Thanks to Alexis Ohanian for pointing this one out. In his words, 'Penguins can be dicks too'.
Come next week and share stuff. The funny thing about knowledge is, the more you give it away, the more you get back. Bad penguins.
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Date and venue: October 24th-26th 2011 at the World Trade Center, Boston. NEXT WEEK!!!
If you are coming, please sign up and let other know on LinkedIn and Lanyrd. it will make you much easier to connect with other useful people while you are there.
Twitter Hashtags: We are going to run two hashtags this year – they are for different purposes.
Hang on, did someone say, 'Live stream'? Oh yes they did! we are going to stream the talks live this year. Tell your friends to register on the Business of Software Homepage and they will get an email reminder when they start.
Workshops: You need to make sure you are registered for the workshops running on Monday afternoon and Wednesday lunchtime/early afternoon. List of workshops here. Long list with details of Monday workshops here. Long list with details of Wednesday workshops here. Help with workshop registration here.
Accommodation: The conference hotel is the Seaport. It has been full for a month though there are occassional cancelations. Thank goodness that Hipmunk now does hotels as well as flights…
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This year, by popular demand, we will be streaming Business of Software live as it happens in Boston. The event, and the stream, kicks off at 9.00 am EST on 24th October from the Business of Software home page – that is this time next week. Best of all, the stream is fre to view.
You can register now and test the stream. You will also receive conference updates but can unsibscribe to those at any time if you wish – REGISTER HERE FOR BUSINESS OF SOFTWARE STREAM. If you are registered, you will receive an email just before the stream starts to remind you.
Please feel free to join in by watching the live stream and following the conference on twitter – #BoS2011.
If you want to show the event in your conference room, or invite others in to watch, that is fine too. Do let us know what you do and feel free to let people know about the live stream.
We are almost sold out now but have a few more early bird tickets have been made available from delegates who are now unable to attend. We have made these available at the rate at which they were sold. To book, use this dedicated registration URL. This will give you the best possible delegate rate available.
You can find out more about this year’s conference on the Business of Software web site and the Business of Software blog.
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Ouch! Just got the final quote for instruments for the Monday night band. When did everything stop being so cheap in America?
We might have to switch to plan B…
Looks like we will have to save the bottles from John Nese's soda pop tasting…
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In the last hour, a bunch of people who volunteered to lead workshop sessions at Business of Software got an email with a list of the people that are coming to their session.
I have already had one email back from someone saying,
'Why on earth is X coming to my session? They're my hero. What can I teach them?'
As Neil Davidson said in his opening remarks last year,
"You guys aren't here because you wantto impress the other people in the room. Most of us are here becuase we care about one thing, we care about building long-term and profitable software businesses."
One of the biggest things I took away from last year was how much the 'stars' of the show ended up learning from others. No one has all the answers. That is why people come. That is why they stay and listen and talk with others. That is why they come again, even if they aren't speaking.
Everyone has valuable experience to contribute which is why we wanted to let people offer to share their ideas and passions in the workshop sessions. Don't be surprised when others want to take part!
That is why I love BoS.
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Every now and then, you come across an idea that makes your heart jump and your skin tingle. That happened to me a few months ago, when Richard and Anthony pitched a small group of us an idea.
“It’s called DBA in Space”, Richard said.
I don’t remember the rest of the pitch.
“DBA in Space” is one of those phrases that’s so simple, remarkable and clear that it sticks and it sticks hard.
Sure, lots of people have done much hard, gritty work over the past few months to make it happen. Sure, there’s some small print. Sure, it’s not turned out exactly how we thought. But the essence is the same.
We’re putting a DBA into space: 62 miles above planet Earth, a cat’s whisker above the Kármán line.
It could be you.
Find out more at http://dbainspace.com
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As I was preparing the content and format I thought it might be a good idea to share some more info about what exactly is going to happen and set the correct expectations.
So here goes.
Why Purple Cows?
For those who don’t know, the term ‘Purple Cow’ was invented a few years back by Seth Godin. Unlike your regular, boring old black and white or brown cows, a purple cow would really stand out in a meadow and you would likely be compelled to remark upon it. Thus, a purple cow is shorthand for a “remarkable idea”; something you can’t help telling people about.
