[Carrie]

Does anyone see open TGP submissions fading away until they're nonexistent? With the amount of cheaters out there, most TGPs with traffic are switching to partner-only submissions, gallery pools, sponsor-hosted galleries or revshare gallery programs (like Diabolical Galleries).

There's probably at least a dozen new TGPs opening up every day with webmasters using sponsor-hosted galleries (or Choker's trading system). Will this lessen the impact of TGPs as a whole?
Without cheaters and fly-by-night submitters who make 50-pic all-hardcore galleries, will the industry finally slow down from its crazed "give away the money shots" runaway train?

Speaking of giving away money shots, will sponsors ever put their thinking caps back on and stop handing out free content sets with hardcore in them? I'm not saying use ugly censor circles or artsy stars to cover the action, I'm saying just don't put them in the set whatsoever. If you give it to the webmaster, he'll use it - plain and simple. Joe Surfer gets the whole kit and caboodle, from the tease all the way to the cum shot... then he closes his browser and goes to clean up. No reason for him to join your paysite, he's finished for the evening. You want to blame TGP gallery-makers or free site makers for the glut of free hardcore on the net? Move your finger a little to the left and point it at the people *giving* them this content - the sponsors. When you give a webmaster content, you're telling the webmaster that this type of content should be free. You devalue it. That type of content should only be seen if someone pays for it (both the webmaster and the surfer!) If the webmaster had to *pay* to put those money shots on his galleries, he'd put more of a value on it, and either wouldn't do it, or would put it behind an AVS script where he'd make his money back.
Are sponsors going to regain their senses?

Visa fees and regulations (you must be incorporated in the US, which means paying taxes in the US, blah blah) shook things up enough that it's still affecting people. Big programs got bigger by acquiring small ones, small programs turned off completely or switched to AVS (lots of amateurs simply moved over to AVS). This raises the "bar of entry" to building a paysite, which is a good thing. But we still haven't seen the full effects all of this is going to take, and we won't until April 15th when it comes time for all of these new US-based businesses to figure out how the hell to pay taxes. Do you think more small programs will disappear (or go AVS) after tax time hits? Do you think iBill is going to survive the huge hit it's taken? Do you think token systems will make a viable comeback?

Spam - egads. The amount of spam I get has tripled at least this past year. It's gotten so bad for my hosting clients and I that I am seriously considering dropping Yahoo and Hotmail into my denied email filters. I definitely see a major crack-down of spam coming *soon*. All it's going to take is one mother whose child has seen a double-penetration image in his HTML email to sue her major ISP for not doing enough to filter the legitimate email as part of the service they're providing to her, and the courts are involved. The smart folks are already using double opt-in mailing lists, but even those will become risky eventually.
Will a crackdown on spam be a good thing or a bad thing for the industry?

Reality sites... the big sponsors' attempt at getting a piece of the amateur's pie. Huge in 2002... still as big in 2003? Or will more sponsors "absorb" single-girl amateur sites (a-la Lightspeed with Nina and Tawny)... or both?

Amateurs make a killing selling their own products... worn panties, videotapes of themselves, digital movies of themselves on CD, exclusive content CDs. Will an innovative company step up and help them market these things (videos, not used panties) to the brick and mortar stores?

Brick and mortar adult stores... where do you see them in a year? In five years? Still as strong as ever, or extinct as everyone moves on-line?

The original topic was conventions... there's some type of webmaster gathering every month at least. Will heavy-hitters like Internext give way to smaller conventions like Cybernet Expo or even smaller, more training-based events like AWE? Will AVN drop back to one show per year?