

Conferences should help hackers get rich, not hack more - marklittlewood
http://thebln.com/2010/08/amazing-event-and-not-one-of-ours-business-of-software-boston-october-4th-6th/

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jackowayed
Nice advertisement.

Can a moderator please change the title to the real title? 95% of the content
is specific to this one conference, yet the title is about conferences in
general.

It doesn't explore the idea that conferences should help hackers get rich at
all. It has one sentence that more-or-less states that and then goes on and on
about how great this particular conference is.

~~~
marklittlewood
I love the idea of this particular conference as the people I know that have
been to it, including the guys at, for example Rapportive, came back from it
with completely different views on the world and have been able to put a lot
of what they learned into their businesses.

That is, in my view, a good thing, and something that should be flagged. If
you think that is an advert, fair enough but I am honestly not aware of any
international class events that focus on the process of creating sustainable
businesses for this community. (There are obviously lots of tech events and
lots of events about raising venture capital). I would love to be taught
otherwise. I thought the idea of this list was to highlight things that the
hacking community and entrepreneurs will find useful. Some will, some won't.

~~~
jackowayed
I'm fine with it being submitted. I'm not fine with it being submitted under
the title "Conferences should help hackers get rich, not hack more", which
makes it sound like a general blog post about conferences.

Much more fitting is the real title, "Amazing event (and not one of ours!).
Business of Software, Boston, October 4th-6th".

Now, that's not a great title for submitting to HN, so I could see changing
that to "Business of Software conference focuses on helping hackers get rich,
not hack more" or something. But trying to pass it off as a general article
when it's not is clear link-bait.

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tonystubblebine
I see a lot of conferences each year and the Business of Software Conference
was by far the best one that I saw last year.

For the people here on Hacker News, it's a major alternative viewpoint on
entrepreneurship. A very large number of articles that get posted here are
tainted in some way by venture capital. There's not nearly as much advice from
bootstrapped and owner-operated businesses.

I went into the 2010 BoS conference wondering if 37signals was an outlier in
the owner-operated world. But after talking to a lot of the software
businesses there I realized there are many successes. I asked one guy how big
his business was, expecting him to respond with a number of employeers--his
answer was $100M.

Also, the speakers last year were fantastic. Instead of having to choose
between several tracks filled with un-rehearsed, amateur speakers, BoS gives
you a single track of mostly keynote level speakers.

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pclark
Hackers usually prioritise other stuff (eg: cool hacks) over monetization,
hence the allure of hacker centric conferences.

~~~
marklittlewood
Very fair but I think the point of this conference is that hackers can learn
business and then do other stuff and buy a Ferrari if they want to.

Business people can't learn technology so guess who holds the power?

(Although I don't believe people are put on earth to be rich. That would of
course be crass).

~~~
zepolen
> Business people can't learn technology so guess who holds the power?

That's incredibly obtuse thinking. Becoming a successful entrepreneur is not
as simple as 'learning business'.

While some of the best entrepreneurs are hackers at heart because they think
outside the box, many hackers are not entrepreneur material, they'd rather be
tinkering with stuff that interests _them_ , and for many hackers, business
doesn't.

~~~
alxp
It takes a lot longer to become a truly proficient hacker than most 'business'
people of an equivalent age have had doing 'business stuff'. So the ground is
less for hackers to make up when learning and gaining business experience than
vice-versa.

~~~
zepolen
I disagree. To be good in business, you need experience, which comes with time
and mistakes.

Hacking imho either comes naturally or it doesn't. If you can't see the appeal
of an apparently pointless activity eg. code golf, then you're probably not a
hacker, and never will be.

This doesn't mean you won't be a good entrepreneur - if anything it could even
help; since you don't waste time on silly (but fun for a hacker) things.

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mkramlich
great speaker lineup!

price a little too steep for my tastes at $2000

~~~
drivingmenuts
Perhaps what is needed is a conference about raising money for hackers to be
able to attend these conferences.

