

DBX - goronbjorn
https://www.dropbox.com/dbx

======
untog
Dropbox are in an interesting position- they're practically a "cloud utility".
Like if ConEd invited me to "discover the possibilities when you use
electricity", I don't really know what I'd get out of a Dropbox conference. It
does file syncing. They have an API that allows you to sync files. Right.
Either the topics would be so specific that they'd all repeat each other, or
they'd be so broad that they would only tangentially touch on what Dropbox
does.

That said, there isn't an agenda so i can't find out.

~~~
samstave
Sounds like someone was hired in the PR/Marketing team and this was the result
of their effort.

 __ _"Dropbox has how many users? Wow! We should have a conference! imagine if
we just get 1% of the users at the conference! Imagine if we charge those
attendees $350! WOW - I am a marketing GENIUS!"_ __

~~~
untog
Well, Dropbox bought Mailbox, which hints that they are keen to 'consumerize'
at least some of their business. Which I'm wary about- like when my cellphone
provider makes an app to view my bill, the results are invariably awful.
There's a lot to be said for focusing on your core competency, but I can
understand the desire to not be another "dumb pipe".

~~~
chii
being the best dumb pipe is better than being a mediocre value adder imho.

~~~
randall
IE Google Fiber, and all the excitement that's generating.

~~~
untog
Google aren't just a dumb pipe provider, though. They've gone from utility to
consumer and back to utility again.

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ruswick
I don't like the copy or the lack of content on the site.

The phrase "request an invitation" seems self-aggrandizing and conceited, as
if one is supposed to beg for the elite privilege of being "invited" to give
them $400. It's purchasing a ticket to a conference, not applying for an
American Express Black Card. Their diction shouldn't pretent otherwise.

As for getting people to "apply" for this $400 ticket, they appear to have
nothing in the way of information or any hints as to what will occur at this
event. It just seems odd that they expect people to "apply" for tickets
without any knowledge of the actual conference.

~~~
atacrawl
_The phrase "request an invitation" seems self-aggrandizing and conceited_

To me, it's a classic example of using social proof to create the idea that
this event is sought after and valuable. See "if the line is busy, call again
later" instead of "operators are standing by."

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timdorr
$350? I'd like to at least get a peek at what's going to go on that day before
sinking that kind of money into this.

~~~
jonknee
Your time should be a lot more valuable than that, so even if it was free you
should evaluate what Dropbox is worth to you. If your work depends on Dropbox
in some manner, it will most likely prove worthwhile.

~~~
ruswick
" _Your time should be a lot more valuable than that, so even if it was free
you should evaluate what Dropbox is worth to you._ "

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you stating that the price of the
conference is irrelevant and that one should only consider the time
investment. If so, I disagree. Although $350 might be negligible to some, it
is not to most people. The price of the ticket is probably going to be cost-
prohibitive to most, and certainly elevates the decision of purchasing one out
of the realm of triviality. To most people $350 is a major expense that
requires thought, and to many, it's an expense that might prove prohibitive.

To the overwhelming majority of people, money and not time is limiting factor
in their lives.

~~~
StavrosK
He's saying that, if you're reading HN, your day rate is probably much higher
than $350. Hence, the conference might not be worth the price even if it were
free.

~~~
jbooth
Yeah, but I still do my own yardwork no matter what my day rate is. Some
things about money you do based on principle, like not shelling out $350
without knowing what you're buying -- Warren Buffett wouldn't do that, why
should I?

~~~
na85
I think you're both saying that $350 is too expensive.

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itafroma
Here's the blog post about it: [https://blog.dropbox.com/2013/05/introducing-
dbx-dropboxs-fi...](https://blog.dropbox.com/2013/05/introducing-dbx-dropboxs-
first-developer-conference/)

It's also rather sparse on details, but the line about being the first to see
Dropbox's new products as the most important thing seems to indicate an
intention to use the conference as an announcement platform.

Edit: TechCrunch is also reporting[1] that you'll be able to interact with the
Dropbox API team:

> Dropbox tells me the three focuses of the one-day conference will be
> learning about newly launched features on its platform, giving developers a
> chance to meet and get help from Dropbox API engineers and designers, and
> highlighting what third-parties have built on top of Dropbox so far.

[1]: <http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/06/dropbox-conference/>

~~~
stmchn
Meh, doesn't seem worth paying $350 just find out about new Dropbox products
when it'll probably be on Hacker News the same day they make the announcement
anyway. :)

------
minimaxir
"People create more than a billion memories, thoughts, and moments in Dropbox
every day."

Interesting copy. If you replaced "Dropbox" in that sentence with Facebook, it
would work just as well.

Maybe that's Dropbox's endgame? An emphasis on "moments" rather than "files"?

~~~
meritt
I'm curious about the accuracy of the statement. That implication is people
_intentionally_ upload/share over a billion files every day?

Given that dropbox is more of a sync service, I'm curious if that number more
accurately reflects the number of files shared total or perhaps the number of
sync events that occurred?

If people are actually uploading & sharing >1B files every day, Dropbox is
immensely bigger than I had thought. Instagram, for example, sees 40M photo
uploads per day.

~~~
Aaronneyer
That doesn't seem unreasonable at all. There are plenty of power users like
myself who do pretty much everything in Dropbox, and there are also plenty of
tiny little files created every day that can count towards that.

For example, deep down in my Dropbox I have a Code directory, which has plenty
of other folders for most of the personal projects I work on. If I create a
rails project, that puts in a bunch of basic files which can easily count for
100. I initialize a git repository on there and that can generate a few
hundred more files. All of those add up quickly.

