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→Site Building Extravaganza - Emma Jane Hogbin
This talk was provided on the second day. I came late and missed the first 2 time slots. So for my first time slot of the day, I did not have any topic that interested me. I decided to take the “Site Building Extravaganza” just because the other topics sounded really boring and I was hoping to pick up tips on how to build better websites. I was completely wrong on my presentation expectation. Because the previous day sessions were workshops that teach the attendees how to do certain stuff and let them get hands on experience, I thought the presentations would be teaching the attendees on how to certain stuff. So in this case, I thought it would be about building websites and showing us how to do it efficiently and what not. I was not expecting it to be what it was.
The presentation was about her experience on trying to make money from open source. This was super interestingto me and others as well because she will be sharing her direct experience and I will be able to learn from her experience. Emma started to adapt open source as a form of income by creating websites. She used Drupal, which is an open source content management system. She would develop websites and sell it to clients ranging from 2000 to 10000 dollars. She says that 8000 would be the average cost of her sites. I found this to be amazing as that is pretty good money for building sites with Drupal. Emma then wrote a book on building sites with Drupal, but did not publish it because as soon as she was ready, a similar book came out and she figured that direct competition means that her book won’t sell as well. However, she saw that there was a “hole in the market” and edited her book towards theming Drupal sites. When she saw that she only made $2 per book but the professors who teach using her book is making much more than she was, she wanted, as she worded it, “a piece of that pie”. In order to make money instructing Emma decided that she needed to make a teaching program. The name of the program was “Site Building Extravaganza”(Which she named this seminar after). Site building Extravaganza was a 1 year long program where the users will get detailed instructions on how to build websites that the students may profit from. Emma decided to price her program $500 per person and set the minimum to 100 participants for it to start. She was able to get over $50000 by getting 107 people to sign up. This was great because she was presented with large lump sum but she would have to spend it wisely because she would need to be devoted to creating manuals for these “students” to follow. After her program has begun, she had to put a pause because she had to run for elections. When she notified her students, some wanted their money back, which she did. Emma had to find more people to take her program before she began to make up for the loss. She found that writing these manuals were no easy task. Some of her students had zero skill in web developing so she had to make her manuals detailed and easy to follow. That’s when she realized that building Drupal site was “time consuming”… after she has written down the steps. Emma suggested that it was a risky selling the program before she had a program to sell, but Emma also pointed out that it was what was so great about it. By not having the program, she can test the market with zero effort on her part. (Unlike the book, which she spent a lot of time on but turns out to have made very little money) She also stated that her program was successful because it provides the community that her students were desiring. Her students took up the course because they wanted to be with 100 other people that they can share their experience learning Drupal and discuss their problems. They wanted the support community I got the feeling that Emma was more of a business woman than a software developer. This quote of her view on open source developers stuck with me. “Open source developers are great at making new technology, but are very bad marketers.” Her quote and her shared experience made me realize it’s really hard to be a proper software entrepreneur and be good at both making desired products and selling the desired products. I was surprised that Emma shared all her income broken down by the products she sold, which included books, workbooks, sites, and her teaching programs. I was able to take a peek at what is involved to properly market a product like price points, group buys and popularity. This gave me an insight on how tough it was to be a successful open source developer, if being successful would mean good at making money.
==Free and Open Source Strategy as Practice: Participant Perspectives - Mekki MacAulay==
==Conclusion==
I would definitely say that attending FSOSS 2011 was an “enabling” experience. I enjoyed being there. Even though I was dreading to attend, I am happy to say I am converted! It is hard to express how educating it was for me to attend the symposium and no brainer for the open source class, DPS909, makes students attend FSOSS. If I was asked what the most important thing was that I gained from FSOSS, I would answer that I learned open source is about the community. Strong community is what drives programmers to help out and reach a common goal. It provides developers with comfort while they develop the next level. Even though FSOSS was not my first conference, I have to say it was the conference where I learned the most. Having a chance to hear from such a variety of speakers who have such broad and different experiences is what makes FSOSS so exciting. You can count on me to be at FSOSS 2012… All three days of it!