Laura considers the value of ‘Open’ and what it means for entrepreneurs, society, privacy and for you.

A strong believer in the value of open working, Laura talks about how the maker movement, driven in Cambridge equally by software, hardware and wider communities has brought people together in a creative space. What happened when a bunch of people who know different things get together to build a creative community space that welcomes engineers, designers, software people, artists, hobbyists and anyone who likes to play with big machines. How has this community fueled entrepreneurial activity as a result?

Video, Slides & Transcript below

Finding a good SEO is akin to getting a reliable builder – it’s tough to get one. But once you know you have found someone who fits the bill and you can trust, it’s worth hanging onto them.

Despite every effort to not admit it – Dave Collins, Founder of Software Promotions and Co-Founder of SmartSEOtraining, is an excellent SEO and someone with great knowledge of what makes websites work and be seen.

In 2014, Dave took to the BoS USA stage to offer candid feedback on websites volunteered by the audience. After hearing Dave’s advice in the talk, every website has been changed.

Putting on a conference is hard work (we know, not as hard as running a software business!). Fortunately, we have the best guests in the world. These were just a few of the things that people said in September when we sat back at the end of the conference, exhausted, and said, “Was it worth it?”

Thank you.

September 21-23 2015. Boston.

300 Software Managers, Founders, CEO’s and leaders filled the auditorium in the World Trade Centre once again for the 9th Business of Software Conference USA.

This year saw a fight back against the unicorn culture sweeping the tech world and Silicon Valley. We instead provided value for attendees in values: Growing software and Tech companies for all the right reasons – to help people and scaling businesses that produce profit in the long term.

This is a guest blog post from Swami Kumaresan, Founder of Databox – a tool which aggregates data for marketers, allowing them to focus on what’s important. The original post can be seen here.

I think I’m awesome, and here’s why:

Well, at least that’s how I feel today. I don’t always feel that way. I’m grateful for the opportunity to work and build a company with the Databox team, but life as a startup CEO doesn’t always feel as awesome as the title might make it sound. But over the last two weeks I’ve been working on this video. If you take a couple of minutes to watch it you’ll see that it’s not exactly the cinematic achievement of the century. But we needed a video to kick off our Early Access Program for growth marketers and the agencies I spoke to wanted 4-6 weeks and $12,000. Ouch! That sounded like “a year and $100,000,000” to a startup guy.

How do we select speakers?

We get asked a lot about how we choose speakers and how people can go about applying to speak at Business of Software Conferences. In the hope that this helps people apply to speak at any event successfully, not just Business of Software Conference.

Here are our secrets…

The Business of Software team is committed to delivering one thing above all else. Value.

So when we say you can speak with some of the world’s leading professionals in a whole range of disciplines, and ask them anything, free… we hope you agree we deliver such value.

We’ve held hangouts with many different speakers, from DHH to Rand Fishkin. Check out the playlist below for all of the hangouts from Business of Software. They’re all free to attend and ask questions at. Join our updates here to find out when our next AMA’s are happening.

“There was a problem… on one of the best [comp sci] courses in the world, and applications were dropping like a stone… kids had stopped coding”

What started out as a project to boost the number of applications to Computer Science at Cambridge University by inspiring a generation of children programmers has turned into a worldwide revolution.

November 26th marked the release of Raspberry Pi Zero – a five dollar computer.

Stop.

Just think.

Five dollars.

Jack Lang, Chairman of the Raspberry Pi Foundation and part of the original Pi Team, took to the Business of Software Europe stage to share the story of Raspberry Pi in 2015: It’s incredible journey from project, to world changer.

Some Things Creep Up On You.

Change is like that. The world keeps on changing but you just don’t notice because you are so close to it but sometimes, something happens that makes you take notice.

 “With SaaS you need to win the customer every month – you need to retain them”

Meet a man with a ‘colourful’ and ‘non-traditional’ past. Duane Jackson.

Duane’s story is well documented. You can hear the full story here. To sum it up in a sentence, Duane has bounced from children’s home… to prison… to accounting software.

But when we caught up with Duane for an AMA, the talk was far more practical than the inspirational message delivered at BoS Europe 2015. Duane built a successful accounting SaaS business incrementally over a number of years, before ‘upselling’ for an undisclosed sum reported to be in the region of £20 million. His marketing knowledge and natural business acumen are worthy of paying attention to – as are his words of advice.

Below is the hangout itself, but also some highlights from the AMA.

Haiyan Zhang, Innovation Director, Microsoft

Innovating User Experiences.

See Video Below