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 24-26^th2011https://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.

Here are some instructions to help you register for the event workshops. I am sorry there are a few clicks involved. We will not be using the same registration software (RegOnline) next year.

From your confirmation email, ‘Click here’ to review your detailed event record. If you don't have a confirmation email handy, go direct to the site and you will be asked for an email and password. 

When you are logged in, click, ‘Change your registration.’

Then click, ‘Event Fees.’ (Don’t worry, the fees are set at zero). Workshops are a part of the conference, the event management software just doesn’t understand…).

Choose one workshop on the Monday, and one workshop on the Wednesday (or leave the session blank if you don’t want/can’t attend a session.

Click ‘Continue’ Will ask you to click continue to save.

Click ‘Continue’ Fees will be $0. Click Finish.



You are now done. Sorry it was not simple. You will now receive a confirmation email.

The folk at Cambridge University Entrepreneurs asked me to jot a few words down about what I expect from a business plan

I decided to draw some pictures too.

You can download my rant from http://dontmakemyeyesbleed.com (warning – it containts mild nudity and violence)

Here is the final list of Business of Software Workshops.

If you are already registered for the conference, you should go and register for your first choice as soon as you can. As these are workshops, space is limited and demand is likely to be high. You can sign up for the workshops by editing your agenda settings.

For instructions on how to register for the workshops, see here.

Please note that the workshops will be allocated on a first come first served basis so make your choice quickly!

Monday Workshops – FOR MORE DETAILS.

• Paul Kenny,  Rewarding & Motivating Sales People.
• Peldi, 40 releases a year? No sweat.
• Alex Osterwalder, Applying Business Model Thinking
• Nemo Chu, How to Crowdsource Customer Support with Q&A Sites
• Richard Muscat, Inventing Purple Cows (or how to create Smart Ideas from nothing). 
• Drew Colthorp, Patrick Foley, Planning for scale
• Jason Cohen, Zuly Gonzalez, Ricardo Sanchez, Practice your pitch
• Erik Pelton, The Future of Brands
• Patrick McKenzie, SEO & Online Marketing 
• Noah Kagan, Underground tactics to grow your newsletter subscribers to over 100,000. 
• Guy Nirpaz, Using Customer Analytics to Increase Revenues of SaaS Businesses
• Ernani Ferrari, Workshop: Internationalization & Localization – Expanding software markets. 
• Rob Walling, Writing Game Changing Copy for Websites and Landing Pages

Wednesday Workshops – FOR MORE DETAILS.

• Jason Cohen, Zuly Gonzalez, Ricardo Sanchez, Practice your pitch
• Drew Colthorp, Patrick Foley, Planning for scale
• Chris Byers, Changing Horses Midstream
• Des Traynor, Customer Relationship Management for App OwnersNemo Chu, How to Near-Guarantee Marketing Results
• Paul Kenny, Sales Skills
• Beau Adkins, Setting up and managing a software project with Subversion and Trac
• Corey Reid, Technology hiring/building a development team & the challenges of technical recruiting
• Dirk Paessler, What do people do to keep their business _online_
• Elizabeth Ayer, Where it Really Hurts:  finding the pain of your present and future customers
• Ernani Ferrari, Workshop: Software Product Management – Maximizing investments. 
• Dave Collins, Zen And The Art Of AdWords Maintenance: from exploited to predator in three simple steps.

If you haven’t yet registered, get going! Hope to see you there.

Much excitement at Business of Software Towers with the news that Alexis Ohanian, (@knothing), co-founder of Reddit, investor, founder and all round activist in Hipmunk, (the only flight search engine that I can actually understand and a thing of such beauty that even my wife thinks it is cool).

Alexis gave a killer Lightning Talk at few years ago at Business of Software. We are delighted that he will be closing Business of Software and will be talking about how software makes the world suck less.

Reddit just got a great mention from Chris Anderson at TED this morning where there is a very active discussion about the best TED talks and TED speakers. I am really, really pleased to see that both Alexis Ohanian AND Rory Sutherland, who are both speaking at Business of Software this year, are mentioned in the list of top 12 speakers of all time. Awesome work! 

If you are planning on coming, register quick! Hotel space is running out and we have 40 delegate places left. If running out of space isn't bad enough, the price of a ticket rises on 21st September by another $100 so get going if you are going!

I’m a fat-ass Sumo….and wherever my fat-ass goes, it attracts lots of attention.

I’m so big my gravitational field literally pulls eyes towards me!  

This will be no exception at the Business of Software conference.  And perhaps I can share that attention with your company…..

Since I’m the Chief Sumo of AppSumo.com…. I know a thing or two about getting your company massive exposure.  

Interested?

