bootstrapping.net

reboot8 is here. 1-2 june, Copenhagen, Denmark. More information at reboot.dk.
For some reason it’s been a tough process this year to get as far as this.
Last year was easy, everyone came from around europe with no expectations and had a really great time - mostly because the event didn’t get in the way of them having a good time, but also because of some really great speakers and session facilitators.
But this year i’m really feeling the pressure of people’s expectations.
But doing reboot has never been easy. Getting your mind into that it can be done when you’re standing alone at bottom of the big mountain of decisions, tasks and a lot of work.
But then other people starts showing up because they’re on the same trip or wanna join the trip, they spread good vibes and energy (one person replied to my question of whether he was interested in coming: “As they say, does a bear @£$% in the woods?. I would LOVE to make reboot”). Slowly the event starts forming, the sense of meaning starts coming back, you get all high from all the energy. And then one day it’s all in the hands of all the others, the participants, to create the experience.
This year that experience starts early with lot’s of openness and involvement into the creation of reboot8 - see the invitation to participate.

Received the inaugural “e of the year” award yesterday for being “a constant rolemodel and innovator”. Hope i can live up to it the rest of my lifetime too!
When you’re working on your own in fields that quite often are ahead of mainstream perception of what’s important it feels very lonely and uphill at times. So it moved me quite a bit to receive recognition for my work which surprised me.
I dedicated the award to all the humans who are working at the edges of society creating new ideas, technology, culture, infrastructure for others to build on, values and shifts in perspectives because of their passion - who seldomly are around to get attention, money or awards for their big contributions.

The concept of democratic pricing is a topic i’ve revisited a couple of times.

In the industrial mode it was “big is beautiful”. The larger your purchasing power, the better prices you would get. You needed to get big to be competitive.

For a couple of years i’ve been trying to spread the meme of doing it the other way around. Especially in the digital field with no inherent costs pricing is much more dynamic. A great web app is more valuable to a large organization than a small. (and no i’m not talking stuff like per-user pricing - i’m talking have different rate cards for different sizes of organizations). Basic stuff - but tough in the real world and very much value-based.

The launch of Amazon S3 made me realize that in the services age democratic pricing is a real possibility if not an inherent core part of it. Since it’s a total self service model there’s almost no transaction costs that makes the deal sweater for the customer with the large volume. It’s democratic pricing that levels the playing field.

Same with Google AdWords that to some extent is levelling the playing field since volume won’t give better prices (not really sure of AdWords since i keep hearing rumors that Google is being squezed to give 5-20% percent discount to existing middlemen, large accounts, etc).

So what does all this mean?. It’s a pretty symbolic testiment to “Small is beautiful”. Not only in creation mode where nobody will disagree that small organizations are much more agile and innovative - but in operations mode where large organizations won’t have many, if any, pricing advantages due to volume/size. It’s a levelled playing field - the big corps will have to get busy because their “easy advantages” isn’t making it into the digital world.