eBay Live! 2006 in Las Vegas on June 13-15

[maggie777]

Alibaba set up shop inside a restaurant at the Mandalay Bay resort, where the eBay convention was held, and offered free lunch to eBay sellers who stopped by to learn about Alibaba's products.

Several eBay employees entered the restaurant and tried to persuade the manager to kick out the Alibaba team, offering to pay the restaurant more than Alibaba, according to Alibaba employees and a bystander who witnessed the conversation

Idiots.  Alibaba.com is a good wholesale resource for finding products to sell on eBay.

[mandy]

Auctionbytes has pictures from eBay Live. http://auctionbytes.com/ebaylive2006/gallery.html

[rejoicemusic]

Just got back home last night from Vegas and eBay Live ...... I dunno, I don't have anything to compare it to, since this was the first one I attended, but I would hardly have called it a Koolaid Fest. 

I really didn't see hoardes of happy people proclaiming the glories of eBay, but then again we didn't go to the Keynote Speech on Tuesday.  We did hang around for a while, as the place was filling in and listened to someone warm up the crowd with comments like "WOW .... isn't Vegas GREAT?" and "How about those casinos, huh?"  I did hear people the next day commenting about Davy Jones and his concert, but few people mentioned Meg and Bill's speeches, other than some people in the PS lounge who said that Bill got booed re: stores inventory in search NOT coming back, and how he then tried to tap-dance around that. 

Many of the classes were way too basic.  For example, I attended a stores marketing class, in a packed room.  Darlene and Carole/Nalani led it, and talked about some VERY basic features to market your store, i.e. using newsletters, etc.  They asked for a show of hands on how people knew a bit of HTML - there were perhaps 20 in the room of 300.  How many used newsletters?  Perhaps 15 hands. 

At a computer lab on the Stores traffic reporting features - which really did have an interesting overview of what the Stores Report Plus can do - it seemed like most people had only opened stores in the last few months.  The people around me were discussing things like how to name their store, should they change their ID to match their store name, etc., and left about half-way through the lab. 

At a PS panel discussion, there were four PSers who each had some HUGE amount of listings on eBay - like 250,000 at any given time, or $30 million in sales (on multiple channels).  The first question from the floor in this Q&A session was WHY doesn't eBay have a similar discussion with small or medium-sized PSers rather than the mega-sellers? 

[rejoicemusic]

On the first day I attended a PS orientation seminar - big ballroom, very full.  After a powerpoint presentation from eBay, there was a Q&A session.  Just about every question from the floor was answered like "Well, that's a great question, but I think you really need to talk to Trust & Safety about this" or "Hhmmppphh, we understand your concerns, but I think you really need to talk to [another person] about this."

One of the PS, after getting this sort of response, said "sounds like the usual answer you get from eBay customer service" [I'm paraphrasing] and many in the room laughed. 

The question was asked about Express messing up sales, and by golly, eBay hasn't been able to find anything that verifies this, and in fact, a lot of sellers are reporting GREAT sales all around due to Express.  This met with a lot of derision from the crowd.

My impression from that PS seminar would have been that a lot of people were already hearing the same cut/paste responses from eBay that they were already getting, and were NOT pleased.  And this seminar was held first thing on Tuesday morning ....

[rejoicemusic]

..... boy, I am rambling here ...... but then again I did attend a few seminars that were actually VERY interesting.  There was one on guerilla marketing that was OUTSTANDING.  I spoke with eBay staff in some of the areas who were actually very impressive, and some of the vendor products were really well-presented, and I signed up for a few free trial offers.

Several people mentioned that this convention was not as good as prior ones.

[maggie777]

They asked for a show of hands on how people knew a bit of HTML - there were perhaps 20 in the room of 300.  How many used newsletters?  Perhaps 15 hands.

Inexperienced sellers are the only thing keeping eBay alive and 'vibrant'. 

[landofsmiles]

Sounds like quite a different crowd than when I attached Ebay Live #1. People were pretty enthusiastic back then. Especially when Meg said that they would be rolling out affordable health insurance. I do remember the lunch buffet, though. There was a long table with all kinds of food, but they had everyone start at both ends of the table to fill their plates. When hundreds of people started to meet in the middle, it was pandemonium.

[amy]

Many of the classes were way too basic.  For example, I attended a stores marketing class, in a packed room.  Darlene and Carole/Nalani led it

Darlene reminds me of many eBay buyers--you know, the ones who are unable to read item descriptions.  The majority of her "pink" posts that I've seen rarely address the original question that was asked--which I guess is to be expected since that's how eBay's customer service has always operated:
Seller Question: My listings aren't showing up in MyEbay.
eBay CS Answer:  You can turn on promotion boxes in the store management console. 

[amy]

Sounds like quite a different crowd than when I attached Ebay Live #1. People were pretty enthusiastic back then.

The news stories this week commented on the relative lack of enthusiasm this year as compared to past eBay Lives.

[bargainbloodhound]

There was a long table with all kinds of food, but they had everyone start at both ends of the table to fill their plates. When hundreds of people started to meet in the middle, it was pandemonium.