Simply one of the best Lightning Talks ever from Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) at last year’s Business of Software.

We sold our first 100 Early Bird Tickets to Business of Software 2011 by the second week of April in 2010. We just sold the 99th ticket to this year’s event. We want to say a huge, ‘thank you’, to everyone that has signed up to get involved this year and offered suggestions, help and advice already, quite humbling. 

This is great – the word is spreading and people want to come back – but we don’t want people who were planning to take advantage of the Early Bird price to feel as though they missed the boat. Neil and I have decided to extend the Early Bird ticket offer give you a chance to book at the $900 discount price up until the end of this week regardless of the number of purchasers.

Cool! We just got our 100th delegate while I wrote that. Panic not! As long as you book by midnight PST on Sunday 27th March, the Early Bird price will stand.

 Early Bird tickets are now available until midnight PST, Sunday 27th March 2011 and will still receive a $900 discount on full the ticket price.

• We are delighted that Alex Osterwalder will be joining us at Business of Software. Alex is the author of, ‘Business Model Generation’, a book about business models that has sold over 120,000 copies. (Why? Because it is really easy to read, interesting and extraordinarily good). Alex isn’t even up on the web site yet but we know he will make you think about your business in a different way. Prepare to be amazed by the iPad App he is launching later this year that may even make me go and buy one. 

We have sold over 90 tickets to Business of Software this year – the first 100 tickets are available at the Early Bird Price of $1,595 saving $900 on the ticket price. One of the most common questions we get asked is how can we get there on the cheap? This is hard. This is a small event and the costs are high.

We try to keep the cost down but if you have ever organised an event in a venue of the type that we run BoS in, you will know it ain't cheap. We have also never had sponsorship for the event as we have wanted to maintain a degree of independence that this allows us. We also don't pack the event to the rafters. This means you get to spend time with the speakers and other people you want to meet. It is not the best way to make money on a conference however.

While the talks are pretty amazing (here is my take on last year), the real value is in the interaction possible between the participants and we believe that this will offer the right organizations significant return on investment. We want to make this an even stronger element of the event this year. The things that you can learn and teach others are the real sources of value and inspiration to you.

We are also trying to build the community of people who can engage with Business of Software – you can join us for example this Wednesday to talk live with Peldi, CEO and founder of Balsamiq. You can chat with him live on 23rd March at 10.00 PST, 13.00 EST, 18.00 CET. See his BoS talk from 2010 here and then tweet questions with the hashtag #BoS2011.

We will make a few tickets available to startups closer to the time but these will be awarded on a competitive basis.

The only way that you could guarantee a discounted ticket is to purchase an Early Bird ticket. This currently offers $900 off the ticket price though there are only 9 places left. The price of tickets goes up the closer to the event we get. My colleague, Anna is keeping a list of potential people who might be available to help at the event and this is also a way of getting involved but we have lots of applicants for a few places. If you want to be considered, it would be great if you could let her know what sort of experience you have and/or how you feel you might be able to help us in the run up to the event. Please contact her at Anna@businessofsoftware.org with your details if you would like to help.

One of the things that people have taught me at just about every conference I go to is the importance of measuring stuff. Yeah, yeah, blah, blah. I just learned a lesson.

We opened Early Bird Registration for BoS on the blog a week or so ago and sent our first note to the mailing list on Sunday. It has been a busty week and the steady thud of messages into my in box with the header,

Registration Alert: Business of Software 2011 (946196) Boston, Massachusetts…

has been fairly steady, but I didn't pay too much attention. We expect to sell the first 100 tickets to the event by mid-April.

I just took a look. We have 16 of 100 Early Bird tickets left. 25% of all the available tickets for the conference are now sold. My first thought was, I will take all the money and join this guy…

Oh look! It is Balsamiq's Peldi, 'relaxing' on holiday as only an entrepreneur knows how.

Then I remembered, I LOVE putting events together and I don't want to let people down, I am getting to hang out with this guy next week, and best of all, you can too! Tigerblood winning style (or something like that).

Come and join Peldi for our first BoS Speaker Talk on 23rd March at 10.00 PST, 13.00 EST, 18.00 CET.

Here is what you should do.

