

Favorite SUS presenter? - LukeG

Who was your favorite presenter? Bezos was pretty sweet.
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dkokelley
I haven't seen them all yet, but I did see and like David Heinemeier Hansson's
presentation. It was energetic, covered an important topic, and was
entertaining/funny (though NSFW at some points).

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samratjp
Haha, Bezos' fan thanking him for Gmail or something lost in translation was
the defining moment; although Bezos' AWS pitching to the ground made me groan.

Definitely, Hansson's was better; who'd have thought charging your customers
wasn't a bad idea after all?

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larryfreeman
I thought that Sam Altman's presentation was very informative. He gave great
advise about VCs. His talk fit in well with Jack Sheridan's talk.

For me, David Hansson's talk was pretty obvious but it seemed to be very
relevant to most people. It was well received by others.

I had heard Greg McAdoo's talk last year but I really enjoy hearing him speak.

Paul's talk was also very interesting about being benevolent as a strategy for
a start up.

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SwellJoe
Bezos was good, though it was primarily an ad for AWS. I did find him quite
entertaining, though. During the Q&A, when he passed the question on to an AWS
developer (I presume), the answer was painfully weaselly--completely without
an answer--and Jeff's response was along the lines of, "since that didn't
answer your question, I believe that means if you call him up he'll take care
of your problem". It was a very nice way of calling out his employee for
giving such a weaselly response.

Buchheit is always enlightening and entertaining, though this one was a bit
disjointed and far less polished than previous presentations I've seen him
give. Still enjoyable, however, and his insights are always...insightful. His
brand of dry nerd humor is very enjoyable, as well. He's also one of the most
arrogantly humble people I've ever seen--he's smug about knowing the limits of
his knowledge. (I mean this in a good way. It's a self-confidence born of
awareness of the limits of human beings, which leads to him being really wise
about a lot of things.)

pg was also a bit less organized than usual--it didn't quite hold together the
way his "Why Not Start a Startup" talk from last year did, or the one he gave
the prior year. But I think he's on to a really interesting idea, with his "do
good, and you're more likely to be successful" theory...I think his excitement
to share it led to it not getting the polish of his prior efforts (which is OK
--I'd rather have heard it today in a rough form than have to wait another
year to hear it in a fleshed out form--but I do hope there's an essay that
gets it perfect).

DHH was a nice counter-balance to McAdoo--I enjoyed both, and think very
highly of both. I think DHH thought he was saying something counter to what
McAdoo believes, though...but I've talked to McAdoo in the past, as he's quite
sympathetic to lifestyle businesses--his presentation was about VCs and what
VCs look for. They aren't after lifestyle businesses, because they would make
no money on them, not because they think you're an idiot for building a
lifestyle business. Anyway, it's a good idea to have two possible paths
presented.

I enjoyed Arrington. He was very forthcoming about the direction TechCrunch
has been going as it has grown--while the site is generally quite generous to
the startups it covers (and harder on bigger businesses), the comments are
almost universally hostile. It's one of the things that makes TechCrunch far
less enjoyable for me, and I was happy to note that it's a problem that he's
aware of and is trying to do something about. I found him genuinely likable.

The lawyer, as always, was painfully boring. The Wilson Sonsini folks are
awesome, and actually better than the non-WS lawyer talks I've seen, but still
quite a snoozer that early in the morning (and there was no more hot water by
the time I arrived, so I was running without tea...now that I think of it, the
hot water is always gone by the time I get there...three startup schools in a
row, now).

