The future of eBay Inc. is becoming a little clearer.

I was privileged to attend and speak at last week's eBay OPEN conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, which attracted several hundred sellers from around the country, despite the summer heat. (One reason it's smart to host a conference in Vegas in July: The audience won't wander off into 120-degree heat.)

This annual event was previously a grass-roots conference (called the eBay Radio Party) organized by a dedicated group of eBay sellers. This year's event, hosted and run by eBay itself, was the first major seller's conference in several years. The overall tone of the event was upbeat, and I can say that eBay is making a sincere effort to reignite its seller community, after several years of losing sellers to Amazon and other online platforms.

During their presentations, CEO Devin Wenig and Senior Vice President of eBay North America Hal Lawton both sent the message that "eBay hears you" and said it will give its seller community greater support in the future by simplifying the seller-oriented sections of the website and gradually relaxing some of the rules, regulations and criteria for terminating sellers' accounts, which many sellers say have been onerous, burdensome and unfairly enforced over the years.

EBay is a unique animal in the menagerie of Silicon Valley companies because it is really two things working in tandem. It is firstly a Fortune 500 corporation based in San Jose, California, with almost 12,000 employees and worldwide operations that have to account to Wall Street and the U.S. government, just like other large corporations do. EBay's employees and executives tend to be highly educated — management often comes from Ivy League universities, top-level business schools and consulting firms - and they work in a polished, professional Silicon Valley environment focused on technological innovation and big-company culture.

EBay is also a community of sellers and buyers (roughly 25 million sellers, 162 million users and 279 million mobile app downloads) around the world who buy from and sell to one another on eBay's 25 websites. This community is, well, a bit different. One eBay seller described the community, saying: "(It's) a bunch of misfits, and I mean that in the most positive way possible. Many, if not most, of us are doing this for a living because we don't really fit in anywhere else. We tend to be very capitalistic, libertarian, self-reliant and fiercely independent, if not outright loners. We are anything but corporate. Most of us don't have formal business training, and we're sometimes not too respectful of authority. We're hard to manage."

Another eBay seller told me, "Unlike Amazon, whose business is selling stuff online, eBay is in the business of understanding and empowering the sellers that drive almost all of its revenue now that it sold PayPal."

While listening to these folks it occurred to me that the future of eBay may well depend on its ability to respect and adapt to the entrepreneurial culture of its sellers, while simultaneously managing them to ensure they make online sales professionally, ethically and legally.

That's a tough balancing act for any company. But despite some grumbling, most sellers I spoke with were genuinely excited about changes that have been made since last year and feel there has been a "genuine, positive and sincere change" in the way eBay is now communicating with sellers. A reliable source told me eBay plans to make eBay OPEN an annual event. If you are serious about selling on eBay, keep the last week of July 2017 open. Hey, it's probably the only way you could legally deduct a trip to Vegas on your taxes.

Many eBay sellers are serial entrepreneurs, and I'm always intrigued by some of the things they do. For example, Bill Perlman (www.silverpanther.com), a seller of model airplanes and ships, among other things, was a Freedom Rider during the civil rights era and the only white member of The Freedom Singers, a popular folk group of that era, which was the subject of Christopher Guest's mockumentary film "A Mighty Wind." Last year, Perlman brought the surviving members of The Freedom Singers together and released a CD called "Songs of the Movement," a live recording of a concert at Ashfield Town Hall in Massachusetts (available at www.ebay.com/itm/SNCC-Freedom-Singers-in-Live-Concert-Recorded-June-2015-Songs-of-the-Movement-/381444769441?_ul=AR).

Vicky Conley (www.hippiedew.com) sells marijuana-themed T-shirts and caps from (you guessed it) Colorado. She is on the production crew of "The Marijuana Show," a "Shark Tank"-type reality TV show for "ganjapreneurs" looking to take advantage of the ongoing liberalization of marijuana laws in the U.S. Lest anyone think this is a niche program, the show has raised over $20 million in venture capital for guest entrepreneurs and is now streaming on Amazon Prime.

Cliff Ennico (crennico@gmail.com) is a syndicated columnist, author and former host of the PBS television series "Money Hunt." This column is no substitute for legal, tax or financial advice, which can be furnished only by a qualified professional licensed in your state. To find out more about Cliff Ennico and other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit our Web page at www.creators.com.