We thought it about time we moved the Business of Software website from the Jurassic period into the 21st century. But what do you think? Is there anything here that you think is missing?
Leave your comments (now that is a new thing :-)) and we’ll do our best to make the appropriate changes.
I miss the page with the videos from 2009 and 2010
Thanks Chris. Was there anything in particular about that you liked? Being able to see one year’s talks in one place? Would love to know what you want to do and we will try to work it out. Thanks for the feedback.
Yes, I miss them too. You can sort of find them in various “category pages” (and there’s a single page for 2011 as well), but boy talk about being user unfriendly. I don’t foresee myself getting much of a chance to attend BoS most years, but I did use the old video page to promote it to established owners and leaders of software companies.
The way it is laid out now, they’ll never click far enough to even watch the video get started (assuming they even open my e-mails in a timely manner). They’ll just see a page with lots of funny coloured text in many different sizes (some of it hard to read — maybe you can run it this by a designer).
Also, I believe Seth’s 2010 talk video is wrong (linked to the 2008 video). The script for each video is a nice touch (for I think everything prior to 2011). However, I know you were rushed, but pointing the videos from the summary 2011 page just to blip.tv is not the best experience — especially since you already have blog posts w/ scripts as a blog post (why not just link to that)? Then the blog posts are a bit disorganized as well considering you have 2 blog posts of the same video to Patrick McKenzie’s 2011 talk.
I appreciate you making the videos available — but they also serve to promote BoS as well so I would assume that it’s a fair trade. Also, when Seth said “Be Remarkable”, I don’t think he was including “remarkably bad” in that umbrella.
But if you’re honest about putting up these videos for people to watch, dedicate a place for them where they can find it and it’s obvious they are videos — w/o reading anything (yes that means you’ll need screenshots as small images again). Yes, think “funnel” and easier consumption. Leaving them scattered around the blog/stream is disingenuous. Hopefully that’s not your intention — I’m just going to assume this was all unintended circumstances.
Also, I probably spent more time typing this comment than to see all those issues — so they’re pretty obvious to me. But then again, I am probably using this site differently than your attendees. Nonetheless, hopefully the feedback was useful.
Yikes! That looks like a lot of text… (was a lot less in the comment box textarea I swear…)
Matthew,
This is useful thank you. Do you have any suggestions of places that show videos and previous content particularly well? M
(replying to this so the answers aren’t as nested.)
Well, nothing really comes to mind that would just “fit” for BoS. You have to come up w/ your own identity/branding. Figure out what matters and why people would want to be here. The conference is once a year, but the website is the entire year.
But if I were to start looking, I’d look at other famous (well to me…) conferences.
GDC: http://www.gamespot.com/events/gdc-2012/?category=highlights&content_type=videos
TED:
http://www.ted.com/
I looked at SIGGRAPH as well but was uninspired.
Anyhow, those are different as well. Their memberships and conferences and packages all mean different things to their attendees (e.g. SIGGRAPH’s coveted famous discs), but they have different attendees. I see BoS as more like TED than SIGGRAPH.
I guess you’ll have to decide what the BoS website is all about. Whether it’s just to setup registration prior to the next BoS, or are you going to take the opportunity to have an ongoing dialogue between conferences.
—
ps. There’s this annoying bug in your comment section that you’ll have to send to one of your front-end developer. (When you lose focus on the comment textarea and come back to it, behind the scenes it selects and deletes everything in the box. You can ctrl-z to get it back, but that’s annoying and other users won’t that they can do that.)
Yes, being able to see one year’s talks in one place.
FYI, the move of the website killed the RSS Feed.
I hope this is fixed now. Please let us know if there are any problems.
Still nothing. Old feed went through feedburner – http://feeds.feedburner.com/BusinessOfSoftware
On the main page, you’ve done a good job of describing the content of the conference, but there are a bunch of little things that happen every year that make it special — I think you could surface some of that better
Things that come to mind from various years
1. Soda sampling
2. Impromptu band
3. The #suckless challenge
4. Sundae bar
5. Space ice cream
6. You said food was going to be better this year — give us a taste
7. Some of the books we’ve gotten (Different, Biz Model Canvas, etc)
I’m sure I’m forgetting a bunch of things.
Also, I come for the other attendees — conversations at BoS are part of the value.
Good points Lou. Thank you!
I have a few suggestions:
1. Move up the social sharing icons to the end of the post. I was actually going to suggest you *add* social sharing icons, because I completely missed them until I scrolled all the way down to leave a comment. I’d bet others couldn’t find them either.
2. I agree with the other comments that the videos from previous years should be more accessible.
3. I also encountered the same bug with the comment section as Matthew.