"Indie" as in "disassociated with the trappings of big business"? Doesn't that work perfectly with the self-image of much (most?) of your target audience? IUnfortunately "WorkPerch" conjures up, for me, images of cages and birdlike office workers sitting atop their chair backs pecking keys.

But what matters more is whether you get a useful service up and running; not worth the time to endlessly debate the merits of things like names. So I'll second the "good luck"!

Online, just because that widens the possibilities greatly; hard to get a critical mass of people interested in a particular niche to converge geographically for an informal get-together with strangers, but if you do it online, there are fewer constraints, and you can come up with more diverse conferences. But, but -- the exact same site could be used to coordinate both types without too much effort, and with the same users and functionality. Some conferences would be online, others offline -- especially if some types of conferences work better one way or the other (e.g. "jam sessions" are conferences between N musicians within an X-mile radius).

Still can't make it, but here's another idea. Warning: this is pretty meta right here.

The Idea: Startup Idea Marketplace -- give away startup ideas, and find ideas if you're wanting to start a startup but don't have a good idea.

The Concept: Ideas only have value if they're executed. Lots of people have good ideas but don't have the opportunity or inclination to execute on them (e.g. if they're already working on something else). Lots of people want to work on a startup, but don't have a killer idea. Right now, it's difficult to connect the two. But if there was a site where you could give away your ideas, and others could find them, that'd bridge the gap. Even better, it could help bring together multiple people interested in the same idea, whether or not one of them was the originator of the idea, helping get past the difficult hurdle of building a passionate core team (or even just finding a great cofounder).

The Money: Not an obvious route for monetization, but costs are low, so there's time to figure that out. Advertising always works, or freemium (e.g. pay to connect with others interested in a given idea), or subscriptions for investors who wish to be informed when startups form around ideas of interest to them. Or, hey, maybe the site would be cut in with 0.1% of equity in startups based on ideas found on there.

Why It Would Work: The market for startups is blossoming (see http://www.paulgraham.com/webstartups.html). Killer ideas are wasted every day, as there's no good way to give them away to those who could use them (obviously, blogs are not efficient for this). Bridging that gap has value -- and little cost.

More: http://jectiv.com/blogs/scier/2007/10/22/startup-...

I won't be able to make it, alas. Feel free to use this idea, though. Maybe cut me in if it works out, yeah? ;-)

The Idea: Pico Conference -- impromptu, informal, online topical niche conferences

The Concept: Take unconferences (BarCamp etc) to the extreme: a few dozen individuals sharing some interest, and no agenda at all. Users tell the system what they're interested in, from filmmaking to Erlang. The system occasionally pulls together a few dozen people with a shared interest, sets a date/time and sends invites, provides an online AJAXy web forum (two-way video, audio, chat/IM, and shared files), and lets the participants discuss, debate, and learn from each other. Some conferences are all peers, some are one or more relative experts and a bunch of relative novices. First weekend pass could use an external service to host conferences (e.g. DimDim) and just do the setup/coordination, later versions could provide internal conference hosting.

The Money: advertising (targetted and with a captive audience), some subset of conferences are pay (with paid experts).

Why It Would Work: Social interactions are moving online. Unconferences are breaking down the formal barriers in group meetings between like-minded strangers. Who wouldn't want to learn from their peers and experts in an informal, enthusiastic setting with little committment or cost? Who wouldn't like to become known as an expert simply by sharing their knowledge?

More: http://jectiv.com/blogs/scier/2007/10/18/pico-con...