Location:

The Whiskey Priest. 6.30 pm till late. 28th October 2013.

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Buffet Menu, Business of Software Conference Networking Dinner, Whiskey Priest, Boston, 28th October 2013.

• Chicken Broccoli Ziti
• Beef Satay
• Grilled Lemon Chicken
• Scallops Wrapped in Bacon
• Crab Legs
• Golden Calamari
• Oysters on Half Shell
• Lobster Dip (with bread & chips)
• Spring Vegetable Dip (Crudite)
• California Roll
• Vegetarian Sushi
• Jumbo Asparagus
• Roasted Red Potatoes
• Grilled Seasonal Vegetables
• Seasonal Vegetable, Broccoli & Ziti
• House Salad (Balsamic Vinegar dressing)
• Tomato Basil Mozzarella Platter

Dessert

• Petit Fours & Sundae Bar
• BoSKeyPie [Update 19th September. This is it but sadly someone else got there first. Your search isn’t completely in vain though. If youre quick – first three people to use this get $1,000 off.]

Coffee

• Regular & decaffeinated coffee, tea

Support can be an unloved function in a software business, but what other part of your business gives you the chance to turn ‘ho-hum’ customers into raving fans?

This morning/afternoon (depending on your timezone) we’ll be chatting to Sarah Hatter, founder of CoSupport, about why is support is such a dirty word in many software companies and why this isn’t very clever. We’ll be holding a Google Hangout at 12.00 EST to talk about making support easier, cheaper and more effective and what Sarah has to say at Business of Software this year.

As the first person to run support at 37 Signals and now a founder of CoSupport (which counts Mailchimp, Sprintly, Wildbit, WooThemes among its clients) Sarah has serious form in helping companies do great customer services on the web. Sarah and Mark will talk for 15 minutes about what software businesses can do to keep customers rabidly happy and scale successful support without derailing product development, business development and all those other good things.

If you have questions or comments for Sarah about her experience and her themes for Business of Software, now is your chance to put them to her:

• Bookmark this page and come back for the Q&A
• You can ask questions on Twitter before or during the Hangout, using the hashtag #BoS2013

You can add the Hangout to your Google Calendar here:

This hangout is now history. Thank you Dan. You can view the conversation between Dan Siroker and Mark Littlewood about the growth of Optimizely and AB Testing and what keeps Dan awake at night below.

Come and join Dan Siroker, CEO Founder of Optimizely and previously the man behind the data analytics for President Obama’s successful social media election campaign. We will be holding a Google Hangout at 13.00 EST, September 4th 2013 to talk about A/B Testing and see what you want Dan to talk about at Business of Software Conference this year.

An interesting conversation despite a couple of technical issues connecting Dan and Mark which did remind us of this from Alan Partridge…

Dan’s talk at BoS is titled, ‘If data can help win Elections, what can it help you do for your business?’ Companies like Disney, Amazon and Salesforce already use optimization as a core part of their business activity and they have masses of data that they can use to achieve this but how can smaller organizations with relatively small data sets use it to generate long term value? How can you get buy-in for A/B Testing in a business? Understand the future of optimization in the software industry as it enables the transition from a one to many relationship to a more personalized relationship with individual customers.

Dan and Mark will talk for 20 minutes about what Dan plans to talk about as well as trying to answer some of the burning questions that you have about Dan, Optimizely and A/B Testing. AB Testing at the Business of Software has often been a point of some contention:

• Patrick McKenzie (@Patio11) has been talking about the value for a long time. Engineering your marketing outcomes.
• Jason Cohen talked about how you have to be very wary about living by the numbers at last year’s Business of Software Conference – Why data can make you do the wrong thing

Dan recently published a book, A/B Testing: The Most Powerful Way to Turn Clicks Into Customers. It will be interesting to hear Dan’s perspective. Is there something that you would like Dan to cover in this talk? Now is your chance to let him know directly.

• Bookmark this blog post, join Dan and come back for the Q&A.
• You can ask questions by using the Twitter Hashtag #BoS2013

One of the highlights of BoS for me would be attending this but I never end up getting the chance as we are busy putting up signs, getting registration ready etc. That shouldn’t stop you going though. The chance to take photos and learn a few tricks with people like Betsy Weber and John Knox is one that you shouldn’t pass up. (John incidentally generously funds the Graduate Scholarship to attend Business of Software Conference, entry deadline 28th September). If you are new to photography and just want to take better pictures, are verging on the professional, or don’t have a camera but just want to meet some really nice people who are coming to Business of Software, then get involved in the Sunday photowalk.

