Some friends and I were discussing ways to stay in the loop without our regular conference schedule to expose us to new technologies and the output was V-Sum. It’s taken a while to come together but the first event is finally on Oct 14th. It’s completely virtual and distributed.
There is no cost to attend. Sponsors are helping with the costs, which are spartan just like the web presence. In that same spirit, all communication is through e-mail with participants outside of the video sessions.
Zach (For Fintechs Sake / Bond) has been fun to bounce this around with for the past few months and his face will be a nice familiar presence for many of you in the FinTech world. I’m excited to have him and his perspectives involved.
The V-Sum Format
After decades of attending conferences there are some trends that have emerged on where the real value is. We’ve tried to condense this to the good stuff and focus on where the learning happens. No cocktail hours, no bags of stuff, and no egregious branding on a lanyard. That reminds me, there are no lanyards. The nice thing about being remote is that we can be brief and focused in comparison to a typical gathering.
V-Sum is a partial day event and we believe there will be 3 briefings to keep things short and simple initially. Briefings are 15 minutes long and come from the company directly giving a demo over video conference. After a series of briefings the attendees are broke up into groups of 10 for a discussion. Each company will be asked to participate in a discussion group after their presentation. Each briefing is recorded and will be shared later but the rest of the event is off the record to encourage discussion.
Each company Q&A can only accommodate ~10 slots in addition to the founders. Since we’re all remote the break out rooms are limited to the number of people that can have a functional discussion.
Attending V-Sum
The event is free to attend and the initial one is sponsored by some folks I look forward to sharing when they are ok with it. They’ve made it possible to bring together a small team to make it happen. Big thanks to everyone who initially responded to a tweet about the concept and helped motivate us to make it a reality.
Attending is simply a function of requesting an invitation and getting a spot when one opens up. We’re over the attendee numbers we had as a goal and will be adding new attendees as we can ensure the tech can support it well and that we have enough moderators.
Presenting your technology at a V-Sum briefing
Companies don’t pay to present but are screened and prepped. If you’re sitting on a unique technology you’re willing to share we have an audience that would love to hear from you.
If you’re interested in presenting or attending please let us know 🙂 For those that are interested I look forward to seeing you on Oct 14th!