• Watch Peldi's talk from last year first or if you are lazy read this precis.
• Come and join the live talk, and if you want to ask Peldi a question, send us one to speakertalk@businessofsoftware.org in advance or take potluck with tweeting on the day.
• If you know you are coming to BoS and want a deal, book now.

• PLEASE NOTE, this is the time of year when time zones are a bit messed up as no-one can agree when summertime finishes and winter ends so different time zones put clocks back at different times. If you want to know when the live cast starts in your time zone, check the time in your timezone on this date!

We want to share some of the Business of Software love on the blog so that if you attended last year's event, you can get a chance to revisit some of the talks and think about how they impact you. If you weren't able to make it, this is a chance to hear some of the best entrepreneurs, thinkers and presenters in the business talk about subjects that matter to them and will probably matter to you.

Introducing – BoS Speaker Talk.

NB The URL to watch and talk live is here: http://www.vokle.com/events/10129-peldi-balsamiq-do-worry-be-happy

A chance to see some of the previous talks by some amazing BoS speakers, then get to participate in an interactive, live, Q&A with some of our favourite speakers from previous years. You will also get to hear and pose questions to some of the great people that will be talking at BoS 2011, 24th-26th October 2011. 

Our first speaker, one of my personal favourite speakers at BoS 2010, is possibly the hardest working man in Italy. He has created, with a small team, something so incredibly useful that the only person at Business of Software who didn't use his software was me, (I am not remotely technical, but after hearing his talk, even I wanted to buy his software).

Here's Peldi!

BoS boys and girls, your first BoS Speaker Talk is with Peldi Guilizzoni, founder and CEO of Balsamiq mock ups. You can chat with him live on 23rd March at 10.00 PST, 13.00 EST, 18.00 CET. 

Take the time to view Peldi's great Business of Software talk from October last year where he talks about what you should, and shouldn't worry about, when growing your business.

Now join us on March 23rd for a one hour interactive Q&A session with Peldi where you will get the opportuntiy to ask him questions about the talk, what he worries about in his business and how he gets to sleep at night – or anything else that you want to know about.

The live Q&A will be held on March 23rd at 10.00 PST, 13.00 EST, 18.00 CET.

The URL to watch live is here: http://www.vokle.com/events/10129-peldi-balsamiq-do-worry-be-happy

The URL to watch live is here: http://www.vokle.com/events/10129-peldi-balsamiq-do-worry-be-happy

You can submit questions in advance to: speakertalk@businessofsoftware.org

Or submit questions on Twitter before the event or on the day using the hashtag #BoS2011.

By the way, EARLY BIRD, $900 discount registration has started. While you are here, don't forget to go and see some of the speakers we have announced for BoS 2011 to be held 24th-26th October in Boston. The first 100 tickets are sold at a $900 discount to the full ticket price and without even letting the mailing list know, we have sold over 40 in the past ten days so get your skates on.

The URL to watch live is here: http://www.vokle.com/events/10129-peldi-balsamiq-do-worry-be-happy

Sometimes other people can put things so eloquently it seems a shame not to share. We were thinking about some of the value that delegates at last year's Business of Software conference took from the event then Zuly Gonzalez at Light Point Security – Making browsing the web a safe, worry-free experience – posted her take.

It seemed so well crafted, that is was a shame not to share it so Zuly is our first guest blogger of 2011. Thanks for sharing Zuly and look forward to seeing you in October. Early bird registrations have already started and you can save $900 off the ticket price if you are one of the next 75 or so registrations (registration opened Monday and we have 25 sign ups already so get in quick).

Zuly Gonzalez, Light Point Security. Thoughts on Business of Software Conference 2010.

Wow, where to begin…

I attended the Business of Software conference (BoS2010) in Boston this year for the first time. The Business of Software conference is a yearly event sponsored by Neil Davidson of Red Gate Software and Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software, where entrepreneurs in the software industry get together to discuss the business side of running a software company.

Attending BoS2010 was truly an amazing experience. It was an intense three days of learning from, and networking with, passionate, motivated, driven, and intelligent individuals. It was very inspiring, and I highly recommend you attend next year, if you can afford it (it can easily add up to $5,000 if you include airfare, hotel, conference fee, and other miscellaneous expenses). [I want to travel Zuly style! I think it would be fairly hard to hit that number].

