Two great pieces about introverts from the past couple of weeks. Always makes me think of Business of Software!

Sacha Chua on introverts and how to be shy effectively.

Susan Cain, talking at this year's TED Conference in Long Beach on the power of introverts.

Three take aways from Susan's talk.

• Stop the madness for constant group work – we need to teach people how to work on their own.
• Go to the wilderness – we could all benefit from unplugging and getting inside our own heads a bit more often.
• Take a good luck at what’s inside your own suitcase and why you put it there. When you have watched the talk, it makes perfect sense!).

Don't forget, registration for BoS 2012 is open now. Hope to see you in Boston October 1st-3rd 2012.

They went already. Probably before some of you even got the email to let you know registration was open.  

Registration for Business of Software 2012, (October 1-3rd October) is now open!

Hurry, not only do the EARLY BIRD rates save you $$$$$, the first 25 registrations for Business of Software 2012 will get a copy of Clayton Christensen's new book, 'How will you measure your life?' with our compliments.

Partly because it had such a great effect on getting people registered and partly because we still think it is an amazing book, we will extend the offer – anyone who has paid for their registration to this point, and the next 25 to do so, get a copy.

What are you waiting for? Business of Software 2012

Just before we put BoS 2012 tickets on sale – in the next day and pretty much as soon as Anna makes her way down from the top of Mount Washington – we thought we would share the feedback from last year's event.

(UPDATE, she made it and got back safely. Mountaineer Andersen is third from the right. Black jacket with yellow zippers. Sustained winds of 65mph. 88mph peak winds. Wind chill -38c. 10.5 hours of hiking, ice climbing and abseiling = one tired Anna.).

Instead of publishing all the lovely stuff people said – and thanks! – I wanted to take Jason Cohen's talk on honesty to heart and here is everything. We think we did pretty well, but we can do better and every year we will try. The main feedback that we want to act on this year is around food and content.

Quite a few people said they felt the food wasn't as good last year as in the previous year. We agree. Despite having the same supplier and a bigger budget, the breakfast wasn't as good as we expected. (Though we note that the spaceperson icecream was a hit, as was the noodle box lunch on the last day). This year, we have upgraded the venue and you should see some differences.

Not every business is a SaaS business. We know! A lot of the talks at BoS are about the human and cultural aspects of growing a world class business and the lessons from a lot of the talks should be applicable across lots of types of business. We want our speakers to represent a wider SaaS, Web, Enterprise Software, and mobile sectors from both consumer and B2B. We think that bringing great people in these communities together to share ideas is one of the most powerful things BoS can do.

Here is the full feedback from BoS 2011 delegates…

• “Excellent opportunity to sit back, away from day to day operations, and share the experiences of others & reflect on those.”
• “An essential conference for anyone or company, waiting to be or is already in the business of software.”
• “I was thoroughly and pleasantly surprised by the cooperative spirit and overall helpful nature of the delegates I met, toward a little 2-person basement-based company who sells their software for $7.50 CAD.  And the scope of attendees – ven-cap funded to bookstrapped, hundreds of employees to 1-man shows, windows and web apps… everything!”
• “It was an enlightening good time!”
• “Another awesome year at BOS. It's like an annual shot in the arm to get me super energized about my industry”
• “Inspirational,  would like to see more nuts and bolts for non store front, higher price sales.”
• “The conference was inspirational. I can't wait to get back and start implementing what I have learned – and it's a lot.”
• “Awesome conference.  Will be back next year.  Please don't let it grow too big….small is what keeps it cool!”
• “Awesomeness OD!”
• “Everyday we had actionable ideas that we can apply almost instantly to our business”
• “The event succeeded my expectations. The energy and good vibe from the presenters blew me away and we are really looking into adapting new practices we learnt.”
• “Please include vegetarian meal options next year.”

Guest blog post from Dan Nolan who came to Business of Software and then quit his job to run his startup. Good luck Dan!

I recently attended Business of Software in Boston, and at the conclusion of the event Paul Kenny asked everyone to make a tangible commitment to act on something they had learnt during the conference.

My commitment was to free up my time so I could ready v1.0 of my new product for launch.

Realising this was going to be near impossible while still in fulltime employment, I decided that I would hand in my resignation upon returning to Sydney. And now, after an incredible 7 year run working with some of the most talented and generous people I’ve ever met, my time with FlexiGroup Ltd will today come to an end.

During those 7 years, I’ve worked as a Developer, shifted into a Release Engineering role and finally onto leadership of the DevOps Team.