Grab your camera! Any camera will do, even the one on your phone, and join your fellow Business of Software attendees for our 3rd annual photowalk around Boston before the conference kicks off.

Rain or shine, on October 27, we’re heading out on the town! This year we’re going to grab a water taxi so we can get some spectacular pics of Boston’s harbor. We’ll head to Fairmont Battery Wharf and visit Boston’s picturesque North End also known as Little Italy. The North End is full of interesting architecture, Italian bakeries, tourist attractions and more.

Everyone is welcome to join – all skill levels and all cameras/camera phones are welcome! Check out some past pics from the event here: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=bosphotogs

Interested? Find out more details and sign-up for a free ticket here.

Look for John Knox  (picture/@windaddict on twitter) and Betsy Weber (picture/@betsyweber on twitter) in the lobby of the Seaport Boston Hotel at 1:00pm.

Spoof startup pitches. How long till this ‘trend’ gets boring. September is our guess. Once is funny, twice is silly, three times is boring/stupid/derivative/a slap.

Radimparency

Radimparency, by Vooza one is well done and the guys that did it run a business creating viral videos.

Funny.

RydeMyPony

The RydeMyPony one is too long but incorporates just about every mistake that a startup will make in putting a presentation together and is put together by Christophe Sollich who teaches startups to pitch so he knows what he is talking about.

Silly.

Any more will be the third or later.

As it is Labor Day on Monday it really is the official end of the summer. I hope you all had a great one.

Personally, I had one of the best ever – hanging out with some of the friends and family of some of the people I have met at Business of Software over the years and relaxing in caves, kayaks and canyons in the middle of France. I have not had as much vacation (slightly over three weeks) since before I went to university and it is surprisingly easy to get used to…

Afternoon planning meeting.

We learned a new french word, ‘Danger‘. Translated into English it means, ‘very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, dangerous indeed‘.

I haven’t been entirely idle though, there is a lot of BoSy goodness in prospect, some Q&A Hangouts with speakers planned for the next few weeks so you can let the speakers know what you want to know about, the Monday workshops have been finalised and we will announce them next week and everything is coming together very nicely. Good job as we are just 2 months away!

Huge props to Hermione and Wendi in particular for keeping everything moving.

If you are reading this though, you are probably an entrepreneur who is working through Labor Day weekend or thinking about getting back into the swing of things now the summer is gone. Either way, that pretty much sucks so, if you are thinking of coming to BoS, we hope you are, we will keep the current Early Bird Rate open until Labor Day is done, regardless of the number of registrations we have. It won;t make you feel any better but you could do something nice with that extra $100 you save – for you or for someone else. You decide.

The short answer is, ‘No’.

The longer answer is that while we have for the past two years as an experiment the cost of doing so is simply too high to justify for us. It isn’t just the hard cost of delivering the livestream (over $25,000), it is a business model question and a question of who pays and who benefits. As it stands, our attendees pay and others benefit and that doesn’t seem quite right.

We thought that livestreaming the conference would mean that people would see the content and decide to attend in person next year. Actually we have found that we have built an audience of people that have proven themselves very unlikely to come to the event in person – looking at the people who have viewed over the past couple of years and comparing it to attendees this year is strong evidence that we have two very different groups of people. This is fair enough, but as we are delivering the stream for free, that means that our paying attendees are effectively subsidising others to see the content and we would rather focus on delivering a memorable and meaningful experience for our paying customers.

We considered a livestream for a fee model and tested this by asking a sample of viewers from last year whether they would be prepared to pay. A small minority would, happily. A vocal minority asserted their ‘right’ to watch it for free (though many of them charged significant amounts for their own products or services). It was hard for us to see a way for this to work for our business model.

We also know that the number of people that watch every single session (or over 75% of them) during the livestream is very small suggesting that viewers prefer to pick and choose which sessions to watch or are distracted by work from watching them all. Again, we don’t think this is unreasonable but perhaps it is evidence that it is hard to commit to watching something online for an extended period of time and people prefer to pick and choose when they view content. (We also know that immediately after the event, we have several hundred inquiries in the following couple of months asking when a specific talk is going to be online as it was missed).