The speakers included Seth Godin, Dharmesh Shah, Peldi Guilizzoni, Jason Cohen, Eric Ries, and Rob Walling. These are people I admire and look up to, and lil’ ole me actually got to meet and talk to many of these guys! How awesome is that! Probably the most surprising part was how humble, and easy to talk to these rock stars in the startup world are. Everyone I talked to was super nice, and extremely willing to talk to nobodies like myself.

I met lots of people at the conference, all at different stages in their business. Not only did I meet struggling startup founders just like me, I also met startup greats like Jason Cohen and Dharmesh Shah, and everyone in between. I especially enjoyed meeting Ricardo Sanchez and Steve Wilkinson, both of which I had previously interacted with online onOnStartups Answers.

It’s impossible for me to write down every lesson I learned, and every emotion I felt, but I’ll do my best to summarize the presentations.

BoS2010 Presentation Summaries

All of the BoS2010 presentations were really good. My goal is to eventually post a summary of most of them. Unfortunately, that’s going to take me some time, because they all contained lots of good information. Below is a brief description of each presentation, with links to the ones I’ve summarized so far. I’ll post more summaries in the months to come.

Seth Godin: Being a great programmer is no longer sufficient to succeed in the software industry. Creating a piece of software that works is no longer an indicator of success. Times have changed. And in a world where we are bombarded with brands and products, we must create a unique customer experience to succeed. Success in the software industry is now dependent on your ability to create a tribe – a movement, a place of belonging, a community – and lead it.

Dharmesh Shah: To have a successful software business, you need happy customers. It’s simply not enough to just acquire lots of customers – you need to retain them. And to retain your customers, you need to make them happy. You must measure your customers’ happiness level. Come up with your own metrics if you have to, but look at those numbers closely. Determine what makes happy customers, and what doesn’t, and adjust your business model accordingly.

Rob Walling: Most of us think that the number one goal of our website is to sell our products. And in a way it is. However, to best achieve that you must motivate a visitor to return to your website. Rob discusses how we can use permission based email marketing to increase website sales and profits.

Peldi Guilizzoni: As you run your business, you will worry about almost everything, however, not everything is worth worrying about. You should only worry about the important things – the rest will eventually work itself out. Peldi shares some of the issues that concern him, and discusses which ones are worth worrying about, and which ones are not. Peldi also shares some tips to overcome, and deal with, those fears.

Jason Cohen: From Geek to Entrepreneur. As a geek who has started three successful companies, Jason had to move from coder to everything else  – salesman, marketer, accountant, and changer of the pellets in the urinals. In the process, he found that some widely accepted advice lead to failure while trusting his inexperienced gut lead to success. He discusses six ways to figure out whether specific advice is right for your situation, and then work those lessons against the 37signals philosophy.

Youngme Moon: If there is one strain of conventional wisdom pervading every company in every industry, it is the importance of competing hard to differentiate yourself from the competition. And yet going head-to-head with the competition—with respect to features, product augmentations, and so on—has the perverse effect of making you just like everyone else. Youngme’s message is simply: Get off the competitive treadmill that’s taking you nowhere. Aspire to offer the world something that is meaningfully different. Different in a manner that is both fundamental and comprehensive.

Paul Kenny: Paul explores how to best get the customer talking about their needs, their concerns, and their aspirations. He discusses how to use our questioning and listening skills to engage the customer in a meaningful dialogue, which will help not only to identify an appropriate solution, but also to enhance the customer experience.

Eric Ries: The Lean Startup is a scientific approach to innovation. Most software projects fail. Most startups fail. Most new products are never used. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The Lean Startup is a disciplined approach to imagining, designing, and building new products. By testing assumptions earlier, faster, and with more rigor, you can improve your success rate.

Scott Farquhar: From Bootstrap to $60 million. Atlassian has been a successful software bootstrap, right up until they took $60 million in funding in July 2010. Scott discusses some of what he’s learned about running a successful bootstrapped software company, including how to pick a business model, how to get free marketing, how they hired 32 people in 6 months, and how they built a workplace that has won numerous HR awards.

