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confab.yahoo is Yahoo! TechDev's new open microconference series. Join academic and industry experts from across the valley and the country as we discuss the latest technologies and their applications and see for yourself what's next on the web. Attendance is free and open to the public. Food and drinks provided. We'll also have a limited number of free copies of "The Wisdom of Crowds."

"Prediction Markets: Tapping the Wisdom of Crowds"
Wed Dec 13, 5:30-8:00pm
Yahoo! Headquarters, Building C, Classrooms 4+5
Webcast 100k http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1531954&segment=180308
Webcast 300k http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1531955&segment=180308

Join us for a public “how to” session on prediction markets** moderated by James Surowiecki, New Yorker columnist and best-selling author of The Wisdom of Crowds. Speakers from Google, HP, Microsoft, and Yahoo! will describe how they are using prediction markets to aid corporate forecasting and decision making. Other speakers include the developer of Zocalo, an open source prediction market platform; the co-founder of InklingMarkets.com, a Paul Graham yCombinator startup, Eric Zitzewitz, professor of economics at Stanford Business School, and Robin Hanson, the visionary economist and inventor whose pioneering work paved the way. The event is open to the public and will emphasize practical lessons and hands-on advice. After brief presentations from each speaker, Surowiecki will open up the session for discussion with the audience.

** A prediction market is like a stock market for ideas or information. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market
The market rewards good information whether it comes from elites or the masses. Prediction markets have built a track record of besting pundits and pollsters when it comes to predicting everything from political elections to quarterly sales figures.

Official Website: http://confab.yahoo.com/

Added by cplasser on November 28, 2006

Comments

jheuristic

Hi --

Great event! See you all there. Note there is an open, non-commercial prediction markets consortium and google discussion group. See:

http://www.pmcluster.com/

and

http://groups.google.com/group/Prediction-Markets

Cheers,

-jheuristic a.k.a.Il Pagliaccio da SF

arikjohnson

Unfortunately I can't be there myself but we're sending emissaries - I blogged one of the PM events in Chicago last June that featured a few of the speakers:

http://recong2.com/journal/arik_johnson/chicago_prediction_markets_summit_june_2006

- Arik

hober

Sounds awesome. Robin Hanson rules.

ChristinePeterson

A room called "Classroom 5" doesn't sound big enough if word gets around about this meeting. Does my having signed up here mean that I will definitely get in?

Kudos to Yahoo for hosting this event.

--Christine

acloudman

i'm expecting this will be recorded and put up on yahoo video / jumpcut / something?

cplasser

Classroom 5 is fairly big. It's the largest room we have on campus. It might get crowded, but I think we'll be fine. Showing up early certainly helps.

And yes, we'll put this up on Yahoo! Video afterwards

dawntv

I see the link to the webcast, but it is safe to assume this is not set up for web conference (e.g. taking questions from web audience)?

cplasser

Right, no questions from the webcast audience - this is just for watching the action. We don't want to complicate things too much.

KPeff

Nothing happens when I click the links to watch either webcast. I had to threadjack - but help. I have Winamp 5.32 installed.

Randy Farmer

Standing Room Only

KPeff

Right, so my computer is eccentric. For anyone experiencing the same problem, I opened one of the webcast URLs with Windows Media Player, and that worked.

gops

how do I subscribe to the confab.yahoo.com events so that I can attend the future events?

is there any yahoogroup on prediction markets?