

Ask YC: Anyone familiar with the Business of Software Conference in Boston in September? - edw519

Reposted by edw519 05/28/08 10:30 Eastern time - No one responded before, so I thought I'd try again.  Really curious.  If no one responds this time, then that's my answer.<p>I thought that Startup School was one of the best things I ever attended. Now I found the Business of Software Conference in Boston September 3-4.<p>http://www.businessofsoftware.org/<p>The speaker list is incredible. Some of them are Joel Spolsky, Eric Sink, Seth Godin, Richard Stallman, Jason Fried, Dharmesh Shah, and Jessica Livingston, among others. I think I've read just about everything these speakers have written, so naturally, I'm interested.<p>The price is $1400 if you pay by June 7, which is $1400 more than Startup School, but somehow I get the feeling it's well worth it. Between this fee, air fare, hotel, and meals, one needs to think very carefully about going.<p>I suspect it's aimed at a different audience than Startup School, so I was wondering...<p>- Has anyone here gone to this before?<p>- Is anyone planning to go this year?<p>- What kind of people would one expect to meet?<p>- What kind of access to the speakers could one reasonably expect?<p>- What are the biggest differences between this and Startup School?<p>- jl, do you know what you'll be speaking about? Perhaps a sneak peak?<p>Any feedback would be greatly appreciated to help decide. Who knows, maybe a small Hacker News get-together in Boston in September?
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spolsky
I went to the first Business of Software conference, last year in San Jose,
and thought it was so good I agreed to put my name on the second edition.

The audience is made up of pretty serious software companies... typically
companies that are quietly making money selling software that people actually
need, so they can afford to go to these conferences. I didn't see a lot of
flashy twitter style "eyeball-first" companies. I saw companies like REAL
Software, Red Gate, SourceGear and Atlassian, companies that making money and
hiring people and growing fast and selling software. Michael Arrington was
nowhere in sight. There were relatively few VC-funded companies and almost no
companies whose business model was to build a thingamajig, get on Techcrunch,
attract 10,000 eyeballs, and flip to Google... the cost of attending made it a
very very serious crowd who learned a lot and most of whom will come back for
a second year, I think.

If you're a serious software company and you'd like to learn from people who
have been in your position and have a bit more experience than you, there's no
better place to do this. The speakers are the least of it, since everything
they say can be found on the web in 30 different places. Personally I learned
the most from a hallway conversation with the head of sales at Red Gate where
I learned how (and why) to hire an inside sales department; that hallway
conversation was game changing for Fog Creek. If you like what DHH said at
Startup School about charging money, this is the crowd you want to learn from.

~~~
prakash
_I learned the most from a hallway conversation with the head of sales at Red
Gate where I learned how (and why) to hire an inside sales department; that
hallway conversation was game changing for Fog Creek._

Joel, can you please elaborate more on this? Maybe make it an essay on JoS?
Thanks!

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webwright
I've subscribed to the feed-- would love to go, but as a company that JUST
started "quietly making money" (Hey Joel!), it's a big chunk of money. Hoping
sales growth keeps up to the point where the cost is less painful.