We remain committed to sharing the content with a wider audience:

• We have made every single video available, for a small fee, to anyone when they are compiled and edited post event and will continue to do so.
• We also release almost all of the talks free of charge on the Business of Software blog over the course of the year and will continue to do so. See the 2012 talks from one place here.

The best way to experience Business of Software Conference, or indeed any gathering of super smart, motivated people, is to be there on the ground with them. Come for the talks, return for the people. We know that it isn’t always possible for everyone to do this but we hope that our community will understand the business logic behind this decision and that those people who are not able to attend in person for whatever reason, will still be able to participate via social media and ultimately view the talks at their leisure.

If you were planning to watch the livestream at BoS and didn’t buy an Early Bird ticket but now feel you need to attend, drop us a line and we will see what we can do to help.

So this is a big thing for us all I think even if we can pretend it isn’t.

Not every visit from a big black dog is unwelcome.

Greg Baugues is a developer who has Type II Biploar and ADHD. He applied to do a Lightning Talk last year but it wasn’t picked to present. It was an interesting talk about how to overcome natural shyness and learn how to talk to people. We offered Greg a ‘semi-final’ slot but in the event, he wasn’t able to make it to BoS last year. He applied to speak again this year on the subject of, ‘Depression, entrepreneurs and software developers’.

He made a brilliant pitch about a subject that he cares passionately about and is one of those topics that just doesn’t get enough airtime. Brad Feld wrote an interesting piece – are entrepreneurs more prone to depression and divorce earlier in the year though I am not aware of any clinical studies that have made the link between depression and entrepreneurship even if I, along with others have long suspected that there is one. (There is much more information about the link between ‘madness’ and ‘genius’ – this Independent piece being an example.

Greg’s talk was a shoe in for a Lightning Talk and when we shared the entries with our advisers for feedback, almost every one of them came back with two comments along the lines of,

“That talk was my favourite, it made me cry”

and,

“I am so glad someone has had the courage to talk about this, I haven’t discussed this before but my experience has been…”

and then a description of either their own personal struggles with something similar or an account of a situation where a colleague, partner, friend has struggled with a mental illness where they did not feel able to understand or help.

Having spoken to Greg, we decided that this wouldn’t be a Lightning Talk at Business of Software Conference. Rather, he should be given a speaking slot of his own to talk about how he has been able to manage his own illness in the hope that this will be helpful to those people who suffer too but also offer some pointers to people with colleagues and loved ones about how we can support people in the software community.

By the way, if this is something that has affected you personally, Greg co-founded Devpressed, a community where techies can discuss mental illness.

Welcome on board as a valued member of the Business of Software speaking family Greg.

Great news – the nice people at Avangate are once again funding Business of Software scholarships for innovative software vendors who would benefit from BoS but would otherwise not be able to finance it. There are scholarships for three companies – businesses that aim to be future software leaders – and we’re very excited to see who will emerge from the search this year.

Avangate will also be hosting a dinner on the Tuesday night for delegates – always one of the hottest tickets in town.

Thank you Avangate, we really appreciate your support for emerging software businesses at Business of Software and we know this will create some very happy people.

If you’d like to come to BoS as an Avangate scholar, here’s what you have to do:

Apply by September 15th, telling us about:

• The creativity of your product/service
• How well your business model matches your market opportunity
• Your go to market strategy

Applications are open to application by Software, SaaS and Cloud Services vendors of all sizes

The winning applicants will receive: a guest pass to Business of Software (please note you will still be required to cover your own travel and accommodation costs) and be invited to attend a dinner hosted by Avangate on the Tuesday evening along with some of the other BoS attendees.

About Avangate

Avangate is the leader in Customer Centric Commerce solutions, helping Software and Cloud services companies increase their online sales across touchpoints and business models, as well as grow their distribution channels to profitably scale and enter new markets.  Avangate’s solutions include a full-featured, modular and secure Commerce platform, which integrates online eCommerce, subscription billing, global payments, a partner order and revenue management solution, as well as a constantly expanding worldwide affiliate network.

Avangate has received numerous industry accolades such as the CODiEs Award for Best eCommerce and Billing Solution, the Red Herring Top 100 European Award for Most Innovative Companies and was selected as a Gartner “Cool Vendor in E-Commerce.  Avangate powers Commerce for thousands of companies including Abbyy, Bitdefender, FICO, iYogi and Kaspersky.

