Just back from the first instagramers conference in Torrevieja, Spain. Instagramers are really coming of age: here’s a group of people who are passionate about their hobby hiring a huge theatre and a top quality gallery to put on the sort of weekend for 100s of people that would have put IBM to shame. And just like a grown-up conference, we had goody bags, a timetable of compelling events and an IT support team running around some state-of-the-art conference technology. It was interesting to see how a professional event format had been adopted by a group of hobbyists. With one difference: there’s very little money changing hands (tickets were EUR 20). Apparantly most of the facilities and goodies were provided by sponsors. So what do they get back? In the case of Torrevieja town authorities, they get back 1,000s of photos of their town being published to probably more than a million people around the world. And what do the organisers get? Again, very little money, if any. But if you have money, what do you buy with it? Pleasure, new experiences, fun. The realisation of dreams. This is what the organisers got from the conference. It’s the new economic (Instagram) paradigm.