Comments on: Business of Software 2009: Excellent

By: David Archer

David Archer — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:16:19 +0000

Thanks for the summary Kyle. I thoroughly enjoyed the conference and experience, and the excellent line up of speakers did not disappoint. However, it was the unexpected sessions that gave me a surprise.

Who would have thought a software developer would get anything of value from Jennifer Aackers talk on Beyond Happiness? I found myself scribbling away madly during the talk, and was thoroughly engaged. No mean feat at the end of the day following on from Kathy Sierra! Realising the the entire software process was actually all about the experience of happiness, both for those designing, building and marketing, through to the end user experience.

Paul Kenny’s talk on embracing your inner salesman, and Michael Lopp’s talk on ‘communicating’, delegating and strategic direction were both wake up calls for me to re-evaluate my working process.

Thanks to the organisers for having the vision to include some left field topics.

By: Kyle Cordes

Kyle Cordes — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:48:19 +0000

I believe the conference organizers plan to make some (or all?) of the talks available online. Keep an eye on the conference web site.

By: disinter

disinter — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 03:46:51 +0000

The conference was great!

Does anyone know if video of Geoffrey Moore’s talk is anywhere?

By: Christopher Baus

Christopher Baus — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:48:04 +0000

I agree on Ryan Carson’s talk. I was rather skeptical going in, but I was blown away. I came back to the office and gave an overview of the conference and focused on this talk.

I overhead others at the conference who had mixed feelings about it. I think many are massively underestimated the amount of productivity that can be gained when people are happy.

Plus to be honest, you could pay me less by providing a better working environment. The reason is that I spend an enormous amount time working, and hence a better work environment is worth a lot to me. It seems the current trend is to cut back amenities, but that just makes me want to go home to my two monitors, killer stereo, and Mac, and not work more in the office.

This is a zen approach, but sometimes doing “less” can actually create more value.

I also felt that Clayton’s talk focused too much on “hit and run” marketing. This might work, but it was against the spirit of the conference.

But overall a huge thumbs on the conference. I loved it. I think I sold my entire office on going next year.

By: Darren Miller

Darren Miller — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:41:04 +0000

Thanks for the summary Kyle. I too really enjoyed the conference and hope to take some time to go through my notes and re-digest (so to speak) the huge amount of content I was exposed to. From my point of view the best talk was from Paul Kenny. This is because he had a single really strong theme/message that he discussed and he approached this from various angles and with various examples for an entire hour. Dharmesh and Joel were also terrific because their content was very relevant to where I am at with my product and business. Thanks to all the speakers – the overall quality was top notch.

By: Dharmesh Shah

Dharmesh Shah — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:12:06 +0000

Thanks for posting your review.

I agree with most of your points.

I really liked Geoff Moore a lot, but I found I got more value out of Kathy Sierra’s presentation. Could be because I’d been exposed to Moore’s ideas for some time now (through his books), but Kathy’s content was different — and still very useful.

Question: Anything you would have changed about my presentation (“inbound marketing/sales”) that would have made it more useful to you? Always looking for feedback.

Hope to see you at the Boston conference.

Cheers,
Dharmesh Shah