To learn more about Avangate, please visit avangate.com.

Apply here – REMEMBER DEADLINE IS SEPTEMBER 15th

Please note that in keeping with out standard terms, we will not sell or pass on your contact details to a third party though if you are a successful applicant Avangate will need to contact you to arrange your ticket and dinner invitation. Please also note that only unregistered attendees may apply for a ticket though an additional team member may apply.

Here are the Lightning Talks that will be presenting at Business of Software Conference 2013 in Boston. You may have noticed that we have already added an additional speaker to the programme, Greg Baugues who will be talking about, Depression, entrepreneurs and developers. Greg applied to do a Lightning Talk and we have shuffled the schedule a little to include him as a full talk.

We had some amazing applications once again and thank you to everyone who submitted an idea. Many brilliant. We have tried to select talks that will entertain and make you think about things in a new way – as ever.

These are the ones that we have picked, along with a few selected speakers who will decide between themselves on the Monday of the conference who will take the remaining speaking slot on Tuesday.

We said we would keep Early Bird registration open until we had made the selections. Now we can put the prices up but, it is the weekend so the price rise will happen as soon as Labor day is out of the way. Have a great weekend people.

Rosemary Francis

Dr Rosemary Francis is the Technical Director of Ellexus Ltd. Rosemary obtained her PhD in Computer Architecture from the Cambridge University Computer Lab. After working in the chip design industry, Rosemary founded Ellexus to help manage the complex tool chains needed for semiconductor design. Ellexus now specializes in tracing Linux applications and troubleshooting software installation and configuration. They provide solutions for High-Performance Computing, semiconductor companies, software companies and research centres around the world. Rosemary is passionate about windsurfing, snowboarding, baking, and standing up for under-represented minorities in the tech industry.

Abby Fichtner

Abby Fichtner is Hacker in Residence at Harvard Innovation Lab and creator of Hack Boston. Named an Innovation Amplifier by the Boston Globe – Abby launched Boston’s Big Data Hacker Space and was Microsoft’s Evangelist for Startups, where she got to help hundreds of early stage companies.

A software developer by trade, Abby’s prior background is a mixture of developing bleeding-edge technology for startups and coaching teams on how to develop software better.

Dominick Reed

Dominick is a user experience designer by day and a wannabe photographer by night. He has all his own teeth, a near-optimal covering of skin, and can touch both of his ears at the same time. His feet are size 11.

He’s designed mobile phones for Nokia, websites and software applications for Red Gate, and has dabbled in the dark arts of marketing as a creative director. His passion for photography borders on pathological and he’s taken more pictures of himself than is strictly recommended.

He drinks lead paint and dreams of a world made of marzipan.

Magga Dora Ragnarsdottir

Magga Dora is a senior experience designer with background in psychology and computer science. She has been involved in software development since the turn of the century and has been teaching human computer interaction to engineers and computer science students for over a decade. User experience is her passion and profession and she firmly believes that peoples lives can be improved by creating good user experiences.

Many congratulations to the Finalists, many thanks to everyone who submitted ideas. We really enjoyed the process even if the final selections were a very hard job.

We’re sometimes a bit guilty, here on the BoS site, of focussing on our speakers during the build up to the event, but I’ve been re-reading some of the feedback from 2012, and the truth is, speakers are only part of the story.

This is, after all, an event for peer learning and one of the best things about BoS is learning and exchanging ideas with the other delegates. Whatever your problem, it’s likely someone in the BoS audience has been through the same situation and has some ideas on what does or doesn’t work. From how to get your software used in the White House Situation Room, to what size of mailing list do you need for meaningful split testing, someone in the BoS audience generally knows the answer.

Every year we feel priviledged to work with a group of some of the best informed (and downright nicest) business people there are. Thank you all.

