Open Access Online Conferences
ONCON Inc., short for Online Conferencing, is an open access online conference service provider designed specifically for the Open Access (OA) academic journal market. As scholarly journals work to update their business models in a publishing market that has transitioned to digital and online, ONCON Inc. will work with OA journals (both in the scholarly and popular periodical markets) and institutional repositories to design and deliver open access online conferences as a forum for journals to showcase published researchers, build awareness of their product/service offering. As a business to business offering, ONCON Inc. provides journals and institutional repositories a way to connect with 21C knowledge consumers. Supplementing text reliant resources with scholarly presentations via synchronous video classroom technologies provide an engaging way to disseminate knowledge. |
The Business Problem
The traditional knowledge management structures of peer-reviewed journals are struggling to find relevancy in the participatory culture of the Internet. More academics driven by the need to disseminate knowledge can bypass traditional publishing mechanisms by connecting to stakeholders via social media, blogs and self-published uploads to open access repositories. Publicly funded research is also directing grant recipients to make their findings publicly available without barriers to access. How does academic publishing find a new niche to get back to its values of disseminating high quality research for social good?
Academic institutions, libraries, public and private funders continue to experience budget crunches as the costs for maintaining infrastructure increases. Traditionally academic conferences are spaces where researchers can network and exchange ideas; however, these international meetings are expensive, not to mention exhaustive, with unproductive travel time and separation from family responsibilities. How can researchers continue to build professional networks sustainably?
The traditional knowledge management structures of peer-reviewed journals are struggling to find relevancy in the participatory culture of the Internet. More academics driven by the need to disseminate knowledge can bypass traditional publishing mechanisms by connecting to stakeholders via social media, blogs and self-published uploads to open access repositories. Publicly funded research is also directing grant recipients to make their findings publicly available without barriers to access. How does academic publishing find a new niche to get back to its values of disseminating high quality research for social good?
Academic institutions, libraries, public and private funders continue to experience budget crunches as the costs for maintaining infrastructure increases. Traditionally academic conferences are spaces where researchers can network and exchange ideas; however, these international meetings are expensive, not to mention exhaustive, with unproductive travel time and separation from family responsibilities. How can researchers continue to build professional networks sustainably?
ONCON Inc. Solution
ONCON Inc. provides interactive technology and conference event management services to answer the pressure traditional academic publishers are facing to diversify and modernize its service. ONCON Inc. will work with publishers who have expertise in the process of stewarding research through a peer-reviewed process. Academic journals also have ready made networks of academics who can be invited to present. Further, publishers already have a community of subscribers or followers. Publishers have an infrastructure and human resources that used to coordinate with ONCON Inc. ONCON Inc. ultimately provides researchers an online space to generate energy around their projects and to connect with peers around the world. Professionally, academics are busy with research, mentorship, writing, teaching and traveling to conferences to disseminate their findings. ONCON Inc., can bring the conference to researchers, to save on time (better spent on work and family) and save on the dwindling travel budgets. |
How it Works
Let's say you are the editor of The Best OA Journal. You want to host a conference for your audience. Yet doing something F2F is a bit expensive and would exclude many of your participants. You want to do something online, could a full conference take place online? Yes! ONCON Inc. will be your online venue and event planner for your online conference. As an Open Innovator, we share Open principles. We want to work with you to take care of your call for proposals, work with your review team, scheduling, training of presenters and moderators (or we can moderate and amplify for you). During the conference participants click on the room and can text chat with fellow participants, view slides & share screens. ONCON Inc. will provide you with a conference quote. Conference fees will differ dependant on number of participants, presenters and types of services required (i.e. training, moderation). Let's keep it simple. ONCON Inc. is your one stop shop for the event. No hotels to book, no menus to consider, no travel arrangements to make. |
Wait, you want to capture the je ne sais quoi of F2F conferences beyond the presentation rooms? We have ideas for social media back channel chats. We can create unconference rooms. Something different? How about joining up at a local watering hole in a Virtual Reality platform. Karaoke anyone ;)
Contact ONCON Inc. to brainstorm ideas for your conference! |
Phases of Start Up
Template Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infographic and made using https://piktochart.com/
Reference: Image based on "Startup Development Process" by Start Up Commons (CC-BY-SA) Retrieved http://www.startupcommons.org/startup-development-phases.html
Reference: Image based on "Startup Development Process" by Start Up Commons (CC-BY-SA) Retrieved http://www.startupcommons.org/startup-development-phases.html
ONCON Inc. is currently between the conception and commitment stage of the company start up. The start up team is still in it’s volunteering stage as the founder, Briar Jamieson, seeks investment money for software development and part-time salaries.