Joel Spolsky: After ten years of running a slow-growth, bootstrapped software company that was profitable from day 1, Joel found myself running a fast-growth, VC-funded internet company that is actually trying to get unprofitable. Joel reflects on some of the differences and some of what he’s learned from going over to the dark side.

Eric Sink: What Eric learned from selling his company to Microsoft. Over the years, Eric was approached by several parties interested in acquiring his company. He learned a lot from those discussions, even though none of the deals happened. In November 2009, Microsoft acquired the assets of his Teamprise division. In his presentation, Eric shares information that may be of interest to others looking to sell a small software firm to a big company.

Mark Stephens: The software universe has gone mad, and you need to step back and re-evaluate big time. This talk takes a long, cynical look at both the past and the future, gives you some new ideas, and pose lots of those awkward, searching questions you try to avoid.

David Russo: The way a company sets itself up from inception to find, hire, engage, reward, and keep its talent plays a large part in whether a company grows, finds success, rewards investors and incumbents, and even lives or dies.

Dan Bricklin: Dan discusses lessons learned from his experience in developing VisiCalc.

Derek Sivers: Derek shares the story of how his company CD Baby came to be, and why he decided to sell it.

BoS2010 Resources

Interested in learning more about the 2010 Business of Software? Here are some additional resources for your reading/viewing pleasure:

Twitter

• Twitter list of BoS2010 speakers
• Follow Business of Software on Twitter: @bosconference
• Twitter search results for #BoS2010.

Flickr

• Official BoS2010 Flickr group
• John M. P. Knox’s BoS2010 flickr photostream
• Mark Littlewood’s BoS2010 flickr photostream

Official Business of Software Webpages

• Official BoS website
• BoS online network
• Social networking site for BoS2010
• Videos of previous BoS presentations

BoS2010 Blog Posts From Attendees

• Patrick McKenzie’s excellent summary
• Mark Littlewood’s notes
• Patrick Foley’s summary
• Patrick Foley’s lightning talk summaries
• Steve Wilkinson’s personal take
• Lisa Wells’s concise summary
• Mark Stephens’s day one summary

Registration is now open for the 2011 Business of Software conference, and the first 100 people to register get $900 off the conference fee.

Videos of some of the 2010 presentations have been uploaded on the BoS website. And although watching the videos doesn’t come close to actually being there in person, they are definitely worth watching.

Did you attend the Business of Software conference? If you didn’t, would you like to attend next year? If you did, what were your takeaways? What stood out the most to you? Did you share your thoughts on your own blog? Feel free to share the link with us.

We are pleased to let you know that the Business of Software 2011 site is now live. This year, the conference will be held in Boston from 24th-26th October and we are putting an amazing roster of speakers together.

Even more importantly to those of you who know and love the event, the first 100 registrations will receive a discount of $900 on the full ticket price. 

We can promise you will hear some of the most thought provoking, and actionable, speakers in the software business.

Opening the conference will be the legendary Professor Clayton Christensen, widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on innovation and growth.

 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.

His paper in last year's Harvard Business Review, 'How will you measure your life?', is a must read for any entrepreneur.

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.

Business of Software is a conference that has built an extraordinary reputation for putting world class speakers in front of some of the leaders of the world's most innovative software companies. If you are looking for inspiration from some of the best in the business, and to share some of your own experience with others, we really hope you will consider coming along.

Just to give you a view of some of the ideas that we shared last year, take the time (it is an hour long, but worth it), to view Seth Godin's hugely inspirational talk at Business of Software 2010 when he challenged the audience with the question, 'Are you afraid to truly make an impact?'

If you have been to Business of Software in the past, do let us know what you learned that has had an impact on your business since you attended in the comments below.

We look forward to hearing from you and to seeing you in Boston in October 2011.

Last year, Red Gate ran Springboard. We called it the accidental incubator – we’d offered free desk space to a handful of interesting people and we figured that we might as well formalise it into an incubator.

In true version v 1.0, lean startup fashion we just hacked it together and shipped it as soon as possible. We didn’t bother taking equity in the start-ups (this was about proving it could work, and we didn’t have time to sort out the paperwork), the mentoring was, frankly, a little half-arsed (essentially Simon and myself telling the start-ups ‘to just effing well ship it’ every couple of days). The speakers were fantastic though (Joel Spolsky, Peldi and Ryan Carson came along, among others), and the start-ups were great.