Here’s what you said last year:

• Amazingly well done conference. The talks are outstanding and the people you’ll meet are even better.
• Great speakers and great conversations. An amazing three days, with much learning and inspiration.
• As an early stage founder, Business of Software was a phenomenal opportunity to learn from phenomenal software warriors who’ve been through the paces of a software company. The conference also put things into perspective, allowing me to take a step back from the day to day trenches to see where the business needed to go next.
• It’s like being hit on the head with an anvil forged of startup culture, ideas, and values.  Something that will forever change the way you think about business, software, and organizational architecture.
• A founder-rich environment of entrepreneurial people who want to learn and who are willing to share their experiences and knowledge.
• One of the best places to meet the people who actually make significant revenues in the software industry.
• You are guaranteed to learn something and meet someone that makes the trip worth it on their own. As a bonus you get to go to an awesome software conference.
• Imagine a dream world of full employment, meritocracy, innovation and success, abundance, respect, and happiness. It’s real, and it’s going on all the time in the unbridled world of software, and the Business of Software conference is your window into that world.
• A great conference for great entrepreneurs to exchange great information about building great business focused on making users great.
• Defies summing up.  Brilliance, compassion, excellence and support all around — who else would you want to hang out, learn, and explore with?
• same as #14: It’s rare that I can have an interesting business conversation with any random person next to me – this is one of the few venues where I can pick a person out of the crowd and have a deep meaningful conversation, help them, or learn from them.ce.
• This conference reminded me of being in the classroom with favorite professors.  Clarity, delivery, substance–it was all there!–were the marks of every speaker.  Their collective honesty and vulnerabilty, frankly, made for a rich and open environment where learning can fluorish, far beyond the confines of business or technology.
• It’s good to realize you’re not alone; there are many entrepreneurs facing the very same problems, and they’re just as confused as you are.
• Engaging and enlightening conference that allows you to learn more about the software industry and connect with others.
• Go for the content, re-go for the audience
• It’s like a spa weekend for software entrepreneur geeks – you leave feeling recharged, focused and cetered but also a little bit sore.
• Great place to meet, interact with, listen to, and exchange ideas with like-minded and passionate individuals.
• There is nothing like the Business of Software conference anywhere in the world.  It’s a place where passionate practitioners in the software industry convene to learn and share.  My favorite event of the year.
• Every time I come to BOS I feel like I’ve found my “tribe.”  Fellow techie entrepreneurs who are dying to roll up there sleeves to get a business going.
• BoS is a great venue to meet people, share experiences and learn about how to grow in the (fascinating) business of software. In my opinion, BoS is the best conference for those who are focused in getting their startups on a path to growth through knowledge and shared experiences.
• an awesome collage of people, ideas and information that will help bootstrap your software product company into a BADASS software business with wildly ecstatic customers.
• Business of Software is a place to meet and talk with people going through the same challenges as you, then learn actionable information on how you can improve your business.
• the best mastermind group in the world for startups. most of your tech smb rockstars in one room.
• The most interesting and highest-quality software conference by far. Attendees aren’t too shoddy either.
• A friendly and informal conference with inspiring speakers and attendees. An evangelical church for software entrepreneurs with charismatic ministers and testimonials from members of the congregation..
• Meeting awesome people, the doers, the FOUNDERS.
• Perect opportunity to swap war stories and elevate everyone’s game!
• A college semester’s worth of training in entrepreneurship and working in the software industry, packed into three days with a room full of people who are all smarter than you.
• I was honored to be part of an incredible network of talent actively discussing how best to apply their passions and address software business challenges.
• You dont know what you dont know until you know what others know.
• Some hundred software biz nerds from around the world sharing their learnings.
• BoS is the only place where I feel – professionally – amongst my peers. We’re all working to use technology to build successful and sustainable businesses. I always walk away thinking bigger, thinking clearer, and looking forward to the next time I can be here again.
• As a first timer to BoS, it’s great to meet with like minded people building real business in the areas we are passionate about. That together with the high quality presenters makes this a must see conference. I will defintely be back next year.
• It’s a conference about software but not about code, and one where the presentations are just one-fifth of the real show. And it picked up right where last year left off.
• The BoS experience is the truest and best representative set of what is now and what is next in software from a business perspective.  Nowhere else can you have access to the people actually DOing the innovation in tech, and they are just as passionate as you are about the craft which remains so essential to success in the software business.
• The only place where I can meet so many similar founders and get real answers to my specific business problems.
• Amazing crowd and good content. Down to earth conversations, a good place to come back to
• That line that “the people make the conference?” It’s never more true than at BoS. So many great conversations with great people, all looking to learn from each other.
• Fourth year here, and the caliber of participants is better than ever.
• Hear inspiring content, have amazing conversations, and make fantastic connections!
• A gathering of real entrepreneurs who help each other and build a community
• Smart people. Epic learning.