The founder will work with the software developer to define specifications and architecture; special attention will be focused on modular development to allow for growth in functionality, security and backups and database built for analytics. Operations oversees conference management that includes planning, scheduling, training and delivery. Business development will be the responsibility of Marketing who will build partnerships with clients and develop a wider sales & marketing strategy; this will include: advertising revenue, consulting with clients.
The founder will work with the software developer to define specifications and architecture; special attention will be focused on modular development to allow for growth in functionality, security and backups and database built for analytics. Operations oversees conference management that includes planning, scheduling, training and delivery. Business development will be the responsibility of Marketing who will build partnerships with clients and develop a wider sales & marketing strategy; this will include: advertising revenue, consulting with clients.
Marketing Strategy
ONCON Inc. is driven by a vision that a connected research community creates positive change in the world. As such, marketing will go beyond traditional service delivery in order to co-create client conferences clients.
ONCON’s marketing strategy would include building an OA journal database to market online conferences. According to the Directory of Open Access Journals online database, there are currently 9156 OA journals; the InCites Journal Citation Report managed by Thomson Reuters list 1253 OA journals. ONCON Inc will measure the online traffic, to inform marketing channels and build a prospect database.
Revenue streams include:
ONCON Inc. is driven by a vision that a connected research community creates positive change in the world. As such, marketing will go beyond traditional service delivery in order to co-create client conferences clients.
ONCON’s marketing strategy would include building an OA journal database to market online conferences. According to the Directory of Open Access Journals online database, there are currently 9156 OA journals; the InCites Journal Citation Report managed by Thomson Reuters list 1253 OA journals. ONCON Inc will measure the online traffic, to inform marketing channels and build a prospect database.
Revenue streams include:
- Conference management fees (including: event planning, scheduling, registration, training of presenters, day of support)
- Hosted archive of conference presentations
- Advertising sales
- Consulting for potential clients beyond current target of OA journals.
Investment Opportunity
ONCON Inc. is currently self (and family) financed. As a B2B service company there will not require a significant investment in fixed assets as staff can work remotely. The core of the business will be invested in the development of the web application needed to deliver synchronous and concurrent online rooms. ONCON is asking specifically for an investment of $525,000, to be distributed over two years:
Return on investment to be paid between Year 2 and Year 3, 1% of startup funding or $52,500. |
Business Model, Open Innovation
CC-BY-SA
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e-Conference Dream Team
Our team is inspired by the people in our personal learning networks. We believe online conferences provides a sustainable opportunity for academic OA journals to modernize their approach and subsequently connect researchers with a broader global network. We are passionate educators who want to open access to knowledge.
Briar, Natalia and Iwona are the e-Conference Dream Team. They have successfully worked together on other educational technology projects for over six years. Together they have delivered online conferences, webinars, presentations and synchronous classrooms.
Our team is inspired by the people in our personal learning networks. We believe online conferences provides a sustainable opportunity for academic OA journals to modernize their approach and subsequently connect researchers with a broader global network. We are passionate educators who want to open access to knowledge.
Briar, Natalia and Iwona are the e-Conference Dream Team. They have successfully worked together on other educational technology projects for over six years. Together they have delivered online conferences, webinars, presentations and synchronous classrooms.
Briar, Founder & President
Prior to the launch of ONCON Inc. Briar visioned and executed the first online conference for ESL professionals across Canada. The conference was held in 2014 & 2015, and grew into a two day event bringing together keynote speakers, language & teaching experts with over 800 registered participants. Briar is an e-learning specialist and is skilled at leading project teams through their digital learning initiatives. She has expertise in managing multiple stakeholders through the design process, technology decisions, and implementation of learning events. Briar has a Bachelor in Education from O.I.S.E. and is currently a graduate student in U.B.C’s respected Master’s in Educational Technology. She is a smart and enthusiastic leader who is committed to supporting the learning needs of every participant. |
Natalia, Chief Operating Officer
Natalia finds teaching very rewarding, no matter who she works with - kids, youth or adults. Her interests and passions have evolved over the years, one leading to another. Her passion for teaching and technology turned into online teaching, which led to a passion for teacher training and professional development. Passion for professional development led to a passion for online communities of practice and social networking. In 2013-2015, Natalia organized and coordinated REALIZE! - the first National Online Forum for ESL/EAL practitioners in Canada. Natalia previously taught EFL and ESP for over a decade in Latvia, where she graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Pedagogy (specialization in TESL/TEFL) from Riga Teacher Training and Educational Management Academy and a Master’s Degree in Pedagogy from Daugavpils University. |
Iwona, Chief Marketing Officer
Iwona has been immersed in e-learning and digital education for over 15 years, across several continents. Under her leadership English Online’s Summer EAL MOOC received a British Council ELTON nomination in 2014. Iwona is an learning designer who is working in Higher Education. She contributes her expertise id learning technology and language instruction in the development of language MOOCs for English and Polish learners. She is a student of a Master’s in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh, UK. |
Risks and Challenges
There is a spectrum of OA models, from gold standard access (mainstream publishers) to green access (individual researcher uploads). Each OA journal has different funding model from obtaining fees from researchers or their institutions, public funders, and foundations. As OA publishers work to reducing barriers of access to research, they need to find ways to generate revenue to continue to provide high quality peer-reviewed publications. Unfortunately, the primary target market of conferences are academics, researchers, librarians, all stakeholders who continue to experience budget crunches as the cost of maintaining higher education infrastructure increases. While online conferences would be considerably less expensive to attend than international conferences it is unknown if payment for an online venue would be seen as equivalent to a face-to-face conference. ONCON Inc. will need to do market surveys to understand audience perceptions.