Well if you wanna get your company more attention at BoS, then I have two important requests from you:

1.) Go to the BoS buffet quickly…because I WILL finish it.

-and-

2.) Send me software or memberships that you want given to all the attendees at BoS 2011.    

THIS CAN BE SUMO-SIZED EXPOSURE FOR YOUR COMPANY.

In case you didn't already realise…

A guest blog from the team at App Sumo. They want to let 200,000 developers and entrepreneurial people know about your software…

Eric Ries had a busy weekend as he launches his book, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. If you are reading this blog and you haven’t bought it already something is very, very wrong.

If anyone wants to get involved in the music at Monday night's event at the Whiskey Priest, please get in touch. We have a really good core of guitarists, bass, keyboard, bongos etc but would welcome more of the above or other instruments.

We need more cow bell. In fact, we currently have no cow bell.

I was particularly entertained to hear from Jeff Gibson at Intercept Solutions who sent me this picture of him at a previous gig in July. Jeff has since been co-opted, willingly into coordinating the music. Thank you very much. To be honest, I was expecting something a little more homestyle for Business of Software and if you play an instrument and want to get involved, we would love to hear back. Reasonable equipment will be provided on the day.

If you want to get involved ping an email to BoSBOSBand@businessofsoftware.org and let us know what you play.

No agents please.

A guest blog from Mike Hapner, President, Izon Analytics, LLC @mikehapner. Mike attended Business of Software in 2010 and was inspired to write about what he learned. Thanks Mike.

Mike Hapner.

First, a big thank you to @MarkLittlewood for letting me share this story.

For several years I had heard about this conference that a lot of my online tech/marketing/business heroes were involved in.  Right before the conference in 2010, I had just been asked to start a SaaS and mobile products division for a successful global mapping firm, so I figured it was time to make the investment and travel to Boston for the conference.  I expected to be impressed, but did not imagine the amazing impact it would have on my life and on the way we do business.

Those luminary people are awesome, but regular people, too!

@NeilDavidson started off the conference with something to the effect that everyone that was speaking was a real person, and were honored to be there… and that rang true for the entire conference.

@dharmesh Shah really undersold himself and then totally NAILED his presentation.  What a brain on that guy!  He really struck a chord with me.  It became crystal clear how important it is to track everything, and that it’s even more critical to use the metrics to make real decisions that drive customer satisfaction and other improvements.

@peldi Guilizzoni had already won me over as a customer of Balsamiq and had 100% impressed me with a service recovery via twitter.  I couldn’t believe I was sitting 10 feet away from him, and was blown away as he shared his success story in such a humble way.  Good guys DON’T finish last!

Seth Godin is probably my all time favorite marketer, and his incredible positive energy and insight did not disappoint. 

Joel @Spolsky was even gracious when I stalked him on a break just to shake his hand.  Side note:  He doesn’t know that whenever something goes wrong in Microsoft Excel, I yell “Spolsky!!!” even though he hasn’t worked there in something like 20 years.

Aftermath

After getting my mind blown at the conference, I came home and immediately devoured everything I could get my hands on that had been mentioned by the speakers.  This included a ton of blogs and the Inbound Marketing and The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development books.  As another aside – I’ve given away about 10 copies of Inbound Marketing so far.

At the conference, Dharmesh didn’t do a real sales pitch for HubSpot, but the more I started playing with their free tools online, and understanding what I was studying in Inbound Marketing, the more I saw the benefit of signing up and using HubSpot.  The thought of REAL, ALREADY-INTERESTED leads coming in on the website, and not having to cold-call and chase prospects is just so appealing!!!   With Hubspot’s help, we went from zero traffic to tons of the right kind of traffic and leads in just a few months, and are continuing to optimize and test our way to even higher conversion rates.

Getting out of the building

Once I had all this knowledge implanted in my head, it was time to start using it.  We had a working prototype of ourallinspections mobile and web software for home inspectors, but up until then, we had only talked to 2 or 3 real live home inspectors – shame on us.  Our little business development team committed 100% to the "Lean Startup" and "Customer Development" concepts that I had taken away from the conference.  Over the next few months we talked to 100s of future prospects and did no selling:  we simply asked them a million questions about how they currently did their work, what the big headaches were for them, and how they thought their problems could be solved.  I cannot stress enough how important it is to get out of the building and talk to real people. 

Product development

Once all of those customer stories started blending into a chorus of the same problems, we were able to improve our working prototype and get it in front of real prospects that could use it to ease the pains they had explained to us.  Because we had done so much Customer Development work, our prospects really saw how it helped, and how well we understood them even though we weren’t veterans of their industry.   This has translated to amazing results in terms of adoption and monthly growth.  We also made customer service our top priority, and really went overboard to make sure everyone was taken care of.  We’ve lost count of the times when customers "ooohh" and "ahhhhh" and shower us with praises, even when we’re on a technical support call helping them with a problem!

