Thought-Provoking Commentary for the Lawson Software Community
Lawson has announced an interesting service offering, VUE ’09, targeted at those of you who weren’t able to make it to their recent CUE ‘09 conference in San Diego.
In addition to video content from Harry Debes and Dean Hager (presumably replays of their CUE keynotes), VUE offers virtual access to labs and sessions, interaction with Lawson experts (like Matt Allbee), and a virtual partner exhibit hall. Just like CUE. But no travel expenses. (And no parties!)
Interestingly, the price was $249 when it was originally announced; the price has since been reduced to $99.
This is certainly a good way for Lawson to push a lot of content out to users who didn’t go to CUE. Attendance this year was down sharply (as it has been for a number of vendor conferences). Virtual, web-delivered, content is easy for Lawson to package up, with virtually no incremental cost per additional user.
This is an intriguing idea, and I will be interested to see how well it is received by Lawson’s clients.
LawsonGuru.com Forums
LawsonGuru Blog 
for those folks that did go to CUE, the VUE is “complementary”. 🙂
I think is a great “additional” revenue for Lawson to get more money. At $249, companies will “think about it”. At $99, its “that all, go ahead”. Did those folks that paid $249 earlier get a refund like the early buyers of the iPhone?
At the end of the day, is the content that matters. The CUE presentations you can download, so the value is the interaction w/ the virtual lab / experts.
For $99 to get access to an expert, its worth the money.
Money well spend is good meets the More Time For Fun principle. Thumbs up!
VUE was a useful tool but Lawson seems to have lacked an exit strategy for it. It’s still out there running and none of the show or booth prizes were awarded at the end. Someone was supposed to win free attendence at CUE 2010.