Warning: the effects of BoS are not always predictable. People have pivoted businesses and left jobs after 3 days at BoS, which may not have been their intention beforehand. Join us at your own discretion!

So the Lightning Talk entries are in…

I try to make a point on NOT looking at them as they come in as they are a HUGE distraction.

And then we start to go through them all…

The Lightning Talks provoke a combination of guffaws, ‘Aha’ moments, giggles, sighs of disbelief (did Frank Slickman really submit a powerpoint of a sales presentation, again?) and OMG I hadn’t thought of that. Some make us a bit teary. Lots of them teach us something practical. Others just make us think in ways that surprise us. Sometimes to be honest, we get a sense that someone is on to something but just hasn’t really thought it through and we have to make a judgement as to whether they will have thought it through and put something into a format that will work on the day, emails from PR agencies offering the CEO of one or two companies we haven’t heard of to talk about a subject of our choice on the Lightning Talk Panels (this happens a lot – please read this if you want an indication of how to submit a good speaking proposal, not just for BoS, but for anywhere else too).

There are several dozen to think about and now we have to make some tough decisions.

Here’s what happens next. The team here will go through the entries to produce a manageable shortlist that we can circulate to a small number of advisers, BoS speakers, and one art student (Neil Davidson) to get their opinions on the selection that will be most appropriate for the Business of Software Community and the Conference. It is not an easy task, believe us, and it is clear that a lot of people have put a huge amount of time, thought, effort and care into preparing their talks. (Others, not so much, when a submission consists of a note along the lines of, “It’s only worth me attending a conference if I get to speak to share my trademarked lead-generation/sales process”, or whatever it is unlikely to make the cut).

The one thing we do know, it’s going to be a very tough job this year to select the speakers, the quality of submissions has been extraordinary. Thank you to everyone who has contributed. We will come back to you all as soon as possible.

As an extra incentive to us to get this done ASAP, we will keep the Early Bird rate that runs out today at the same level until we revert. I hope this will be less than a week.

Such an entertaining reminder that sometimes asking an expert isn’t the best way to work out how to do something.

Balsamiq’s Peldi is a pretty phenomenal cook in his own right but when he made this delicious dish for us recently he told us that it was a recipe from his Grandmother who is the kind of Italian food genius who makes her own pasta every morning. This is a short tale about what happened when he asked her for the recipe for this delicious dish.

Experts are often better at doing than teaching. It’s one reason that the best sales people are often not the best sales managers. ‘Sales naturals’ are rarely the best managers as they are great salespeople without having to think about why they are great sales people.

I came across this guest post from last year today and thought it worth repeating – thanks to Joe Corkery and Zuly Gonzalez for sharing.

‘This is a guest post from Joe Corkery. Joe is Vice President of Business Development at OpenEye Scientific Software in Cambridge, MA. Remarkably, Joe has been with OpenEye for nearly 13 years helping it grow from 3 people to over 40 at last count. In an earlier life, Joe ran away from writing code to attend medical school, only to be drawn back in after graduation. Despite not having access to a prescription pad, he is passionate about drug discovery and the impact computers have on that process, among others.

Joe gave a Lightning Talk at Business of Software 2010, and he was gracious enough to share his experience with us. If you’re still not sure why you should give a Lightning Talk, take a look at what he has to say.’

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

With the deadline for Lightning Talk submissions rapidly approaching (midnight on August 7th), I thought I’d offer a little perspective on why you should be giving a Lightning Talk.

Giving a Lightning Talk is without a doubt an unnerving experience, but giving one at Business of Software is terrifying because it’s not your average audience. The audience is filled with not only your peers, but also your idols, and a large number of other software rock stars that you just haven’t heard of yet. However, despite the boot-shaking terror that came with giving a Lightning Talk at BoS 2010, it was far and away the best thing I did at that meeting and it continues to pay dividends to this day.

If you aren’t familiar with the concept of Lightning Talks, they are very short time-constrained talks in which you are allowed 7.5 minutes to cover 15 slides (each of which will be automatically advanced every 30 seconds). After all the talks have been given (there are usually between 5-10), the audience votes on the best talk. The winner receives bragging rights, an invitation to the speakers’ dinner and whatever cool electronic gadget happens to be in vogue that year. Winners from previous years have also gone on to give regular talks in the subsequent year’s meeting.