Why do we want our products to be purple cows?
Well, if your cow stands out, more people talk about it and your idea or product spreads.
Can I really invent them?
Yes. If you’re a successful software company you’ve already done so at least once. The flagship product that is your cash cow (forgive the pun) and that everyone talks about is your purple cow.
So what’s the problem?
The problem is that most companies will do this only once: in their early start-up days.
As entrepreneurs, designers, developers, product managers and Agile cultists we’re taught to go out there, meet customers, discover their pain and make their world better. It’s a method that works in many kinds of organisations: start-ups, small companies and Googles. And 99% of the time its the way to go.
But there’s a 1% of the time where paying customers and end-users can’t tell you what they want because they don’t yet know they need it. For many companies, this “1% of the time” happens only once in their lifetime: the initial start-up phase. Some crazy entrepreneur convinces some crazy co-founder that what the world wants is X and they set about building it. If it works, they then spend the next 99% of their company’s existence iterating on that by talking to users. Sometimes the iterations are small (new features), sometimes a bit larger (new products) and sometimes bigger leaps (adjacent markets). But rarely does that spark in the initial 1% see the light of day again.
There are good reasons for this. If you have a market of paying customers, why risk it all? If you’re growing you need to optimize for efficiency and maneuver for market positioning and ubiquitous advertising presence. Being ‘crazy’ again is too risky.
But sometimes not being a bit crazy is the biggest risk.
So how does the workshop address this?
In this workshop we’ll be talking about minimising this risk in two ways:
Looking forward to seeing you in Boston!
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Clayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on innovation and growth.
Christensen has served as a director on the boards of a number of public and private companies. He is currently a board member at Tata Consulting Services (NSE: TCS), Franklin Covey (NYSE: FC), W.R. Hambrecht, and Vanu Inc. Christensen also serves on Singapore’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council (RIEC), and has advised the executives of many of the world’s major corporations.
Christensen is an experienced entrepreneur, having started three successful companies. Prior to joining the HBS faculty, Professor Christensen served as chairman and president of CPS Technologies a firm he co-founded with several MIT professors in 1984. In 2000, Christensen founded Innosight, a consulting firm that uses his theories of innovation to help companies create new growth businesses. In 2007, he founded Rose Park Advisors, a firm that identifies and invests in disruptive companies. Christensen is also the founder of Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank whose mission is to apply his theories to vexing societal problems such as healthcare and education.
Professor Christensen is the bestselling author of five books, including his seminal work The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997) which received the Global Business Book Award for the best business book of the year, The Innovator’s Solution (2003), and Seeing What’s Next (2004). Recently, Christensen has focused the lens of disruptive innovation on social issues such as education and health care. Disrupting Class (2008) looks at the root causes of why schools struggle and offers solutions, while The Innovator’s Prescription (2009) examines how to fix our healthcare system. Four of his five books have received awards as the best books in their categories in the years of their publication.
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A long time attendee at Business of Software, this year he has generously sponsored a scholarship for young entrepreneurs to attend the Business of Software Conference in Boston (24-26th October).
Well, the Business of Software Conference targets people who make and sell software for a living. It's a niche market. If you look at the other software conferences out there, they already cover how to make software, programming languages, how to make software better, how to sell a software idea to investors, and a million other technical details. The non-technical details, the stuff not covered by the tech conferences you see in the news, that is what you get at BOS.
The Business of Software conference is about the culture and philosophy of software and software businesses. We get together and talk about the side of business which is rarely discussed publicly. We discuss how to make software people want and find useful. We cover how to hire great developers and make them happy. We learn how to find and grow a customer base. We even talk about how we can be happier.
If you want to know how to be a successful software entrepreneur, make the world a better place, and run sustainable business, this is the place for you. It might not seem exciting in the Hollywood sense, but the content does inspire you. That's why I think young entrepreneurs would really benefit. I know I would have benefitted had I attended right out of college.
That is why I'm sponsoring a few scholarships to the Business of Software Conference through my mobile app development business, Moving Average Inc.