Product sales – FINALLY!

Now that the product is stable and our customers are saying awesome things about us, we are really making the transition to a sales organization.  The fruits of our early Customer Development and Inbound Marketing efforts are truly paying off.  In fact, we are so busy with customer meetings, tradeshows, and the like that we’re not going to be able to attend the Business of Software conference this year.  Bummer.  We’re hoping to be there next year, and even do a lightning talk – hint. hint.

Go to BOS2011.  Be inspired.  Try what you learn.  Be amazed.

@mikehapner

President, Izon Analytics, LLC

Eric Sink is the author of Eric Sink on the Business of Software and Version Control by example. He is the founder of SourceGear, a source control system vendor. He also founded the AbiWord project, and lead the team that built the SpyGlass browser, now known as “Internet Explorer”. He’s the first to have coined the term “Micro-ISV”. This is his talk about selling Teamprise to Microsoft in 2010.

Video, Notes, Slides & Transcript below

Jason Cohen’s Business of Software talk in 2010 was a cracker. As someone who has consistently broken the rules he spoke about rules and when you might break them.

Video, Notes & Transcript below

These are the winners of the Lightning Talk submissions for Business of Software 2011.

Thank you to everyone that submitted an entry, especially by video. We had a lot of fun reviewing them. I for one can't wait to see these talks for real.

Lighting Talks, in no particular order:

• Corey Reid, Freshbooks, Be afraid, be very afraid.
• Karl Treier, Prospect Stream, 20 tips on starting a business.
• Justin Goeres, JKI, Getting to nowhere.
• Patrick Foley, Startup success podcast, Microsoft, Confessions of a wannapreneur.
• Tyler Rooney, 4ormat, Things I learned the hard way at Amazon.com

The Business of Software conference will be held in Boston, October 24-26th October 2011. Use code BoSAug to save $550 on the full ticket price.

A guest blog from Shawn Anderson, 4 time Business of Software attendee, all round gentleman and president and co-founder of Admin Arsenal, maker of tools for IT administrators, a.k.a. smart people. Shawn shares seven top tips for getting the most out of the Business of Software conference.

Shawn is: blog.adminarsenal.com, @ShawnAnderson, shawn.anderson@adminarsenal.com

Would you give a total stranger $2,495.00?

Ridiculous question, huh?

For those whose bucket list doesn’t include “give that dude a huge check”, never fear, you’re not alone. Sane people generally don’t give money to someone without an expectation of a higher return, which is why your decision to attend BoS 2011 is so telling.

This will be my 4th Business of Software conference, and I, like so many others on this spinning orb we call Earth, have learned a lot from this annual meeting of software minds.

So here, in no particular order, are the seven things you can do to make the most of your BoS experience.

1 Sit at a different table for each meal

Breakfast and lunch are great times to meet other software pros, so utilize this time by mingling with many people. If you are so fortunate as to be attending BoS with others from your company, group, organization, charity, church, synagogue, or coven, then rest assured, you will have plenty of time to chat with them about what you have learned at BoS. Just not during meal time. Take the challenge to NOT sit with your associates during breakfast/lunch. Get out and mingle with the masses.

2 Listen

God, science, a photo-plasm explosion, Thor, or pure dumb luck gave you two ears and one mouth. So while you’re eating, do yourself a favor and chew with your ears open.

You probably face challenges that are effecting your company’s growth. After all, if you had all the answers you wouldn’t be spending your hard earned money to attend a conference (see paragraphs above).

You may be surprised at the number of people who do have the answers you’re looking for. Lest you feel like a moocher, worry not, if you’ve been in business for longer than a month you too have sage advise that someone needs to hear.

3 Don’t force the conversation

Hey, remember that time I asked you for $2,400? How’d that go?

You’ll probably find the same outcome if you sit down and start blathering about your feeble marketing, uncertainty about product pricing, poor cashflow, annoying partner, or that website redesign that actually ended up losing customers.

Remember the adage: “Me! Me! Me! That’s all you ever want to talk about. Let’s talk about you for a change.”

I’ve found a lot of great responses by simply asking someone easy questions like:

• where they’re from?
• which company they’re with?
• is this their first BoS?
• why did they choose to attend?
• who’s paying for it? (the answers to this question are interesting)
• what do they hope to get from attending?

