Building the minimum bad ass user. Some unfinished business… Kathy Sierra at Business of Software Conference 2013.

Kathy Sierra‘s talk last year, ‘Building the minimum bad ass user‘, is one that has had a huge impact, not just on the people that were there in the room on the day, but on people who have watched it online subsequently.

One of the key metrics we use to measure the value of the talks that we put online is not the number of people that start watching the talk, it is the number that watch to the end.

The talks are an hour long, this gives us a very good idea of how interested people are in what someone has to say. Over one third of the people who start watching this talk have finished it in one sitting. In a world where 6 second videos and 140 character pearls of ‘wisdom’ rule the world (allegedly), this is a stunning record. (It doesn’t include people who download, watch in sections etc).

While Kathy did an amazing talk, she has been thinking hard about whether she would come back and speak again rather than come back as an attendee to an event that I am deeply proud she feels so happy to be a part of. I am so happy that we all, as members of the Business of Software community, have played a part in creating a conference that our speakers want to return to as attendees, regardless of whether they speak. It is something that makes this community very special and for that I thank you all.

Can the person who drew this picture please get in touch please? The team at BoS Towers love it & wanted to say, ‘Thank you!’

I still really wanted her to talk this year though…

Kathy wanted to be sure that if she did speak, she would bring enough new material that she doesn’t cover old ground and moves the conversation on. I personally never doubted it so imagine how excited I was when she said she would come back this year to build on the ideas she talked about last year? (At this point I should probably apologise to my neighbour who I may have woken up as I ran round my garden, naked, whooping with excitement on Saturday morning…).

More details to be confirmed but please welcome the wonderful Kathy Sierra back to Business of Software conference this year as our latest confirmed keynote speaker. You can see all of the other confirmed talks here in the new ‘Speaker Section‘.