Phew! Getting the first phase of Veer Marketplace off the ground has kept us busy - but let's take a quick moment to catch-up on our experience at the UGCX show a few weeks back.

February 9-10th a group of us from the Veer Marketplace Team traveled to San Jose to attend the UGCX conference and Expo. It was a great way to follow-up to the Veer Marketplace announcements the previous week, and a good opportunity to start connecting with our peers in the microstock and user-generated content world.

Our very own Aaron Booth – Director – Commercial Media Partners and Community Content – presented as part of two panel discussions in the Photography track. The first “Making Money with Other People’s Photos: Exploring UGC Business Models” on Day 1 also included Chad Bridwell from Fotolia, and John Griffin from Cutcaster. Aaron also was part of a panel discussion on the second day: “The Agency: Production Tactics from Rights Managed to Microstock” that included Christina Vaughn from Image Source, and Rick Becker-Leckrone from Blend Images.

Besides the great presentations (the keynote speakers were especially fantastic!) – we got some good feedback on the Veer Marketplace announcements.

We also got to meet some superstars of the microstock world: from top-selling shooters like Yuri Arcurs and Andres Rodriguez – to business leaders like Bruce Livingstone and Kelly Thompson of iStockphoto, to microstock community leaders like Lee Torrens (Microstock Diaries) and Tyler Olson (Microstock Group Forums). The mix also included folks like Rahul Pathak of LookStat - part of a growing cadre of talented indviduals and companies who are developing innovative third party tools for microstock contributors. And that's just a small handful of the great folks we got a chance to connect with.

We had a blast!

To see more shots of Aaron speaking at UGCX – take a look:

Brian's shots from UGCX

Big thanks to Lee Torrens (Microstock Diaries) and Patricia Vargas (JupiterImages) for working so diligently to organize the Photography track at UGCX. We’re looking forward to the next one!

Anything you’d like to hear about from our trip?

Any of you attend – if so – what did you think?