However during the last few months, my thoughts and energies have progressively drifted towards my startup. Developing ‘ReadyRoll‘ has occupied nearly all of my time outside work for the better part of the last year but I’ve found it incredibly enjoyable. Corporate work usually involves balancing a number of different workloads, so being able to lavish the design of a singular piece of software is something of a luxury.

ReadyRoll will be the my first product since ‘StyleMaker’, a CSS authoring tool that I created way back in 1997 as a teen. It was something I made for a school assignment, but it ended up being more than that when I decided to distribute it as shareware. I can still remember the rush of my first few sales and seeing my software on the front page of sites like TUCOWS and Download.com.

Though I did manage to achieve “ramen profitability“, it didn’t work out in the end but I learnt a lot about things like how much hard graft and perseverance actually goes into creating things of real value. And how listening to customers and being open and honest in your dealings is key to long-term prosperity in business (thanks to Jason Cohen for reminding me of this). Failure to deliver on these things can be a great teacher.

So in a way this move is a continuation of my “geek origin” story. In the years since my early efforts, I’ve been blessed to have had the opportunity to hone my skills under the guidance of some fabulous mentors. And now I get to do the indie software developer thing all over again.

With trepidation and excitement in equal amounts, today I begin to take those first few tentative steps from “Wannapreneur” towards “Fledgling Startup Founder”. Who knows what happens next.

A nice guest blog by Lisa Wells, Product Principles on this year's Lightning Talks.

Every Fall for the last three years I’ve made a pilgrimage to absorb wisdom face-to-face from software greats like Seth Godin, Joel Spolsky, and Eric Ries at the Business of Software (BoS) conference.

It’s an expensive conference, but it’s worth every penny to get the latest, greatest insights from movers and shakers who understand both business and technology, and whose ideas are shaping the future of software entrepreneurship. And the opportunity to mingle with like-minded entrepreneurs is priceless!

BoS also has a Lightning Talk competition – short, fast-paced talks that consist of 15 slides, set to auto-advance every 30 seconds. Giving a Lightning Talk is not for the faint of heart. This year, prospective speakers were required to submit audition videos. Those selected as finalists are invited to give their talks at the conference itself, where the audience votes to determine the “Best Lightning Talk” for the year.

I've been nudging my colleague Justin Goeres from JKI for years to come along and he could never swing it. This year though, he decided to 'earn' his way by submitting a Lightning Talk (also he likes to do this sort of crazy stuff). So he put together a video and sent it along. And in the face of stiff competition, he got accepted to speak!

So this October, both Justin and I trekked to Boston to attend Business of Software 2011. Like the last two years, the conference was incredible! For the first two days, we were awed by speakers like Dr. Clayton Christensen, the Harvard professor who wrote The Innovator’s Dilemma and other award winning books. Praxeology expert Rory Sutherland blew us away with his insights applying human behavioral science and economics to business situations. Dharmesh Shah, Hubspotfounder and author of Inbound Marketing, showed us in detail how to build a bad-ass software business. Jason Cohen, author of popular blog A Smart Bear, rocked the house with his insights on Naked Business: How Honesty Makes Money. (Justin’s and my detailed notes for the sessions are online here).

[Great notes by the way, you should take a look – Mark Littlewood]

The Lightning Talk competition happened towards the end of the second day. This year there were five talks, all by really smart people who can present really really well:

• Corey Reid, Cat-herder at Freshbooks on Hiring Developers
• Karl Treier, CTO/Partner at Prospect Stream on Tips on Starting a Software Company
• Justin’s talk – the only “non-business” one: Getting to Nowhere – the story of Richard Feynman's 'last journey' to a country called Tannu Tuva, and what a lifelong quest means for all of us
• Patrick Foley, Evangelist and popular blogger from Microsoft on Confessions of a Wannapreneur
• Tyler Rooney, Founder/CEO of 4ormat on Things I Learned the Hard Way at Amazon.com

All of the talks were outstanding – which makes it even more of an accomplishment that the BoS audience voted Justin’s talk the winner of the contest! As he introduced the speaker after Justin, Conference Organizer and emcee Mark Littlewood said Justin’s talk brought tears to his eyes. For the rest of the conference, I heard people asking each other, “What’s your Tuva?” In other words, what’s the quest that gives meaning and adventure to your life?