Don’t shy away from the personal stuff. Asking someone about their family will also shed light on issues that you may have. Peldi Giacomo spoke at the last BoS and discussed balancing time with his family and business. “Work while they sleep… because they don’t even know you’re ignoring them”.  (https://businessofsoftware.org/video_10_peldi.aspx (at approx. 18:50)

4 Take advantage of the lack of electrical outlets at the conference 

After BoS 2008 I spoke to Neil Davidson (founder of BoS) about the lack of electrical outlets in the main theater, lamenting that my laptop battery wasn’t powerful enough to last the whole conference. I’ve since changed my tune, having learned the value of keeping the computer off. It’s just too tempting to check email or handle support questions.

I do take notes with my iPad, using NoteTaker HD and Mind Node. The iPad battery is more than strong enough to handle a BoS day without needing to recharge.

5 Introduce yourself to Dharmesh (sorry, Dharmesh)

Dharmesh Shah, the founder of Hubspot (www.hubspot.com), just happens to be the biggest reason why I continue to attend BoS. He’s a start-up guru. If he doesn’t know the answer, the person who does know it is probably following him (@dharmesh).

6 It’s not rhetorical. Try it.

Take what you’ve learned from BoS and put it to practice.

Some of the things learned at past BoS’ have been golden for us. Others have not been so golden. That’s OK. We tried them, tweaked them, and if they didn’t work, we stopped doing them. Through it all we remembered Dharmesh’s advise that most mistakes will not kill you.

7 Participate in the break-out sessions

My first advice in this article was a method to network with attendees during meals. The next best place is the break-out session. 

You will hear eloquent speakers and will soon have great ideas dripping out of your ears. Attend these sessions and learn what others have also discovered. Sometimes their conclusions are in contrast with your own (pay attention to these instances). Other times they will confirm your thoughts.

With my list completed, my parting statement will likely stroke your ego a little. (Just go with it.)

You are a genius. You either run a company or you are an integral part of a company. You have learned things, that when shared, will be the reason that other attendees shelled out their hard earned money to attend. They, like you, are up nights wondering what they can do to navigate the next turn, not quite sure what lies just beyond their view. It’s a scary thing to run a company. You need support.

So think of BoS as your very own 12-step software anonymous support group.

Hi. My name is Shawn, and I run a software company.

Shawn Anderson is president and co-founder of Admin Arsenal, maker of tools for IT administrators, a.k.a. smart people.

blog.adminarsenal.com

@ShawnAnderson

shawn.anderson@adminarsenal.com

By the way, you can save $550 on the ticket price if you book by September 1st and use the code, BoSAug.

If you are registered for Business of Software 2011, we want to let you choose which workshops we should run in the afternoon breakout sessions. If you haven't registered, what are you waiting for?

Please register your preferences using the SurveyMonkey form here.

We have lots of configurable space at Business of Software so we have some great options to set up workshops and discussions of various sizes that should mean that you get to spend some time talking and learning about some things that you really care about with other people who care as much. Please indicate which of these workshop sessions you would most like to attend by the 9th September – you can identify four. We will then take your preferences, juggle the space and the timing of the workshops in order keep as many people happy and interested as possible.

We will then ask you to sign up to attend one workshop scheduled for each session. If you wanted to make an additional suggestion for a workshop that you would like to lead, please send a note ASAP with a workshop title and 100 word description so that we can add it to the list. The sooner this gets done, the more likely it will be that folks will get a chance to sign up.

Workshop 1. Writing Game Changing Copy for Websites and Landing Pages. Rob Walling.

The best copywriters understand their prospect's mindset and craft an engaging story that doesn't feel like marketing garbage. People hate being sold, but they love to buy. This session will focus on how you can make buying the obvious decision for your prospect. In this workshop you'll learn the fundamentals of engaging copy, apply several copywriting techniques to your product or service, and emerge with a proven framework for improving your bottom line through game changing copy. Workshop moderator – Rob Walling is a serial entrepreneur and author of Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup. He blogs at SoftwareByRob.com about building self-funded startups and runs the Micropreneur Academy, an online learning community of like-minded founders designed to get a startup from zero to launch in six months. Walling runs 11 one-man technology businesses and has been building web applications professionally for 11 years.

