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Being somewhat in the media business myself, I know how hard it is to capitalise in online media. Today I noticed TechCrunch’s story on the new kick ass Nokia N900 Maemo device. I read the story and stopped to wonder what kind of culture is present in TechCrunch that makes people publish news articles with this little value for the reader. If media was hard to capitalise in the first place, publishing this sort of articles does not help in the challenge.

If you read the article you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Guessing (or relying on insider information) is ok, but when you praise yourself on how well you performed instead of actually talking about the news item itself – you’re off on the wrong track.

This is something I talked about in Paris as well. Seems like there is a real market for this as Michael Arrington is also worrying about the perfection of their wifi in next year’s TC50. My point was that since there is always talk on the internet after a conference (pick a place and theme with more than 1000 members) how the internet connectivity sucked, that someone set up a company who would guarantee connectivity for a much above market prices.

This is something we think about a lot at TechCrunch, because so many conferences have bad connectivity, and we need to make it perfect at TechCrunch50 next year. There’s a real business here if a large company can get it right and is willing to put a guarantee in place to conference organizers. They can charge almost anything – I’m sure Loic would have paid €200,000 if that’s what it took to get proper Internet for attendees. If they can build a reputation for reliability, and are willing to back up that reputation with a liquidated damages clause for failure in the range of, say, 5x the fee they charge, then I imagine every conference that could would hire them.

Src: TC

It’s a simple business idea: build a company around guaranteeing internet connectivity in large conferences. You can have your own gear, cables, etc., put a little bit of magic into the connectivity and guarantee that the internet works – I’m sure this future company would become world famous and a trusted brand globally within a year.

Image: Travelin’ Librarian CC:BY-NC