Another risk is that ubiquitous nature of Internet Communications technologies. Many institutions and research groups are already providing regular webinars or broadcasts of lectures. A service like ONCON Inc. may be seen as unnecessary to the current online events held by researchers. ONCON Inc.’s model would need to make a case for publishers and researchers that an online conference will generate more interest and reach more cross-disciplinary researchers. From experience people schedule attendance for full day event, when one-off webinars typically have low viewer turn out.
Finally a risk that ONCON Inc. undertakes is the development of its own synchronous classroom, leveraging current open source technology. There are many third party classrooms (i.e. Adobe Connect, Wiziq, Zoom) that are available and that are already commonly used in online learning communities. Publishers could plan their own online conference and use these tools. It will be important for ONCON Inc. to present value proposition of having a full service conference planner and online venue together.
There is a spectrum of OA models, from gold standard access (mainstream publishers) to green access (individual researcher uploads). Each OA journal has different funding model from obtaining fees from researchers or their institutions, public funders, and foundations. As OA publishers work to reducing barriers of access to research, they need to find ways to generate revenue to continue to provide high quality peer-reviewed publications. Unfortunately, the primary target market of conferences are academics, researchers, librarians, all stakeholders who continue to experience budget crunches as the cost of maintaining higher education infrastructure increases. While online conferences would be considerably less expensive to attend than international conferences it is unknown if payment for an online venue would be seen as equivalent to a face-to-face conference. ONCON Inc. will need to do market surveys to understand audience perceptions.
Another risk is that ubiquitous nature of Internet Communications technologies. Many institutions and research groups are already providing regular webinars or broadcasts of lectures. A service like ONCON Inc. may be seen as unnecessary to the current online events held by researchers. ONCON Inc.’s model would need to make a case for publishers and researchers that an online conference will generate more interest and reach more cross-disciplinary researchers. From experience people schedule attendance for full day event, when one-off webinars typically have low viewer turn out.
Finally a risk that ONCON Inc. undertakes is the development of its own synchronous classroom, leveraging current open source technology. There are many third party classrooms (i.e. Adobe Connect, Wiziq, Zoom) that are available and that are already commonly used in online learning communities. Publishers could plan their own online conference and use these tools. It will be important for ONCON Inc. to present value proposition of having a full service conference planner and online venue together.
Summary
Our Vision |
Our Everyday |
Our Ask |
We believe a connected and engaged research community creates positive change in the world.
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ONCON Inc. is a start-up B2B online conference service. We provide the online space (technology infrastructure) and conference management service (event planning and execution) for OA journals and institutional repositories.
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Let’s improve the world together. We are seeking startup investment of $525,000 over two years with a ROI of 1% paid out in Yr3.
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ONCON Inc. is the brainchild of Briar Jamieson. This business idea brings together Briar’s expertise in delivering online learning, her passion for knowledge and her belief that Open Access is a responsibly and has the power to engage a broad community to actively create positive change in the world. As an Open Innovator, Briar welcomes community input and critique for the refinement of the business idea. Investors interested in this opportunity are welcome to contact Briar directly.
* Important: This iteration of Briar's business concept has been flushed out as an exercise for a UBC Master's in Educational Technology course, Ventures in Learning Technologies.
* Important: This iteration of Briar's business concept has been flushed out as an exercise for a UBC Master's in Educational Technology course, Ventures in Learning Technologies.
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