2. Customer Relationship Management for AppOwners. Des Traynor.

Software owners are disconnected with their customers. Sure you can buy drinks at a conference or hand out 64MB pen drives now and then,but it's not a real relationship. If you ask an app owner to introduce you to ten of their best customers, most would struggle, grimace and then get a developer to break out SQL. Imagine trying to run a bar, convenience store, hairdressers, hell any service with that level of apathy to the folks who pay your wages. It shouldn't be surprising that your customers are willing to jump ship the second they hear of a competitor with a shiny new homepage. You never cared about them, why should they care about you? This workshop teaches you how to greet your users, how to get to know them and establish a relationship that will last through downtime hiccups, buggy iPhone apps, and accidental emails. A relationship built on real communication, real contact, and genuine consideration. We'll explore how to greet customers to your software, how and when to check in with them, how to encourage and reward loyalty, and how to measure the impact of all these activities. Attendees leaving the workshop will be freed from the thrice yearly email blasts, and will be focussed on delivering a compelling customer experience, one that increases retention and referrals. This won't be a botched walk through gamification & sign up hacks, it will be a truly useful and practical guide to how you can change your companies attitude to your users. Workshop moderator – Des Traynor is the Customer Experience designer at Intercom. He is an accomplished writer on start-ups and growing businesses on the popular Contrast blog, and is a regular conference speaker at events such as Future of Web Apps, MIX, CS Forum, MidwestUX, and many others.

3. Setting up and managing a software project with Subversion and Trac. Beau Adkins.

If you are running a software business, you deal with code. There are some great, free tools available to manage this important asset for you, but unfortunately some people in the field do not use them. Some people may not know how to get started, or which tools to use, or how to use it once it is set up. This talk intends to answer all of these questions. An attendee will receive simple step-by-step instructions on setting up a Subversion server for source code version control integrated with Trac for web-based ticketing. In addition, attendees will learn subversion best-practices for checkins, branching, and releasing. Workshop moderator – Beau Adkins, CEO of LightPoint Security

4. The Future of Brands. Erik Pelton.

The proliferation of social media, mobile applications, websites, blogs and keyword advertising mean that the interaction between customer and brands continues to grow and multiply. Each day it becomes is easier and cheaper to create or to destroy a brand. This workshop will discuss ideas for building strong brands today that feature input and output from reviewers, marketers, users, fans and more on a variety of platforms. We will discuss the power of brands to create emotions, passions,and user contributions and will review several examples including Apple, The Gap (a failed logo redesign last year) and Old Spice. Anyone with a brand; anyone marketing via website, blog, or social media, should attend this workshop. Workshop moderator – Erik M. Pelton. Attorney with 10 years experience working with brands and trademarks; blogger; creator of Apptorney® iPhone app for intellectual property professionals.

5. Zen And The Art Of AdWords Maintenance: from exploited to predator in three simple steps. Dave Collins.

Mistake #1: Most companies believe that theirAdWords accounts are reasonably efficient.

Mistake #2: Most companies believe that AdWords is a no-brainer; that with a smallish budget you can't go wrong.

Mistake #3: Most companies believe that their AdWords accounts do not waste money and opportunities.

Most are very, very wrong. Zen and the art of AdWords Maintenance will look at the three steps required to turn your account from exploited to predatory. It probably won't change your life, but can transform your AdWords ROI beyond words. Workshop moderator – Dave Collins, SoftwarePromotions

6. 40 releases a year? No sweat. Peldi.

Peldi will share some tips and tricks on how Balsamiq release updates to their software almost every week, with a big smile on their face. Topics include the obvious continuous integration, unit and integration testing topics, but also the more elusive "premature design is the source of all evil" mantra, which helps us split the work in little chunks and build community in the process. Workshop moderator – Giacomo 'Peldi' Guilizzoni is the founder and CEO of Balsamiq, makers of Balsamiq Mockups, a fun little wire framing tool for programmers, UX experts and yes, even business types. Balsamiq has been a bit of a poster child for anew wave of tiny but ambitious bootstrapped tech startups, netting over $1.6Min sales in the first 18 months of operation and gathering rave reviews. Peldi is a champion of the "radical transparency" trend that's sweeping the Internet, through his posts on the popular Balsamiq Blog.

7. Applying Business Model Thinking. Alex Osterwalder.

Practical application of some of the issues discussed in Alex's Business of Software talk. Workshop moderator – Swiss based Alex Osterwalder is a gifted communicator and the author of 'Business Model Generation', a book about business models that has sold over 120,000 copies. In the words of Fast Company Magazine in naming Alex's book one of the Best Books for Business Owners in 2010, "In Business Model Generation, Osterwalder encourages owners to plot out their business model using something he developed called the "business model canvas." It forces entrepreneurs to communicate their business model visually, which Osterwalder says sharpens their thinking and allows them to get what's in their head onto a canvas for others to see and contribute to. Once your vision has been exported from your head onto a canvas your employees helped to create, you'll have a business that can grow without you calling all the shots — which is the essence of a sellable company. This is by far the most innovative book on how to think about putting together a business."

