Westercon Business Model Canvas

For this post I would like to talk about a couple of ways Westercon could improve their business model canvas.

Key Partnerships:
While Brandon Sanderson has partnered with Westercon, no one would know. Westercon needs to capitalize on this partnership they already have. When you go to their website Westercon should use Brandon Sanderson to draw people in. He is a huge name and I feel like many more people would come to the event if they know about Sanderson coming.

Channels:
Westercon is on many social media sites but they are not engaging the few followers they have. In order to get more followers and make people want to follow Westercon they need to not only post their own content, but find funny and relevant content to their event. I think they could branch out onto vine and Youtube. But honestly they just need to make their current channels more interesting and it would make a world of difference.

Customer Segments:
I think it would be wise for Westercon to branch out into who they want to try and get to come to this event. A couple groups that might be interested are as follows:
-Young people
-Young writers
-BYU/UVU writers
-Aspiring authors
-High schoolers and middle schoolers in Utah
-BYU arts program
-English majors
-Utah aspiring writers of any age

I think there are a lot more people that would be interest in attending Westercon than currently do. I think they need to get a stronger presence online and make their event something that people want to share.

Westercon vs. Comic-Con

Westercon has potential to become big but they are not capitalizing on social media. In today's age social media is crucial to promote events and create hype. While it won't make every single person aware of your event, it can capture a large portion of your audience if done right. However, in order to capture your market, you have to make it cool.

Comic-con Salt Lake has done a good job of this. Looking at their twitter, it instantly looks interesting and fun. You can see that they have put a lot of working into creating original content, finding interesting and relevant content and interacting with their followers. Even though this is the page for only Salt Lake, they still have almost 4,000 followers.

Contract that with the twitter of Westercon. All of the content is only created by Westercon. They try a little to interact with their followers but they only have 20 followers (many from our class). The reality is there is not enough people even following their twitter to even have the potential for someone to see the content. No only do people not see the tweets, but there is nothing exciting about this twitter. The are not memes or interesting and relevant content from outside sources. It does not catch your attention much less make you want to follow it even if you are a huge fan of Westercon.

The same goes with the website. Comic-cons website is fun to look at and draws the audience in. I can tell instantly what I am looking at. However, Westercon's website is kind of boring. If I had not done research on it I would not know what it even was. It does not look like a fun event and I would most likely turn away simply from the website.

 Finally let's talk about Facebook.

 Westercon has a cool logo but they still only have 270 likes while Comic-con has almost 70,000. The content could be the reason why.

Comic-con has found funny meme and content that their users would like. They offer incentives to share and like and get their followers engaged. I found their Facebook interesting even though I was their target market. It is content that is fun to look at and something I wouldn't mind in my feed.

If you look at Westercon's posts, they do not offer a lot of engagement. They do not give users a call to action. They do not find outside content and it is not something worth seeking out.





When Comic-con came to Salt Lake I knew about it instantly. All of my friends were posting pictures with characters or actually dressing up themselves. Because users posted their own content it spead the word even more than anything Comic-con could have done on their own. They created a cool event that people wanted to go to and promoted it well on social media.

R.I.P. Print

Twitter
Enhances: Conversation about current events. You cannot share multiple pictures like you can on Facebook at once. But with twitter it is all about conversation. When the Grammy's are on, everyone is talking about them. During the walking dead the conversation is there. We can talk and interact with people we have never met but share a common interest with.
Obsoletes: Blogs in a way. We no longer want to read someone's two page blog post. It is much easier and faster to follow them on twitter. It is limited to 140 characters and only required seconds of attention per person.
Retrieves: The act of sharing links to articles. Lets users talk about what is going on in the world.
Reverses: Twitter allows users to share links, pictures, and their thoughts. People sometimes use it as a Diary of sorts in which they use as a medium to remember what they did and their thoughts about what was going on.

While we can talk about twiiter in relation of the McLuhan Tetrad, what is really interesting is the effect it has on us. Sites like Twitter and other social media sites have killed our attention span. We can no longer read for more than 20 minutes. A writer from Spain said:

 “The digital era has made us lazy and apathetic, and our stories, our literature, are losing their shine." 