We took on four teams. One team – Tidepowerd – are doing some really interesting work with GPU computing and .net. Pagerduty went off to Y Combinator in the US. Some of the start-ups who inspired Springboard are doing well too: Mixcloud, the online home for on-demand radio, is connecting tens of thousands of DJs to hundreds of thousands of listeners; Rahul, Martin and Sam founded Rapportive and went to Y Combinator.

This year, we decided to do it properly. We’ve spun Springboard out of Red Gate. It’s being funded and supported more widely and is being run out of ideaSpace, part of Cambridge University. Jon Bradford, who ran the Difference Engine incubator in the North East, is running it now. He’s found a ton of mentors, and it’s going to be great.

The deadline is 20th February. You can read more, and apply on the Springboard web site.

What I enjoy most about what I do is turning nothing into something. It’s about taking an idea that most sensible people say is dumb, and trying to prove them wrong. It almost doesn’t matter whether it succeeds or fails – it’s about the thrill of the journey. The next step – turning that small something into a big something – is an activity that I like being part of, which I’m moderately good at, and which is enormously important, but it’s something which other people are way better at and enjoy way more than I do.

The first Business of Software Conference was in 2007. Over the past few years many people – Joel Spolsky, the team at Frosch, Anna Andersen, all the speakers, myself, and, of course, all the delegates – have been part of turning it into something much bigger and better than I thought it would ever be. But, selfishly, it’s not as much fun for me now as it used to be. And that’s kind of important. On the other hand, I want it to continue, I want to stay involved with it, and I still want it to be the place that people who care about building long-term, profitable and sustainable software businesses go to from around the world to meet their peers and listen to amazing speakers.

So I’ve taken the decision that somebody else should run organise it. Mark Littlewood, Darren Harper and the team at BLN have agreed to do this. Some readers of this blog might have met Mark at last year’s conference. He was the larger than life, outgoing guy, wearing a very loud t-shirt, who probably came up to you unprompted to say hello. I’m still going to have overall control, and will still front at least some of it, but Mark and Darren are going to take BoS to the next level.

Business of Software 2011 will be October 24th – 26th at the World Trade Center in Boston.

Watch this space for more news. We’ll be announcing speakers, revamping the web site and doing a whole bunch of stuff very shortly.

One of the great things about being part of Red Gate is that I’m able to support some really cool things. Here are three things we’re working on right now.

Springboard 2.0

Last year, we ran an incubator out of the Red Gate offices. We had a bunch of really cool start-ups and some amazing speakers (including Joel Spolsky, Ryan Carson and Peldi). It was a great few months for everybody involved. This year, we’ve decided that Springboard would be better run out of Red Gate. So if you’re a start-up looking for a kick start, then check out the new web site at http://springboard.com.

Wp7Comp

We’d like to find out where the dragons are lurking, waiting to bite the butts of Windows Phone 7 developers. So we’re running a competition. We’re handing out three $10,000 prizes for WP7 apps that developers love. In return, we ask, erm, nothing really. Just create something cool and let us know about it. Take a look at http://www.wp7comp.com if you’re interested.

mobile foo

A couple of folk here have been playing around with iPads for a few weeks. If you want find out more about what they’re up to, and be notified when we release our first iPad app, then take a look at http://mobilefoo.com

Red Gate was 11 yesterday.
Dom (aka I Drink Lead Paint) took a fantastic picture to mark the event. Even more impressive is his video of the photo shoot. Enjoy:

You can see the finished photograph, the full-sized video and the rest of Dom’s extraordinary photographs on his flickr stream. He is on twitter too (as @idrinkleadpaint).

Summary

“That’s how it is done”, is bullshit. Make up your own rules and understand that all advice comes with its own prejudices.

Dharmesh is obsessed by code and making customers happy. In this talk at Business of Software 2010, Dharmesh talks about why venture capital is neither necessary, nor evil, how value is created, why user experience is EVERYTHING and how Hubspot developed its key metric, the ‘CHI’ – Customer Happiness Index.

Video & Bio Below

Summary

The founding leadership in a business sets the world view, the tone for the culture that decides whether a business will succeed or fail in the long haul. Culture is set from the start, you can’t change it and if you try, you will destroy value in your business. Here is the proof.