Just getting up in front of this crowd of software superstars and not embarrassing oneself is reason for celebration, but winning the competition is truly a special accomplishment! So from all of us here at JKI, a big congratulations goes out to Justin, who had the focus and courage to step out in search of his Tuva.

[We loved his talk too and can't wait to get them back from the editing suite so we can share them! Thanks Lisa].

Anonymized from the conference feedback…

"My BoS commitment was to free myself up so I could dedicate as much time and energy to building my company and getting v1.0 of my flagship product ready for launch. Realising this was going to be near impossible while working a fulltime job, I made a commitment at BoS to quit my job at F(redacted) (who graciously helped me get to BoS, knowing my ambitions) as soon as I got home. It was very tough but after an incredible 7 year run working with some of the most talented people I've ever met, my tenure will come to an end next week.

"What BoS has helped me with is to give me the courage to take this step, by introducing me to an incredibly supportive community of brilliant entrepreneurs. People who have been on a similar journey to me and are able to offer support or a friendly ear for the challenges I am facing. And it's very heartening, hearing about how others have similar challenges and being able to offer my own thoughts. Outside the walls of this conference there are very few other venues that offer this kind of experience. Plus the fact that the delegates are just so friggin smart! I have been endlessly namedropping to the guys on my team all the great people I met but the highlight would have to be meeting Peldi from balsamiq. I love his style and how he built his fantastic company on his own mettle is truly inspiring. Jason's talk was the highlight for me, and also his critique of my product pitch (which I already rabbited on about in my other survey response so I'll leave it at that :)). My only regret from the conference was not saying hello to Mark! But I could see he had his hands extremely full. Oh and that I forgot to collect that bottle of champagne 😉 I would be delighted to blog about the experience above over my two BoS conferences 🙂 I'd love to hear from someone who still does desktop software and how some of the benefits of SAAS companies might be applied here. For example, measuring customer engagement and subscription-based pricing models. See ya next year! Provided I don't drive myself broke over the next few months ;)"

Congrats D! Hope it works out for you and come and write some guest blogs for us on how it is going.

To save me answering the same question by email 7 times per day, I will do what I should have done before…

We will post all of the talks from Business of Software 2011 online over the next year. We will choose when we make them available. Of  course we use them to post over the course of the year in order to help market the event next year (October 1-3rd in Boston since you asked).

This year, we will send a password to each of this year's Business of Software attendees that will give them exclusive access to all of the content before it is posted to the wider world. People that sign up to next year's event will also get a password that allows them to watch the videos at their convenience. The video is currently being edited and will not be online for at least two weeks. This should not be shared or used in blog posts until it has been released into the wild via the BoS blog.

Hope that sounds like a good plan?

Some nice summaries of this year's Business of Software talks by Theo Spears. I have included one from each day and a link to the relevant blog post. 

Day 1 - Jeff Lawson

Jeff from Twilio talked about SaaS pricing models. You can base pricing on how much value you add, how much the service costs to provide, or how much your competitors charge. Ideally the combonation of the three should suggest a suitable point. He talked a lot about the benefits of consumerization – treating all your customers as if the are consumers, but equated this with SaaS more than I was comfortable with. Both of these are options a business can take, and are becoming more popular, but neither necessarily implies the other. Read the other summaries from day 1.

Day 2 - Josh Linkner

Josh talked about creativity. He had a model of how modern education was suppressing creativity in kids, although didn't actually demonstrate this meant adults were any less creative than they used to be. Interesting suggestion around RoleStorming = brainstorming whilst pretending to be a particular character, to free you up to suggest ideas without fear of personal criticism. Read the other summaries from day 2.

Day 3 - Paul Kenny

Paul Kenny talked about the importance of closing and how to do so in sales. People often fail to close because they are afraid to hear a no, and it makes for an awkward conversation. It also means you are less likely to make the sale – more sales are lost due to failing to ask the customer if they want to buy, than asking the customer if they want to buy too soon. When the customer does say no, this is a great opportunity to learn about what changes are needed to the product. Read the other summaries from Day 3.

I had a little catch up with Theo yesterday. I was kind of hoping he might be interested in using some of his sabbatical time to do some amazing things with the community aspects of the BoS website but as his blog details, he has got another itch he is focused on scratching. He did make some interesting commments to me, and in his blog about talks and conferences…

"I've thought about the nature of talks I've attended catering to the entrepreneurship world, and my overwhelming conclusion is I will not look back in 10 years time and think "If only I had attended more talks where people recapped their experiences, I would be in a far better place now".