"Increasingly sophisticated gadgets and ubiquitous Internet access mean that we are ever closer to information and knowledge, and yet our ability to glean that knowledge, by reading uninterruptedly, has been irrevocably stymied."

"What’s important right now is our lack of concentration, our inability to be able to read, listen or write for more than 20 minutes."

I think it is sad how our culture has largely forgotten the culture of reading. Now there is so much on the internet that people forget to unconnected. It is rare to see someone checking out a book at the BYU library. We are so used to being able to get information in mere seconds that we no longer have the patience to search though a book, much less read one from cover to cover. 

Here is the link where the quotes came from. 

http://publishingperspectives.com/2013/09/technology-has-ruined-readers-attention-span-says-argentine-hernan-casciari/

Online communities: The new block parties

"Net members are distinctive in providing information, support, companionship, and a sense of belonging to persons they hardly know offline or who are total strangers."

When I first read this article, I immediately thought of LDS Missionary Moms. I was talking to a mom this weekend who has a son on a mission in Costa Rica. She told me how there is this site that allows you to join the email group with the other moms who have sons in your same mission. It allows the moms to better know what is going on and have some support. While they have never met and will never met, they can chat with the other moms. Hey can help each other while they are missing their sons and gives them a community that understands what they are going through. 

"Repayment of support and social resources might be as exchanges of the same kind of aid, reciprocating in another way, or helping out a mutual friend in the network."

This quote made me think of when I became friends with a girl by the name of Carlie Bond. She was the roommate of my best friend who was currently going to college at BYU-I while I was at BYU. We became friends because we always commented and liked each others posts on our mutual friend Whitney's page. 

Eventually we talked enough and I finally visited her and she asked me to be one of her bridesmaids even though we had only met in real life twice. However, I knew her very well because of all of our internet interactions. "Net users usually trust strangers much like people gave rides to hitchhikers in the flower child days of the 1960s."  

The nature of literature

1.) Literature as the 'foregrounding' of language:

Shakespeare's Writing. 

I always remember in high school that we couldn't read Shakespeare without first talking about the way that he wrote and how he not only rhymed what he wrote but also with iambic pentameter. 

2.) Literature as the Integration of Language:

She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore.
The shells she sells are sea-shells, I'm sure.
For if she sells sea-shells on the sea-shore
Then I'm sure she sells sea-shore shells.

This tongue twister calls attention to itself and is very hard to say. 

3.) Literature as Fiction:

Harry Potter

The Harry Potter books are fictional and the events and story all happen in a make believe world. Many people who read these books try and interpret them different ways. Each person takes something different and views the book in their own individual way.

4.) Literature as Aesthetic Object:

Les Miserables
The broadway play and movie are incredible. It was so powerful that it brought me to tears (something that rarely if ever happens). While I have never read the book, I am sure it is even better than the play and movie. 

5.) Literature as Intertextual or Self-reflexive Construct:
Wicked

This broadway play was only made possible by the previous story of The Wizard of Oz. Wicked plays off of the story line and is the story behind The Wizard of Oz. It gives the audience a new perspective on who all of the characters are and what their previous lives were like before Dorothy was introduced to them. 

"Networking knows no boundaries"

One of the things that I have found to be really cool is how easy it is to communicate with people in other parts of then world. When I was a kid, I remember not having long-distance calling on our home phone plan. Whenever we called Grandma, we had buy a long distance card and then use that to call.

However, with the invention of cell phones, the internet, Skype, iMessage, etc. we are more connected than ever. My parents are able to not only talk to me, but they can also see me while they do so for free even though they live in Minnesota. I think it is incredible how easily we can communicate with anyone in the world. Vontage even offers unlimited international calling for $9.99 a month, something unheard of just a couple of years ago.

With this ease of communication throughout the world it has expanded everything we can do on a global scale. So many businesses outsource their work as it is cheaper and the option to easily communicate is now available. People can meet and date on a global scale. Families that live thousands of miles away can easily share all of their moments with each other. Recruiters can find someone that fills their requirements from any part of the world. I think it is incredible to look at how far our technology has come and what it can do for us.