[mattquinn]

As a college student myself, I see/hear many variations of this idea all the time from people. My reaction is the same every time: you are competing for students' time, and they have barely any discretionary amount of it that they'd be willing to spend on things like this. College students eat, sleep, drink, socialize, have jobs, and occasionally study. I'm not sure why people think students will make time for attending product demos and experimenting with new products.

[jonlegend]

Good input. As a college student as well, I wouldn't expect any of my peers to attend something like this for free either.

I believe the key to this, however, lies in a good business model that pays the students for their time and input. Many students are strapped on time, but I'd be willing to wager even more are strapped on cash.

Ultimately, my concern at the moment is not whether students would be interested, but whether startups would be interested. What do you think?

[mattquinn]

Money and college students always mix well, but it doesn't apply to events like this, which classify as thinly veiled marketing, however informative they may end up being.

Even if you pay ppl $15 to sit for an hour, it won't be worth it to you or the startups involved. Why? Because 70% of that audience would be people who would've come out of interest even if you paid them nothing. The other 30% would be ppl in it solely for the money, texting friends or on Facebook.

I trust you've seen the attention span of students during a lecture - the ratio of interested to distracted is even worse. Money doesn't necessarily trump other factors like basic interest level.

[jonlegend]

Great points! This is the type of feedback I was looking for.