8. Technology hiring/building a development team & the challenges of technical recruiting. Corey Reid.

Corey Reid, ChiefCat Herder at FreshBooks, will lead a discussion on the difficulties of hiring developers, DBAs, QA folks and other technical professionals. How do you find these people? How can you evaluate them? What will attract them to your company and make them want to work for you? Share your frustrations, learn new techniques, and discuss your theories on what works and what doesn't. Required reading: Joel's "Guerrilla Guide To Interviewing" Workshop moderator – Corey Reid, Freshbooks

9. Changing Horses Midstream. Chris Byers.

This workshop is about the difficulties and leadership opportunities that come from changing key leaders in the midst of a startup. Formstack was only a few years old when the founder had a great opportunity to create a new social media startup and move out of town. This left the original, semi-bootstrapped plain jane has some revenue company to find a new leader. I'll talk about the challenges I faced coming into a company with a pre-defined culture, finally gaining my own platform (thanks Spolsky for your 2010 talk) and redefining culture and the direction of the company. Changing leaders doesn't have to be the end. Workshop moderator – Chris Byers, Formstack

10. Underground tactics to grow your newsletter subscribers to over 100,000. Noah Kagan.

11. Practice your pitch. Ricardo Sanchez & Zuly Gonzalez.

We will invite 4 screened startups that will be given 5 minutes to 'pitch their idea', followed by 10 minutes of open & honest feedback from entrepreneurs who have been there before. We will select the startups to pitch before the date of the event and are currently seeking experienced entrepreneurs who can offer their time and experience to all the workshop attendees.

12. How to Near-Guarantee Marketing Results. Nemo Chu.

For some, marketing is like rolling dice. It doesn't have to be. I'll reveal my recipe for acquiring 3000 customers in 1.5 years for a new B2B app. The recipe is inspired by key principles in social psychology, lean startup thinking, and agile methodology. Workshop moderator – Nemo Chu, Ambassador at Bloomfire

13. Raising money or selling companies. Jason Cohen.

Dealing with investors or outs (it's a similar process), especially for geeks and boostrappers. Workshop moderator – Jason is the founder of WPEngine, the WordPress hosting company that makes websites fast, scalable, and secure, with tech support who live, breathe, and even debug WordPress. Previously he founded and sold Smart Bear Software (software quality tools, mainly peer code review) and co-founded and sold ITWatchDogs (server room climate monitoring devices). He's known best for the blog and podcast http://blog.ASmartBear.com about startups, marketing, and geekery.

14. Where it Really Hurts: Finding the Pain of Your Present and Future Customers. Elizabeth Ayer.

Most people can't explain their pain to their doctor, let alone a software guy. But if you don't find out where it really hurts, your products will lack a compelling edge. Come get some ideas about how to get the right people to talk to you, and how to steer the conversation away from software specifics. Workshop moderator – Elizabeth Ayer, Red Gate Software

15. Market Sizing Action Plan. Elizabeth Ayer.

Market size estimation is the foundation for most business cases, and shaky analysis can undermine your whole argument. This session will present an example and look at its strengths and weaknesses. Workshop moderator – Elizabeth Ayer, Red Gate Software

16. Balancing Short-term and Long-term investments. Elizabeth Ayer.

Urgent problems always seem to win out over longer-term investments. In this session, we'll talk about practical strategies for finding the right mix and sticking to your investment decisions. Workshop moderator – Elizabeth Ayer, Red Gate Software

17. Planning for scale. Patrick Foley and Aaron Schaap.

After you’ve proven your business model, you want to know that your technology can grow as quickly as your business grows. While you don’t want an over-engineered solution, you do need to think about scalability early or else your technology will be an obstacle at the most inconvenient times – when you are experiencing your greatest successes. How do you plan for scale? And what about The Cloud, doesn’t that fix everything? This interactive session will discuss scalability strategies at a level that every business person needs to understand in order to have meaningful conversations with their technology experts. Aaron Schaap is CEO of http://elevatorup.com and http://downstreamapp.com and has significant real-world experiencing scaling applications, mostly using open-source software. Patrick Foley is an ISV Architect Evangelist for http://microsoft.com and has worked with numerous companies building scalable applications.