Even if you don’t win (which sadly I didn’t), giving a Lightning Talk provides you with an unprecedented opportunity to meet people at the conference (which if that isn’t your goal in coming to the meeting, you ought to rethink your goals), both before and especially after you give your talk. The fact that you are giving a Lightning Talk is a remarkable conversation icebreaker, particularly at the Sunday night cocktail reception. This is particularly helpful if you aren’t naturally social and can never find the right topic to start a conversation, because the Lightning Talk will do it for you. Mark Stephens (the winner from BoS 2009) helped me (and a few others) out in this regard by introducing us to other groups by name, mentioning the fact that we were giving Lightning Talks, and then letting the conversation take off from there. Most people you will meet will generally be in awe that you’ve agreed to subject yourself to this strange form of torture and will really want to talk to you about it. What’s even better is that because you are putting yourself out there as an opportunity for their schadenfraude, people are much more likely to remember you both during and after the meeting as a result. I was truly amazed by the number of people (including a few of the real speakers) that remembered me at BoS 2011 because of it – it was a great way to start a new meeting.

But don’t forget the other presenters – there is nothing quite like a shared challenge to bring people together and build camaraderie. I still try to make a point of keeping up with a number of my fellow speakers and look forward to seeing them again at the meeting this year.

Beyond meeting new people, the Lightning Talk gives you a rare opportunity to spend time thinking about a specific topic of your own choosing and distilling it down into something you can quickly and effectively communicate to others. I can’t underestimate the importance of this skill and what better way to hone that than by sharing a relevant passion with an open and like-minded audience. Amazingly enough, they let me talk about how Viagra could teach us something about the software business (and it’s not how you think)! The story is a medical version of a business model pivot. Ask me about it at the Sunday night reception.

One of the biggest obstacles to participation is clearly the fear of having to speak on someone else’s clock. And it should be a fear, because it is a serious challenge. Watching the countdown clock staring you in the face really brings it home during the talk. However, with a lot of preparation (about which I’ll write a separate post later), you can definitely do it (and do it well) if you are willing to put in the time. But, even if you don’t pull it off without a hitch, you will still have the respect of all the other attendees for trying and with this crowd, that isn’t nothing.

Finally, if I haven’t convinced you to give this a try yet, how about this: the conference fee for Lightning Talk speakers is waived. So, if you’re just starting up and aren’t sure you can afford to come to the meeting or if you’re at a larger company that is just too lame to pay for you to attend, this is a great way to get a spot at the meeting.

Photo courtesy of Betsy Weber

So now, my question to you is, why aren’t you fighting for a spot to give a Lightning Talk at this meeting? Just writing about it has made me excited for the conference; perhaps, I should throw my hat into the ring again and give a meta-Lightning Talk on why it should be you on the stage and not me! For more details on how to apply to do a Lightning Talk, go here. See you in October!

Question for you: what do Eric Ries, Jeff Gothelf, Scott Berkun and Kathy Sierra have in common?

Yes, they’re all BoS speakers, no prizes there. They also share a publisher, O’Reilly Media, an organisation which, in its own words, is put on this earth to ‘spread the knowledge of innovators’. After 25 years of working in the technology community, O’Reilly is now a highly trusted organisation in the technology world – I’d be rather surprised if you don’t have an O’Reilly title somewhere in the same room as you as you read this.

It struck us earlier this year that O’Reilly and Business of Software have a lot of values in common around innovation, community and learning. Rather brilliantly, they agree, so today we can announce O’Reilly Media as a media partner for Business of Software 2013 and supporter for the BoS Reading Zone, a space at the conference where you can discover and share some of the best titles in technology.

This is worth talking about because it means we are being put in front of a larger community than before. Which is a good thing: we’re always trying to grow the BoS community, to bring in fresh perspectives and innovative ideas, and we’re confident that O’Reilly fans will make a great contribution. It’s quite possible that it will also mean BoS tickets sell out earlier, which is also an attraction to us!

So, if you are part of the O’Reilly community, coming here for the first time, welcome. We hope you enjoy the blog, conversations and videos from earlier editions of BoS, and we look forward to seeing  you in Boston in October.