Kathy Sierra is back at Business of Software Conference 2013. New speakers. Some potentially life-changing advice.

July 18, 2013 by Mark T Littlewood

Three more great speakers confirmed for Business of Software Conference (28-30th October 2013). We hope you will be as excited as us about the new additions…

First and second, Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek from Re-Wired Group will be doing a talk, ‘Uncovering the Jobs-to-be-done‘. You might remember Clayton Christensen’s talk a couple of years ago when he introduced this concept at Business of Software 2011 – it’s the idea that customers often ‘hire’ your product or service to do something different to the thing that you think. Bob and Chris will explain the idea in more detail and help us understand how this knowledge can help you build better products that more people use. Seems we aren’t the only ones that pleased they are coming – Jason Fried at 37 Signals tweeted, “So glad to see Bob Moesta speaking! Bob’s amazing. He’s going to blow minds.”

Thirdly, we will also be joined by the incomparably fabulous Kathy Sierra. Kathy has been thinking hard about whether she should speak this year. Last year, her talk, ‘Building the minimum badass user‘ received the highest ever feedback for a talk (and we like to think we set a high bar). She has been working hard on her book (it won’t be out before BoS this year sadly), but she didn’t want to speak unless she felt she had enough material to move the conversation on significantly. I never had any doubt she would but it was a source of celebration when she said she felt she had enough to come back. Welcome home Kathy.

Here’s Kathy’s talk from last year – Building the minimum viable user.

So that speaker line up is starting to look good huh?

  • Professor Rita McGrath, Professor, Columbia Business School: Dynamic strategy. The end of competitive advantage.
  • Scott Berkun, Author, The future of work
  • Jeff Gothelf, Managing Director, NEO, How does ‘lean’ work when you aren’t a startup? A practical step-by-step guide to making innovation better.
  • Dan Siroker, CEO, Optimizely, If data can help win elections, what can it do for your business?
  • Iris Lapinski, CEO, AppsForGood. What can we learn from a new generation of tech entrepreneurs?
  • Mikey Trafton, Founder & CEO, FireAnt Software. Recruiting & hiring a world-class team.
  • Dharmesh Shah, Founder & CTO, Hubspot. The Culture Code.
  • Mike Muhney, Founder & CEO, VipOrbit. Building sales into code.
  • Sarah Hatter, Founder of co-Support: Support is never, ever, as important as product development. Discuss.
  • Patrick McKenzie, Kalzumeus Software: Building things to help you sell the things you build.
  • Scott Farquhar, CEO, Atlassian: Leadership in crisis. When stuff gets real.

Perhaps you would like to speak and share something you care about with an audience of passionate software people? Don’t forget that we are open for submissions for Lightning Talks – details and entry here – don’t forget the deadline is 7th August.

Is there anyone you would like to see there this year? Is there a topic you think we should be covering in more detail? Is there a problem that we can help you solve – either in a talk or by connecting you to someone else in the BoS community? Let us know, we will try to help. One thing we have been asked a few times recently is software pricing. Do you know any tools or frameworks out there that can help people approach the problem of software pricing? Who are the best people writing and talking about it? Please let us know and we will share via the blog.

There is lots on the Business of Software blog that is new including Joel Spolsky’s talk from last year, ‘The Cultural Anthropology of Stack Exchange‘ and Bob Dorf’s ‘Customer Development, The Science of Acceleration for Growth Businesses‘.

Just for a change though, we thought you might like to look at a couple of things we found recently that we thought you would enjoy. Some of you will read these and change your lives.

We hope to see you at BoS 2013. If you haven’t already, don’t forget to book your place today.

Mark Littlewood