I’m setting up a series of markets to help me predict attendance at a regular meeting. The mailing list has about 100 people, and somewhere between 8 and 16 people show up. I’m hoping that by adding a market to my meeting planning that I can be better prepared, and of course it’s a way to introduce a group of people to the idea of trading on other information.

The first market I proposed is set to run only 7 days. Ideally it would be up and running Thursday so that I can show people what it looks like at the meeting (otherwise I’ll show them Harry Potter). I did an informal poll via IM and email and got back a dozen guesses, so there’s enough interest to get something going if people don’t get tripped up by the user interface.

My best guess is that if I want to accurately predict future attendance I should encourage trading in the current week contract and in the contract 4 weeks ahead, so that there’s more than one thing to bid on. I doubt there will be enough people bidding to make sense to have 52 markets open right away. For grins I think I’ll do the birthday party attendance market (that would indeed be something to want to know ahead of time).