Summary

In this session Paul explores how best to get the customer really talking about their needs their concerns and their aspirations. We explore how best to use our questioning and listening skills to engage the customer in a meaningful dialogue, which will help not only to identify an appropriate solution, but also to enhance the customer experience.

Summary

Most software projects fail. Most startups fail. Most new products are never used. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The Lean Startup is a disciplined approach to imagining, designing, and building new products. By testing our assumptions earlier, faster, and with more rigor, we can stop wasting people’s time.

Yesterday, Seth Godin asked ‘Whatever happened to labor?’

It reminded me of a couple of paragraphs in John Ruskin’s ‘unto this last’, written about the same the Brooklyn bridge was being constructed:

“We have studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour, only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men:- Divided into mere segments of men – broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself making the point of a pin or the head of a nail

[…]

we manufacture everything [in our cities] except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages”

Powerful stuff, and a partial answer to Seth’s question.

One of the speakers pulled out of BoS2010 a couple of weeks ago, leaving a gap in the schedule that I’ve been trying to fill since. For me, the best speakers at previous years have been those who’ve left my brain throbbing gently by the end of their talk. People like Geoffrey Moore, Don Norman, Seth Godin and Jennifer Aaker. I’ve been trying to think of somebody – they’re often substantial academics and great communicators – who could fill that slot. I’ve been struggling.

Then I stumbled across Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Youngme Moon.

I picked it up expecting a book like all other business books. It would have, I thought, a single idea that would have made a good essay. That idea would be padded out to 200 pages, because that’s the length business books have to be. It would include examples from WL Gore, Whole Foods, Best Buy and South West airlines. It would have a coherent set of principles and a checklist I could follow to help improve my business. It would probably do those things exceptionally well.

It didn’t.

It totally under-delivered.

But it doesn’t matter.

Why doesn’t that matter? Because it surprised me in so many other ways. It’s not a traditional business book – it’s a mashup between a business book and a reflective essay. It meanders between marketing and philosophy, spending as much time discussing what it means to live in the modern world as how to build brands. As you’d expect, Youngme talks about Google and Apple (how could a book that talks about brands that insult their customers, polarise consumers and revolutionise product categories fail to mention Apple?). Less expectedly – but still within the category of ‘business book’ she’s careful to keep one foot in – she writes beautifully and conversationally about Mini, Marmite, Red Bull and BAPE. But she also talks about Richard Feynman, the Onion and the Fonz. She even uses the word ‘motherfucker’ once. How many business books do that?

Youngme’s thesis is that the way businesses are taught to compete is flawed. We’re encouraged to talk to our customers and add the new features they demand. We examine our competitors, figure out where they’re better than us and then we copy them. We find out what our weaknesses are, and fix them. We repeat, repeat, repeat, stuck on a treadmill of incremental innovation as we try to become better, faster, cleaner, cheaper, tastier – whatever it is that our customers tell us they want. The end result is entire product categories (bottled water, shampoo, detergent, cars, beer, operating systems, accounting software) stuffed with thousands of near-identical, micro-differentiated products that nobody can tell apart.

Youngme thinks there’s a better way. She believes that the way to compete isn’t by being better. It’s by being different. The products and brands that people love are those that fail to give us what we expect, but which then surprise us in some other way. They refuse to be judged on the same axes as their competitors. They change our perception of what a product ought to do. Sometimes, they insult us. They cultivate their enemies as much as they nurture their friends. They’re flawed, and they shout about their flaws to whoever will listen. They polarise. They refuse to be bland.

Youngme doesn’t pretend this book is complete. Some of its ideas are tentative, and it has flaws. But rather than pretend those imperfections don’t exist, she embraces them. Youngme describes Different as a ‘leaky, leaky boat’. It takes what could be a weakness – its lack of absoluteness – and turns it into a tremendous strength. Sure, the book is ambiguous, its arguments aren’t perfect and it offers few conclusions. But that’s what the real world is like.

There’s no way I can summarise this wonderful book in a single review. Go buy yourself a copy.

Youngme Moon is speaking at Business of Software 2010. There are still a few tickets left. Book now!