Business of Software Blog

The real reasons why you should be going to Business of Software 2010

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According to Mark Stephens, a BoS regular:

“The most important reason to go there, however, is that you will find 300 of the brightest people in the Software industry are also going to be there. It is your chance to meet up with lots of other people who might be potential clients or customers, but who will definitely have lots of valuable experience to share with you, even if it is only to reassure you that times are tough.”

And the penguins.

You can read more on Mark’s blog.

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How to persuade your boss to buy you an iPad

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When we kicked off our SQL Response 2 project last June, we decided to rewrite the product from scratch. Early on, the team decided that it would be web based. It would be easier, they claimed, to write cleaner code and create a more modular user interface. They talked about ASP.NET MVC, jQuery and separation of concerns. I think they mentioned that the flux capacitors would run faster that way too.*

Oh, and you’d be able to monitor your SQL Servers from your mobile phone.

Like anybody would want to do that. What a dumb idea, monitoring your servers from your Blackberry.

And then, six months ago, Apple launched the iPad. Monitoring servers from a mobile device suddenly doesn’t seem so dumb. But we didn’t realise that until Tech Ed a couple of weeks ago when Ben and Gareth showed SQL Response 2 running on an iPad to a bunch of DBAs:

They loved it.

If you’re a sysadmin, you need to be able to keep an eye on your servers wherever you are. You might be at your desk, wandering among your boxes in the labyrinths of your server room, or eating a sandwich on a park bench.

This is an argument you can easily, and justifiably, make to your boss. To make it simple for you, I asked Gareth, who used to run our IT at Red Gate, to put together an e-mail you can use. Just copy and paste this text, personalise it and send it to your boss:

“

Dear [put your boss’s name here],

Now we've deployed SQL Response, we can start to use the access-anywhere benefits of the web application. It needs to work just as well from the park or the co-lo facility server as from my desk.  

To do that, we'll need some kind of portable device with a rich web browsing experience to get the best of our investment. The selection criteria should be:

- standards-compliant web browser

- long battery life

- zero boot-up time

- wifi and 3G connectivity with VPN support

- touch-screen interface so we can re-patch network connections with one hand

Having done a full survey of the alternatives, it seems that the Apple iPad might fit the bill. Please can I borrow your company card to purchase one to evaluate?

Yours sincerely,

[put your name here]

“

SQL Response 2 could be the killer app for the sysadmin’s iPad. The early access program is now open to the public. You can find out more and download it from here.

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###

*Of course, what they really meant was that it would be cooler and more fun to build if they used some shiny new technologies they hadn’t used before.

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Don Norman at Business of Software 2009

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Imagine you’re on the first slide of your powerpoint presentation and want to move to the next slide. Your remote control has two buttons. They are unmarked, but one button points up and one button points down.

Which button do you press?

Now, spend five minutes watching this video of Don Norman speaking at Business of Software 2009:

The whole video’s over an hour long, but in the first five minutes you’ll learn:

• Why half of people would press up, why half would press down, and why everybody thinks their choice is utterly obvious.
• Why you have to design products for how your customers are, and not how you want them to be.
• Why making your product usable, understandable and emotionally satisfying are never your goals. They are never sufficient. And they’re not always necessary.

Didn’t watch the five minutes? I didn’t think so. You’re busy. You’ve got meetings to hold, e-mails to read, tweets to write. Five minutes is a looong time.

Those are lousy reasons.

Five minutes *isn’t* a long time. And even if I’m wrong and you did watch five minutes, I bet you didn’t watch the whole video. I didn’t. For all I know, the editor accidentally spliced porn in at minute 34. Like you, I’m just too busy to spend an hour watching it.

But we should have watched it and, deep down, we know that. If you’d watched the whole hour, you would be able to create better software. You’d have learned new things, you’d have had been entertained, and you’d be – just possibly – a better person because of it.

Here’s a second chance. Go and watch the video.

…

I thought not. Again, you’re just too busy. But if you spend all your time on the here-and-now and the urgent, you’ll never have time to do the important and the interesting.

Which is why you should carve some time out of your schedule and come to Business of Software 2010. You need to create a bubble away from your routine meetings, e-mailing, coding, and hiring and firing. Spend two and a half days talking with 300 of your peers, and listening to wonderful people like Seth Godin, Joel Spolsky, Dharmesh Shah, Peldi Guilizzoni and Eric Ries.

The early bird discount expires on July 2nd. One hundred and twenty five people have already booked. I hope you can join us in October, in Boston. Visit the Business of Software conference web site to find out more and book your place.

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Why grit beats talent

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Derek Sivers has a great blog post on his fantastic blog illustrating how talent is overrated, and why it’s grit that really counts:

“After 15 years of practice, and about 1000 live shows, I was finally a very good singer, at least by my own standards.

[…]

I'm really trying to be a great computer programmer, and so in awe of the people who seem to do it naturally. I'm just such a beginner.

It may take me another 15 years, but I'm determined.”

I used to think that the ability to program was something you were either born with or you weren’t. Now I’m only half sure.

We all love stories of the genius with the god-given gift, and creative people are never more creative than when telling their own stories (Michelangelo destroyed his early work and harangued his first biographer because he mentioned that he once studied under a master, all to perpetuate the myth that he was born perfect), but, as Derek eloquently demonstrates, the truth is often more complicated.

Derek is speaking at Business of Software 2010. The early bird discount expires soon, so if you want to hear him then book soon.

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Want to speak at Business of Software 2010?

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The Business of Software conference scratches a deeply personal itch.

I set it up because I care about building a profitable, sustainable and enduring software business. I wanted to hear from the most eloquent, most experienced and most thought provoking people in the world, and meet people in the same boat as me, struggling with the practicalities of creating a software business.

I wanted to create a conference where the speakers are guaranteed to be great, and have something to say and not something to sell. A conference which has no sponsorship, no clutter, and where the right to speak has to be earned and cannot be bought.

That makes finding speakers hard. Plenty of people e-mail me and ask to speak, and I almost always say no. I only invite people to speak who I've heard speak before (I've heard Seth Godin speak 3 times), who I've met and who I think will rock the audience (I met Peldi over pizza and a beer last year), or who have been recommended by somebody I trust (three people I know recommended Eric Ries).

But the best things in life are often the unexpected. Serendipity and randomness create more remarkable moments than planning ever can. That's why, every year, there are a handful of short slots available for people who I don't know; people who are not guaranteed to rock. But often, they do.

If you'd like a chance at one of these short slots, then go here.

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Something for all tech entrepreneurs: Paul Kenny's talk about sales at #BoS2009

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Paul Kenny spends most of his time trying to persuade sales people to be more entrepreneurial. But most people in the business of software have the opposite problem. We're entrepreneurial, but we need to more salesy.

In this video, Paul talks about sales stories and about how we, as entrepreneurs, can use them to bridge the gap between our technical insights and our customers' commercial needs.

Brilliant.

If you liked this talk then follow me on twitter, and check out the conference web site (there are other videos from previous years there too).

(P.S. The early bird discount for BoS 2010 expires soon. If you want to come to Boston in October and hear Joel Spolsky, Dharmesh Shah, Seth Godin and many others, and discuss the business of building sustainable, profitable software businesses with your peers, then take a look at the web site).

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