"So no more entrepreneurship talks for me

"However, far more useful than listening to the content is the opportunity to mix and network with other like-minded people. This is one of the things that makes BoS so good, and I'm glad that Mark is really focusing on how to get the most from this aspect of the conference. As I attend more networking opportunities I become increasingly aware it's not just a social occasion to chat – making the most of it requires you to identify and focus on the other people in the room who are most relevant to you, and avoid getting caught up in conversations that are less relevant. I would be interested in hearing any advice on how to do this better.

"So maybe I'll skip the talks and just turn up for the networking sessions. And the free food."

My daughter has something to say on that subject - http://thebln.com/2011/10/the-childs-guide-to-business-of-software-networking-a-quick-tour-of-the-original-cambridge/ I think we might revisit that subject later in the year. 

Balsamiq's Peldi gets stressed to the max while preparing the night before his interview with John Nese of Soda Pop Stop. Marco plays the role of John. 

Warning, contains no bad language but there is much giggling.

You can see some ofthe pictures from the real interview here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/bos2011/

It would be fair to say that none of their worries were realised!

Beau Adkins writes,

"Along with Zuly, I attended Business of Software (BoS2011) this year. This was my first time attending, and I have to say it was an intense 3 days; lots of learning and lots of networking. Although I had a good time and met a lot of really nice people, I’m glad to be back home programming. It was a bit draining for an introvert like myself.

"I held a workshop on Managing Software Projects with Subversion and Trac. I created a simple eBook for the workshop that walks you through step by step on setting up Subversion and Trac. You can download the Managing Software Projects with Subversion and Trac eBook for free."

Introvert or not, thanks for coming, taking part and volunteering to lead a workshop – it takes guts.

Thanks Beau.

If you were at BoS last week, you might remember Paul Kenny asked people to make a commitment to putting something in place in their business within 7 days of BoS2011 finishing and pass it on to someone else in the room. I am putting $10 (about £3 of your English pounds using an exchange rate from several decades ago) that no one has got as far as Noel Clarke – especially as he only started this on Friday last week.

He has taken the lead in the Alexis Ohanian #Suckless #BoS2011 challenge in a way I couldn't have hoped or imagined for…

"Hello Mark & Alexis,

Some great tweetable lines from this year's Business of software Conference as collected by the inimitable Zuly Gonzalez of Light Point Security. Zuly won a Stack Exchange (stunning idea), sponsored place to Business of Software for being an awesome community member.

A sample here from the first talk by Professor Clayton Christensen…

Clayton Christensen

Image Credit: Betsy Weber. More BoS2011 photographs here.

-    “Worry about the bottom when thinking about who can kill you.”
-    “Pick a fight where the giant is more motivated to flee than fight you.”
-    “The market to make something more affordable and simple is often times a bigger market.”
-    “A business unit is not designed to evolve.”
-    “The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it is selling him.” ~ Peter Drucker
-    “Help people do what they want to do even better.”
-    “Invest when you don’t need the results of the investment. Innovation is a long term investment.”

Hop on over to her blog for the rest of her summary. Plenty more where that came from. Thanks Zuly and thanks Stack Exchange.

Lots of blogging going on post Business of Software. We will link to, and run some of the stories, notes and opinions over the next few weeks.

First up, James Young, of EzCoC with his six key takeaways.

"Business of Software 2011
October 24-26
Boston, MA

I just arrived back home in Raleigh after attending this year’s Business of Software (#BoS2011) conference in Boston, MA.  Like last year’s event, it was really good, with an impressive lineup of speakers.  If someone asked me “Well, what did you really learn there?” I would say that the following are the basic (condensed) principals and recurring themes that I learned over the last 3 days:"

Nicely summarized this:

• Creativity
• Honesty
• Test and Tweak, Always
• #JFDI
• Don’t Sell (Your Dream) Out
• Ask

Read the full blog post here: Business of Software 2011 Overview: James Young, of EzCoC 

If you want us to link to your posts, or are prepared to offer up the whole thing for a guest blog, get in touch with mark at business of software.org

Don't be shy!

We didn’t get a chance to get all the speakers together at BoS 2011 for a photo, so I drew them instead. The image might be wider than the browser window, so expand it to see all the figures.

There are other sizes / high-res for printing etc. on flickr.

I’m on twitter and Google+too. If you want to see my other drawings, they’re on facebook (<– please ‘like’ the page if you like them).