The scholarship gets you admission to the conference, which takes place in Boston October 23-26, 2011. You can find the details of the Startup Scholarship to attend the Business of Software Conference here. Please apply if you fit the bill.
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A guest blog for Business of Software from Ricardo Sanchez, leader of Ontechies.com out of Austin who is organising, alongside Jason Cohen and Zuly Gonzalez, the, 'Practice your pitch workshops' at Business of Software in two weeks. (Some tickets still available if you are quick).
Ricardo Sanchez:
Would you like to pitch your startup to a group of people and experienced entrepreneurs? Good news! The Practice Your Pitch workshop organized by two bright entrepreneurs (Zuly Gonzalez and Jason Cohen) and myself will give you that opportunity at Business of Software 2011.
How It Works
Four lucky startups will have the opportunity to pitch their startup to the workshop audience. The startups will get their undivided attention for 5 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of open & honest feedback from entrepreneurs who have been there before.
We will select the four startups before the date of the workshop in order to give them time to prepare their pitch. If you are interested, signup for the Practice Your Pitch workshop and contact me.
Why Participate
If you are a startup looking for funding or for people to work with you, then you need to have a good elevator pitch and there is nothing better to accomplish this than by practicing and getting feedback from other entrepreneurs. That is what this workshop is all about.
If you are just starting, finding the right name and logo, a perfect domain name, the right color scheme for your website, etc. is probably in your priority list. However, talking to people about your idea, asking them for feedback and being prepared to pitch your startup should be one of your top priorities. An opportunity to talk to a potential investor or potential co-founder could happen at any time and you want to be prepared with a good elevator pitch when the opportunity arrives. This workshop will help you with that.
In summary, having the ability to communicate efficiently with people and explain what your company does is key to success. Practicing and polishing your pitch will help you greatly with this and we are here to help.
Sounds interesting? Make sure you sign-up to present at the Practice Your Pitch workshop today and be one of the lucky startups to pitch and get valuable feedback from the workshop audience and from smart entrepreneurs that have been there before.
See you soon in Boston at the Business of Software Conference 2011!
Ricardo D. Sanchez
See you in Boston at Business of Software.
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Paul Kenny gave the single best talk about sales and software I have ever heard at Business of Software 2010. The audience of die-hard techies turned business people agreed. If you involved in any sort of technology business, software, hardware, whatever, you should make some time for this. It will increase your revenue and profit or your money back.
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What a great thought.
We had a lovely note from John Knox, founder of Moving Average Inc, who develop mobile applications for the Android™, iPhone®, and iPad® mobile devices, who has been a long time attendee at Business of Software. He has clearly been putting what he has learned to good use and in the spirit of helping others he wrote,
"BoS would have been a life-changing experience for me right out of college. I was hoping that you folks might already have some potential candidates. 🙂 If it's not too late, can I help contribute some funds?"
John, thank you from all of us. What a great thought. We want to make your scholarship money available to four founders of software businesses in the Boston area who are: able to attend the event on October 24-26; are less than two years out of college or didn't do college because they wanted to do something entrepreneurial; are unfunded; would not otherwise be able to attend Business of Software.
If you fit the criteria, and would like to come, please email me directly by October 11th at mark @ businessofsoftware . org Tell us what you are doing and what you hope to get out of coming. We will be in touch on October 12th to get the winners signed up.
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A great thought from Auren Hoffman, CEO of Rapleaf in his blog, Summation. Go and read the full post, the table is just a taster.
"Here are some things that will be less valued in the future and some things that will be more valued:
| Less-valued | More-valued | Why? |
| General knowledge | Judgment | Search engines will be attached to our brain |
| Knowing more than one major spoken language |
Sales in any language | We’ll have universal translators |
| Coding | Art | Building things will be much easier. Designing aesthetics will always be hard. |
| SAT scores | Combining left-brained and right-brained thinking |
Systems-thinking will be easier to outsource |
| Majoring in business | Majoring in philosophy | Learning to “think” will be more valued that just learning |
Reminds me of Seth Godin's answer to a question from the audience at last year's Business of Software Conference where he stated baldly, (no pun intended but now I come to think about it):
"If there’s any job that could be written down, it gets done by freelancer. Because if we can write down exactly what we want, why on earth we need a brilliant person to do it? We get a competent person to do it. There are no competent people that work at our company."
