I sadly could not attend last Friday’s mini-conference in San Francisco on prediction markets, but Peter McCluskey has an informative write up.

Apparently Tradesports explained why it makes it a pain to link to its contracts. They want to sell access to the data. I don’t see easy linking and data sales as mutually exclusive, but Tradesports’ current practice doesn’t help it win bigger opportunities (becoming the dominant PM exchange).

A Microsoft representative promoted the use of open source licenses. (Indirectly.)

An implication that real money traders did consider the Bush re-election good for terrorist stock:

[Eric Zitzewitz] showed an amusing graph indicating that Tradesports prices implied Osama was twice as likely to be captured in October 2004 as in November 2004 (implying some connection with the U.S. elections).

With conditional futures voters could’ve been informed of that collective opinion before the election.

Go read McCluskey’s comments, replete with links.

Chris Hibbert is also blogging his summit presentation on Zocalo.