18. How to Crowdsource Customer Support with Q&A Sites. Nemo Chu.

Our Software powers over 3000 Q&A sites, some of which belong to software companies. They think, "Golly gosh, wouldn't it be nice if our users helped solve each other's problems without us getting involved?" I've seen how companies pull this off (and don't pull this off), and I'll provide a blueprint for companies looking to go down this path. Workshop moderator – Nemo Chu, Ambassador at Bloomfire

19. Inventing Purple Cows (or how to create Smart Ideas from nothing). Richard Muscat, Red Gate Software.

Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki have done a great job convincing us that we need "purple cows" that "make meaning". But how? And how can we be certain our big idea will work? This workshop ambitiously claims to do just that: build you your very own pet Purple Cow. This is *not* your regular old brainstorming session. It's a fun, motivating journey that takes you from a user to a product. You will go away with a process that you can easily repeat back home; one that is focused on building certainty in ideas rather than on running away from risk. Workshop moderator – Richard Muscat, Red Gate Software

20. SEO and Online Marketing. Patrick McKenzie, (@patio11)

21. What do people do to keep their business _online_? Dirk Paessler, CEO of Paessler The Network Monitoring Company

In this workshop we will talk about what your peer workshop participants do to keep their your business running! We don’t want to be in the customer’s way: How do they make sure that a customer can send you money for your product at any time, 24/7, 365 days a year? Of course step one is to simply monitor our website, shop, downloadsites? But what else do you do?

Even more monitoring: Do you keep an automated eye on your shopping cart process, your automated logfile download and analysis, your build process, your unpaid invoices, your daily cash flow, your maintenance rate, your support ticket count, your data center room temperature, etc.? Do you have a dashboard of the vital parameters of your business?

Hosting: Where/How do you host your website? How do you prepare for disaster or total failure of your hosting company? Do you dare to use the cloud (and are you prepared for cloud failure)?

Payment: What payment methods and what payment processing companies do you work with?

Usability: Are you testing your sign-up/download, trial and shopping process with people who have no idea what they are doing?

Support: Do you offer 24/7 phone/email support? Or just 8 hours on business days?

22. Workshop: Software Product Management – Maximizing investments. Ernani Ferrari

Learn how to maximize scarce resources and investments in software products. Get key drivers to streamline communication and processes in you organization and along with clients and partners. Understand

• The software management cycle
• Traps software companies fall into
• The importance of systematic product management
• The objectives and necessities of the product management process
• The product management organization – approaches; product manager’s role and profile
• The eight key-information areas for research, mapping and analyses

Address key concerns with whom played as a product manager and director for many years and has implemented the process several times.

Ernani Ferrari, Chief Consultant of Mondo Strategies and author of the book Product Management for Software – Simple Processes for Great Results, the Mondo Strategies Guide of Metrics and Software Indicators (this one not available in English) and several articles related to software management. Ferrari brings 27 years of experience in IT, 14 as executive in some of the largest enterprise software companies in the world, having worked in 16 countries of North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and South America. Frequent speaker, helper to software associations and coach to software company’s CEOs, Ernani has worked with over a hundred software companies and provided consulting services since 2005 to companies like Microsoft, IBM, Totvs, Sonda and dozens of other large, medium, small and start-up companies, from North America and Latin America, focusing the three key-areas for the international software business: strategic planning, software & business processes, and internationalization.

Ferrari is a business administrator with masters in Production Management and in Marketing from Fundação Getúlio Vargas, the most respected management school in Latin America. His previous experience includes companies like Volkswagen, Ford and Boehringer Ingelheim and the production and delivery of enterprise software to over 70 countries in 26 languages.

23. Workshop: Internationalization & Localization – Expanding software markets. Ernani Ferrari

Ernani will share his experience and guidelines about internationalization and localization of software:

• Planning for internationalization – reasons to go across borders; approaches and requisites to make it happen; planning objectives; absolute needs to play internationally.
• Choosing your markets – critical factors to enter a new market; applicable business models; and requirements and special-care topics.
• The localization process – the characteristics of localizations; what has to be localized; and the several aspects to be considered and addressed.
• Key-phases for an internationalization roadmap.

Questions brought by the audience will be discussed with Ernani, who has worked around the globe.

Ernani Ferrari, Chief Consultant of Mondo Strategies and author of the book Product Management for Software – Simple Processes for Great Results, the Mondo Strategies Guide of Metrics and Software Indicators (this one not available in English) and several articles related to software management. Ferrari brings 27 years of experience in IT, 14 as executive in some of the largest enterprise software companies in the world, having worked in 16 countries of North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and South America. Frequent speaker, helper to software associations and coach to software company’s CEOs, Ernani has worked with over a hundred software companies and provided consulting services since 2005 to companies like Microsoft, IBM, Totvs, Sonda and dozens of other large, medium, small and start-up companies, from North America and Latin America, focusing the three key-areas for the international software business: strategic planning, software & business processes, and internationalization.

Ferrari is a business administrator with masters in Production Management and in Marketing from Fundação Getúlio Vargas, the most respected management school in Latin America. His previous experience includes companies like Volkswagen, Ford and Boehringer Ingelheim and the production and delivery of enterprise software to over 70 countries in 26 languages.