Business of Software 2011, Boston, MA, October 24-26th 2011 https://businessofsoftware.org For people growing sustainable, profitable, software businesses. If you book by 13th October and use the code, BoSAug, you will save $350 on the full ticket price.
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This is a great talk because it explains why ‘company culture’ is an important thing in any business, the five principle kinds of company culture, and what you can, and cannot do to manage company culture successfully.
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“I have to say if I have, to be in a business during this economy, I would want to be in a software business. A service led software business. Because it’s the most flexible. It’s the most, it can run to value faster than anything else on the planet.”
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Seems that Cambridge England is sending more people to BoS this year than are coming from Boston. That might just be something to do with the fact that Red Gate and the BLN, who run the event, are Cambridge based. By the way Toronto, you rock! Thanks for makeing the effort!
Fantastic to see Moscow, Sydney, Christchurch, Dublin, Tartu, Edinburgh and other places so well represented. Bring it on!
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As Business of Software has developed over the years, more and more organisations have asked how they can sponsor the event.
The simple answer is we have never taken sponsorship at the event as we have always been concerned that it will change the nature of what we are doing. Business of Software is the antithesis of the kind of event I went to recently where a dull session ended with the announcement that after the break there would be the, 'sponsor panel'. This consisted of four marketing/sales managers from the largest sponsors of the event talking about something. I don't know what, and neither did 180 of the 200 or so delegates who chose to carry on networking while the panel blew its course. This kind of thing doesn't do a sponsor any good and it doesn't do anything for the reputation of an event.
There has to be a better way of running and sponsoring events. Sponsors ultimately reduce the cost of events for delegates. We want to find a better way to help make Business of Software sustainable in the long term, help interesting organisations reach get known by our delegates and readers and allow us to invest in the long term future of the business. We think that is a good thing for everyone.
Organisations want to sponsor Business of Software because we have an extraordinary group of decision-making delegates and a blog that is read by people that matter. We want to let more people to share the learning from Business of Software and have been considering the possibility of live streaming the event this year.
This year, we are going to offer a single option for sponsorship of Business of Software. Sponsors will never have control of the content of the event. If you would be interested in raising your profile at Business of Software, please get in touch. We don't sell speaking slots, but we would love you to help us spread the BoS word more widely and raise your profile.
Business of Software Sponsorship Package
Please contact me directly if you would like to discuss further mark.littlewood@businessofsoftware.org
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Date and venue: October 24th-26th 2011 at the World Trade Center, Boston.
Workshops: Running on Monday afternoon and Wednesday lunchtime/early afternoon. List of workshops here. Long list with details of Monday workshops here. Long list with details of Wednesday workshops here. Help with workshop registration here.
Want to make music with the BoS BOS Big Band on Monday night? Sign up here.
Business of Software 2011 on LinkedIn and Lanyrd.
Accommodation: The conference hotel is the Seaport. There is very little space left so act soon or you will be relying on AirBnB.
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Please take a moment to let others know you are coming and add your name to the LinkedIn and Lanyrd event pages. You will be able to see who else is coming and identify people that you want to spend time with at the conference.
We also have a BoSConference Twitter account where you can follow latest news about the event.
You can also follow a list of some of the #BoS2011 attendees. If you are coming and want to be added to the list, send a message to @bosconference.
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Quick reminder to let you know you should be booking your hotel accommodation at the Seaport Hotel if you are planning on staying there. With over a month to go the the conference, we have exceeded our allocation on a few nights of the conference already and have less than 10 rooms available at best on any night. (You can of course choose to stay elsewhere but don't leave it too late to book accommodation. Boston is a great place to visit and this is a busy time of year).
Business of Software 2011, Boston, MA, October 24-26th2011https://businessofsoftware.org For people growing sustainable, profitable, software businesses.
Don't forget, if you haven't yet booked your place, if you book by 22nd September and use the code, BoSSep, you will save $450 on the full ticket price.
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