Here's the results of a few commands showcasing the size of my personal
dropbox, and I'm sure there are other power users who are similar to me.

ls -aR Dropbox | wc -l

74397

du -sh Dropbox

32G (Just to note, .dropbox.cache accounts for 10G)

~~~
meritt
Right, so it's the latter -- People are using dropbox as an automated rsync.
Which is fine.

It's just fundamentally different than people sharing over a _billion_
memories and moments each day, I'd argue their tagline is very misleading.

~~~
codys
Their tagline does say "create" rather than "share".

------
Jemaclus
Why should I fork over $350? Because you're Dropbox? C'mon. Gimme some idea of
why I should bother going...

~~~
homosaur
Do you need a keychain maybe? Perhaps a plastic cup that is cheaply
screenprinted?

~~~
walls
Anything in that vein would certainly help more than just: "Come spend $400
watching something you can read online ten minutes after it happens"

~~~
rschmitty
Much like any conference.

However most conferences are good for networking, not sure about a very
specialized dropbox one however...

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_sentient
Amazing UX design. These Dropbox designers have really stepped up their game.
Try resizing the browser window or submitting a blank form. It's the little
things that matter.

~~~
swah
The font is kinda awful here on Chrome/Win7.

~~~
senorerik
That's a general problem with chrome on windows rendering sites with custom
fonts. It doesn't have directwrite, unlike Firefox and IE.

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josephers
Clicking on the boats on this page makes them sink.

~~~
purephase
Odd analogy to tie-in to your event registration page. Sinking ships?

~~~
pyre
"Play in our sea and we can sink you"

~~~
mcintyre1994
Bit early to become Twitter? :)

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huhtenberg
Clearly the conference is organized by ignorant younglings.

DBX is Dolby X - a Dolby noise reduction system for audio recordings, from the
late 70s and onward. We had a separate box in my dad's audio stack that
essentially had just one push button on a panel. That button was called DBX
and it caused an audio signal to get mangled if it was recorded and de-mangled
when it was played back. Good old analog times :)

~~~
xrt
dbx is a company and a noise reduction format. It competed w/ Dolby.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dbx_(noise_reduction)>

~~~
huhtenberg
A-a-and you are correct.

------
jluxenberg
Am I the only one who thought DBX was Dropbox's new ticker symbol? :)

~~~
samstave
They don't even own DBX.com... which is the trend these days. They should be
trying to get it with all their money.

------
lopatin
I agree with a lot of the commenters here. If your website doesn't explain the
conference clearly then there's no predicting the crowd that will be in
attendance. People are basically gambling on the fact that this will be worth
their time.

------
jl6
If that's 1 billion new objects created every day, then I believe that puts
them somewhere in AWS's top 1 customer.

~~~
pestaa
Not necessarily if you take data deduplication into account. (You don't upload
files they recognize the fingerprints for.)

------
benatkin
I thought they were announcing their IPO and a ticker symbol in a dramatic
way. I was disappointed that it's just a conf.

DBX looks to be available as a ticker symbol and I hope it will make a good
ticker symbol for them someday.

------
dubcanada
If you open up the "join us" modal and then click outside the modal, you get a
orange box that says join us and requires you refresh the page to get back to
where you were.

~~~
tjtrapp
Not true. I'm visiting with Chrome 26.0.1410.65 and clicking outside the box
does close it.

However, clicking on 'request an invitation' without completing the form does
make it do a nice little dance :)

------
csomar
You can't tell if $350 is expensive or not if you have no idea of what you are
getting for it. I wouldn't go to the conference even if it was free and 2
meters from home.

I need a basic idea of what's going on there, and the main advantages.
Usually, I go to a conference to listen a little, and socialize as much as I
can. Different kind of conferences, different people. I discover other people
who have other crafts.

Well, maybe it's just me.

------
nhangen
Seems expensive for a single day event that will likely require travel, unless
of course it's targeted at SF devs.

Great design though!

------
timjahn
Here I was thinking this was their stock symbol and they'd gone public all of
a sudden.

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mangoBoy
Why do people have to pay to attend these conferences? What is dropbox, or any
company for that matter, going to give away or share that is so much more
valuable than the price of the tickets?

~~~
grinich
It's less about the money and more about filtering for people who are serious
about attending.

Just like WWDC or F8, I'm guessing you'll get to speak with engineers and
designers at Dropbox to get a sense of where the platform is going. If you're
building products on top of Dropbox, this is invaluable.

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badclient
Is DBX going to be dropbox' stock symbol?

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enest
The design of the page is actually not that bad. We like it :)

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debugger
I prefer adb.

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reaclmbs
$350 is a filter not the basis for a "profit center".

~~~
13rules
If I could upvote this more than once I would.

It limits the number of people who are going to show up and ensures that there
is some level of interest by all in attendance. Even if 1000 people go to the
first conference, that is hardly a big money maker — $350,000 disappears
quickly with costs associated with hosting the conference.

They will make money, but it's hardly a boondoggle. The real benefit for
Dropbox is getting 500-1000+ developers all in the same location sharing
ideas, creating, giving them feedback, etc. A few days of a conference is
worth months of emails/tweets/HN/etc — in both directions.

Those complaining about the price probably don't have any business interest in
Dropbox and are unlikely to attend — which should suit everyone just fine.

------
lawnchair_larry
What a useless link title. Was it submitted that way, or did the overzealous
moderators get to it?

~~~
izad
I agree. It's like the opposite of a typical Reddit link title.

~~~
mortenjorck
Reddit headline:

<Superlative adjective> <Emotionally charged adjective> <Popular noun>
<Politically charged context>

HN headline:

<Single noun that is completely meaningless without context>