It’s complicated…

We had a metric f-tonne of entries. Thank you. We decided to award the prize to the person that had the most actionable idea that had a chance of scaling. There are two entries that we thought expressed particularly good ideas.

Some guy called Dharmesh(?):

Every great programmer should help two other developers just get started writing code. The sooner the better.

https://twitter.com/#!/dharmesh/status/129223285467660288

Richard Mitchell, who is an employee of Red Gate Software:

Make the world suck less by not giving me a mac book air – I don’t need it – give the money to a school instead

https://twitter.com/#!/richard_j_m/status/129285498467393536

Now Dharmesh don’t need (or want one), and Richard don’t want one neither so…

We thought we could combine the two notions. We will award the prize on behalf of them both and donate the Macbook Air to a public school in Melrose, just outside Boston. Why Melrose? Well Melrose is where Noel Clarke, a BoS attendee this year, lives and he got in touch and offered to help some kids learn programming. He also said he would donate an iPhone to the cause. I thought that exhibited the characteristics of awesome. Thank you.

We will then give two tickets to BoS2012 to two kids from the school that learn something in the next year. I am sure they will really enjoy it. Look out for them and be nice.

So I got in touch with Alexis with the new plan, this is what he said:

“So awesome! Love the plan. If we find a classroom, let’s ask what they need… or we could find a donors choose classroom in MA looking for programming related projects….(if only bc one air can only go so far) either way, very happy to price out an air and donate the 2k or so it’d have been 🙂 very awesome indeed.”

Great idea. Noel, thank you for being such a willing volunteer. If you can identify a school and work out what they need, lets make this happen. Thanks Alexis, thanks Dharmesh, thanks Richard and thank you Noel. If anyone else wants to get involved, I will put you in touch. Let us know how it goes and we look forward to seeing some new coders at Business of Software next year too.

That is all.

Two ways to treat yourself at the start of the week.

Come and watch the FREE livestream of Business of Software 2011 starting at 9.00 am EST TODAY! First speaker is Professor Clayton Christensen who will be followed today by Jason Cohen, Alex Osterwalder, Dharmesh Shah, Jeff Lawson and Tobias Lütke. Enough said? Well the conference would cost $2,495 to attend if we hadn't sold out, so some pretty well informed people think it is worth it. See what you think and follow the event on twitter – #BoS2011.

If that isn't enough meaty, juicy content goodness for you and you just want us to give you more cool stuff for free, SHAME ON YOU! (But OK then). We have teamed up with App Sumo to produce a BoS App bundle.

Attendees at this year's event have offered up a total of $5,921 of software & service for a total cost of, err, $0. You can however, only buy it at that price for the time that the conference is on so be quick. BUY NOW FOR TOTAL COST OF $0 (This equates to £0 at the current exchange rate).

Have a great Business of Software.

Happy Sunday and welcome to Boston and the Business of Software. If you are registered, you will receive an email version of the attendee list. This is not for publication but you can see job titles of attendees and where they are coming from. We have 358 attendees.

• Registration will start on Sunday evening at 7.00pm in the Atrium Lobby at the Seaport Hotel. It reopens at 7.30am on Monday morning.
• Reception tonight will take place from 7.00-10.00pm in the Harbourview Ballroom. There is a view of the harbour but no ballroom dancing.
• Breakfast tomorrow starts at 7.30am in the Cityview Ballroom. There is a view of the city but once again, you will not be forced to dance. Do feel free however to exercise your newly learnt networking skills.
• Conference starts at 9.00am prompt tomorrow. Please feel free to let people know they can watch the livestream at https://businessofsoftware.org/

• Twitter: @bosconference, @marklittlewood, @neildavidson, #BoS2011 (general conference goodness), #BoSMeet (for organising & connecting BoSers).
• Flickr: Group, Tag your photos: #BoS2011

Business of Software will start soon. People have already arrived in Boston from Australia and a substantial UK contingent is heading out tomorrow. 

For all those thinking about how to pluck up courage to talk to people they view as heroes, my daughter has some advice.

I am pleased to present an 8 year old's effort at a guide to networking. We had fun making it.

• Tip number 1 – Talk to people.
• Tip number 2 – Be visible & don't hide behind technology.
• Tip number 3 – Introduce people.
• Tip number 4 – Be yourself & be interested in others.

Thanks to Paul Kenny for pointing out that the world actually ends on 21st October according to Harold Campling. He seems slightly peeved that he has put so much work into his presentation.

How does he think we feel?!?

We are going out on a limb here and have ordered food for a sell out conference.