I am helping to organize, and will be a panelist at.  The full slate is:

Moderator:
- Dr. Howard Morgan, Co-Founder and Partner, First Round Capital

Speakers:
- Betsy Morgan, President, TheBlaze.com
- Shawn Price, President, Zuora.com
- Richard Reisman, President, Teleshuttle Corporation
- Paul Smurl, Vice President, NYTimes.com

I suggest this will be an outstanding session--we expect to generate a very interesting dialog on strategy and innovation, both incremental improvements, and more radical directions.  (And we may still add one more panelist to represent the music or video industry.)

Register at MITEF-NYC.

The concept is:

Monetizing digital offerings is a continuing challenge. Advertising can generally generate only some of the revenue required, so customer payments appear to remain essential for most businesses. Freemium was a good starting point, and now soft pay walls are being tested. Shifting music and film from purchase to subscription is emerging as a sea change.

What else is new? What can be applied across verticals? Do we need to rethink the value proposition and customer relationship? How successful are strategies to apply social influence and "pay what you want"?

This session will look broadly at how content businesses such as publishing, music, and video are transforming themselves to achieve economic viability:

Among the issues we will discuss:
- What strategies are they adopting?
- What can these verticals learn from one-another?
- How far out of the box can solutions go?

I will present a brief overview of FairPay, and will be available to address questions during the Q&A, and afterwards.

We hope to see you at this exciting event.