XDC 2022 Video Cost

I have to say I’m very disappointed at the cost of the XDC videos. Honestly I’m just sad that they are behind a paywall in the first place. $199 is an extraordinary amount of money for most “citizen developers”, especially given the cost of living crisis at the moment.

I’m only interested in two of the talks (no offence to the other presenters - the other topics just have no relevance to me). If you’re going to insist on charging for them, please consider selling them individually at least. It’s also a bit cheeky since I can’t imagine that Xojo Inc is remunerating the presenters for their talks.

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Well, there must be an incentive to join the events. So if you want them now, you can pay for them.

But I would expect the videos will not stay forever behind a paywall. Past conference videos were first sold, then later given away as bonus to sales and later for free to everyone.

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Presenters get no payment as such, but a discount on the conference fee.

I would have thought the incentive to go to the events was (a) to network, (b) get information from the engineers directly and (c) get the presentation information earlier.

By charging for the videos you just reduce their impact.

I for one am interested in how Xojo is built and how the framework is worked on. I’m interested enough to watch the videos but not pay $199 for two hours.

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I agree with Garry - I was expecting maybe £40-£50 but was a little shocked at the price.

Maybe offer them individually for purchase like Garry suggested - I only want a couple of them really.

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The videos are very informative, but the incentive to go to an XDC is not becoming better by charging for videos, they it brings the idea xojo providing information for a high price.
Also the impact (very important aspect) of the video’s is being reduced as @GarryPettet just posted.
My believe is free video’s do much greater impact then priced, but i’m not the owner of the content…

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there was already some askings some years ago to get the video individually, at a lower price
it was never accepted, like this year problably not also.

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Xojo always sells the videos after the event, people are always disappointed because either they want the videos for free or because only want to buy a couple of sessions.

A search for “XDC videos” on the forum can give you an idea of the process they usually follow (at least from 2018), Full price videos first, then a discount, then included in other purchases, and finally posted on YouTube:

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We already discussed that in the past, the answer is continuously “no”.

So the outcome is useless. When it’s expensive, people pass; when it’s free , it’s outdated, not interesting anymore or enough, and people will just ignore it. A Lose-Lose situation.

As I’m already used to the system, I just ignore it since day 1. :smiley:

It’s the old MP3 vs CD situation.

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D) Generate content to promote the product and distribute it in every way possible as most other tools do… But with the content behind a pay wall, no wonder why there is no talk about xojo outside the forum

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I know no other company which sells conference recordings. Apart from making money, I see no logical reason to do this, but like 10 reasons to don’t.

Xojo really doesn’t do a great job when it come to marketing, community care and cross-education. You should be happy when someone is as into your product to watch these videos, instead of squeezing every penny out of every user.

my 2 cents.

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I agree. I just don’t see Xojo generating any meaningful revenue from selling such niche videos whereas releasing them to the community would actually make a big positive difference to a lot of their users.

It’s left a real sour taste in my mouth.

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Definitly. I think releasing the videos for free would be much more benificial than selling it.

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Yes definitly, have a look at the youtube channel of Embarcadero, which concerns an, according to Xojo, “dead” language. They release a lot of video material, and that “dead” language has 38k subscribers, versus xojo’s 7k. It’s comparable because they are niche languages both of them.

Says it all I believe. Xojo needs to rethink their marketing strategy regarding this.

My 2c

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Embarcadero have 500 employees (according to wikipedia) and they are @ Austin…

Yes, all the more reason for Xojo to learn something…

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Embarcadero is part of a bigger software group with many products, Idera Inc. I think that ~500 people is inflated with Idera numbers, not Embarcadero’s.

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true, the RAD Studio department is not that big I beleieve. Anyway that was not really my point though…

:+1:t2:

In my case, I’ve been using Xojo for a number of years, and have a current MBS Plugins subscription. I only use a couple of the MBS plugins, as I have not found any information on benefits of some of the other MBS classes vs Xojo’s built in classes. I was waiting to watch Christian’s presentation (‘Using MBS to Extend Xojo’) hoping for some better insight. IMHO, charging another $200 for information that should be available to current users, subscribers, or potential customers, is disappointing.

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