24. Sales Skills. Paul Kenny.

25. Rewarding & Motivating Sales People. Paul Kenny

26. How to present a workshop at Business of Software 2011 in Boston that really only exists for the sole purpose of being the longest titled workshop pitch in the entire Business of Software Conference beating those Canadian ninjas at Freshbooks by several words. Jeff Steinbeck.

Please register your preferences using the SurveyMonkey form here.

A guest blog from Patrick Foley who produced last week's entertaining, 'All hail the Wannapreneur!' video. Patrick is an ISV Architect Evangelist at Microsoft and co-founder of the Startup Success Podcast. http://patrickfoley.com/about/

We would be very interested in hearing from you if you wanted to write a post about how you can get the most from the Business of Software conference, what you got out of a previous event, or what you are hoping to get out of this year's event. They don't have to be love letters but this is hugely appreciated.

Patrick writes:

Thanks for sharing that silliness, Mark. One of my favorite parts of the conference last year was the fun we had while learning. Watch Patrick McKenzie’s winning Lightning Talk for an example. He conveyed an extremely useful point, but he managed to do it while being uproariously funny.

The earnest point behind my xtranormal silliness was inspired by Giacomo “Peldi” Guilizzoni’s amazing talk. About 16 minutes in (watch it now!), Peldi shows how his overnight success didn’t really happen overnight. He spent years learning and preparing (and getting his finances in order) before launching Balsamiq. That message resonated with me, because I would love to launch my own software business someday, too. Yes, that makes me a “wannapraneur,” but I’m enjoying my time working for a great company while learning about the business of software.

Jason Cohen would probably caution against that approach. Last year, Jason spoke about advice and the nature of learning itself – amidst the sea of knowledge and wisdom available, you have to make decisions and you have to act. You have to figure out what business concepts are meaningful to you, but the only way to really learn that is to do something and see if it works or not.

As you can see, you can get a taste of the Business of Software conference by watching the videos from previous years. If you didn’t attend last year, take an hour a day for the next week or so and watch a video a day. You’ll learn a ton. Heck, I learned things from Dharmesh’s talk that I didn’t even know were knowable! There’s a reason Dharmesh’s company, HubSpot, is so successful. You can learn from his success.

What you won’t get from the videos is the spirit of the conference. It builds on itself, so that it’s more of a conversation than a series of presentations. You don’t just get to hear these brilliant people speak; you also get to chat with them at lunch and between sessions. Because ALL of the speakers are keynoters, they want to hear what each other has to say. The speakers are some of the most passionate attendees of the conference. Because there’s just one track, each speaker references and builds upon talks that came before, and certain themes emerge.  One theme last year was measurement. Another was stories – Dan Bricklin had so many stories (with great pictures!) that he gave a bonus session during a break. Derek Sivers even scrapped his prepared talk in favor of simply telling his own illuminating story. Who knows what themes will emerge this year …

The quality of the attendees is as important as the quality of the speakers. There are plenty of good technology conferences, but it’s a hard to find a conference where everyone attending is working to create successful software businesses (as opposed to just writing cool software). You’ll chat with people having the kind of extraordinary successes you aspire to and the struggles you know all too well. You’ll be inspired, and you just might provide key inspiration to another entrepreneur as well.

Business of Software might be THE conference for serious entrepreneurs, but it’s not just for startups.

The principles of great software businesses apply equally to a one-person company like Patrick McKenzie’s as to a company like Microsoft – the execution is just different. So whether you are listening to Mixergy or being interviewed for it; whether you work for a tiny startup or a huge corporation; whether you are a wannapreneur, entrepreneur, devoted employee, or investor – you should change your schedule if necessary and find the funds to go to Business of Software. Register now, because the remaining seats will be gone before you know it. I hope to see you there!

Patrick Foley, ISV Architect Evangelist at Microsoft and co-founder of the Startup Success Podcast. http://patrickfoley.com/about/

Business of Software, Boston, MA, October 24-26^th 2011https://businessofsoftware.org For people growing sustainable, profitable, software businesses.

Dan Bricklin invented the spreadsheet amongst other things. In this talk he shares the knowledge he has gained from producing software that people buy for over 40 years. A brilliant talk from someone with absolutely nothing left to prove in the software business.

Video, Notes & Transcript below

Last week I adopted a word: http://www.savethewords.org/ You might want to adopt one too. My word was mingent. I was encouragd to use it where I could. I laughed so much watching this 2 minute video that I have the perfect opportunity to do just that. Not completely safe for work but enjoy.

This is a guest post from Patrick Foley, ISV Architect Evangelist at Microsoft and co-founder of the Startup Success Podcast. http://patrickfoley.com/about/

Patrick can be contacted at http://patrickfoley.com/about/ or catch up with him at Business of Software 2011 if you can wait that long.