Duane Jackson’s life story is remarkable.

His life has bounced from children’s homes to drugs and prison, and… accounting software.

On Tuesday, November 24th, Business of Software will be hanging out with the recently announced ‘Pride of Britain’ award winner, following his BoS Europe Fireside Chat (The video for which can be found here).

Business of Software Conference USA is ten years old this year.  To celebrate, we’ve thrown open the archives, with over 200 hours of videos available right now, free, here.

Over the years the BoS stage has been graced by a vast array of speakers, talking on a range of topics which aim to fulfill the promise of helping anyone who listens build better software businesses.

To think of these videos as the most popular BoS talks of all time is perhaps a fallacy, as most attendees have their own favourite moments and talks which were relevant to them at the time. These videos simply represent the most viewed Business of Software Conference Talks of all time, all in one place.

Joel Gascoigne, co-founder of Buffer, shares some of his thoughts on the on the advantages and disadvantages of building a business while sticking to the core principles that he and his partner Leo set out when they founded the business.

Can such a highly distributed, radically transparent approach to building a business pay off in the long term? See the video below to find out.

The world is flat. The Four Humours. Geocentricism.

These are all examples of paradigms which have since shifted once thoughts moved on.

In a similar way to these paradigms, Joel Spolsky’s writing in the early 2000’s on joelonsoftware.com shaped thinking in the software business – some could say even forming paradigms of their own.

Top of the list of all of Joel’s 1113 articles* is ‘Things you should never do, Part 1’. This article states the worst strategic mistake you could ever make is ‘rewrite the code from scratch’.

David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and Co-Founder of Basecamp, disagrees with Joel. Rewriting should be an option.  

We exist to make you more bad ass in your business. This means arming you with the knowledge to help you think differently and more efficient in your business. This also means by attending our conferences, you are able to meet the people who will help take your business to the next level.

Google Hangout, DHH, Basecamp. Friday October 16th

We’re hosting an AMA with DHH on his talk at Business of Software – ‘Rewrite!’

The video, slides and attendee notes are available here.

Join us Friday October 16th, 17:00 BST, 09:00 PST for the Hangout with DHH.  Get your questions to the front of the queue, tweet @bosconference using #BoS2015.

Join the DHH Hangout. Friday 16th October

What’s number one on Joel Spolsky’s list of ‘Things You Should Never Do’? — “Rewrite your software from scratch.“ Naturally, David Heinemeier Hansson disagrees.

In this talk, ‘Rewrite!‘ at Business of Software Conference USA 2015, David Heinemeier Hansson, Co-Founder, Basecamp, and Creator of Ruby on Rails explains why he disagrees and discusses his experience in rewriting the code for Basecamp, not once, but twice, with the third version of Basecamp launched this month.

Speaker decks from Business of Software Conference USA 2015.

Slidedecks are presented in order of appearance.

You can see more attendee notes, speaker comments etc here.

Duane Jackson, Founder, Kashflow

Duane grew up in childrens’ homes in the East End of London, left school with no qualifications and ended up serving a 5 year prison sentence for drug trafficking. He served time in US and UK prisons.

On his release, with a baby on the way, he decided to “go straight”.  He struggled to use products like Sage and Quickbooks to keep accounts so developed a web-based application for his own use. He eventually spotted the opportunity to sell this product to other small businesses and KashFlow was born.

KashFlow was one of the first Software-as-a-service (SaaS) products and was at the forefront of the move of software from he desktop to the Cloud.

By 2013 KashFlow employed 40 people and was serving nearly 20,000 customers. In October 2013 the business was sold to IRIS for an undisclosed sum that has been reported as being “in the tens of millions”.

His extraordinary story is recapped in his recently released book Four Thousand Days and seen him be honoured in events such as the Pride of Britain Awards in October 2015.

Video, AMA & Transcript below

• Eventifier. This seems to be a magic social media app that sucks up content related to event hashtags.

Not as useful as a hand curated set of comments but definitely easier to do!

Some great talk write-ups from attendees at Business of Software Conference USA 2015. This page has links to photos, slide decks of speaker presentations, attendee notes. If you want to suggest some notes or additions, please get in touch with Joe who will add them to the list.

An email from Trevor Lohrbeer, (if you come to BoS you will recognise him as the guy in the Fedora), with some brilliant advice for first time Business of Software Conference attendees to get the most from the event.

Everyone has heard the phrase ‘Money Makes the World Go Round’. These days, it could even feel more appropriate to say ‘Data Makes the World Go Round’. But what about when the two combine?

Brian Massey is The Conversion Scientist and makes a living by using data to produce websites and processes that optimise for conversions of all manners, including maximising the bottom line. In 2014, he spoke at Business of Software Conference USA on the subject of optimising web pages and email, outlining a check list of top things anyone can do to ensure their landing pages deliver time and time again. You can watch that video here.

As part of the release of Brian’s talk free to the public, we caught up with him to see what has changed in the world of conversion science since last year. Watch the video below for the full AMA hangout, or for a summary, see below the video.

It is not in the interests of any investors or entrepreneurs to talk about bubbles. They are too profitable for some. Besides, ‘this time it’s different‘, is the stock response to anyone who question the increasingly high valuations of some companies.

It is in everyone’s interests to understand the implications and what this means for other companies.

Arriving into Boston early? Join your fellow Business of Software attendees for the Fifth Annual Photowalk and tour around Boston. This is a great way to meet other attendees before the conference kicks off. All skill levels and all cameras/camera phones are welcome! Bring a camera… or leave it at home and just walk around town with us.

“You don’t want a heart surgeon to turn up for your surgery with a swiss army knife. You don’t want them to use the wrong tools.”

Last week we had the pleasure of hosting Alex Osterwalder for a catch up before his Business of Software Conference USA 2015 talk – ‘How to Design Organisational Culture’.

As an entrepreneur, inventor of the Business Model Canvas and also a Best Selling author, Alex is well placed to comment on the tools people in companies can use to create clarity and direction in all areas their business.

As a Conversion Optimization Evangelist, Brian spends a great deal of his time speaking and writing about conversion. As the Original Conversion Scientist, Brian has helped dozens of businesses transform their sites through a steady diet of visitor profiling, purposeful content, analytics and testing.