Interesting list of the most active venture capital and corporate investors in the Internet of Things from CB Insights (obviously very US centric though probably not much different if it covered Europe too. Intel, Qualcomm, Cisco have certainly be very active of late).
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DEADLINE: 20th May 2014
The Lightning Talk Competition is coming to BoS UK 2014! We’re delighted to be running this in the UK because it has always been one of the highlights of the US Business of Software Conference programme.
The Lightning Talk Competition entrants receive a free pass to the Business of Software Conference they are speaking at, the chance to share an idea they care about with a live audience of 200 (as well as the viewers of the Business of Software videos which reach a very large audience worldwide), and the respect of their peers. (Don’t underestimate the last one).
If you want an opportunity to speak at Business of Software Conference, please consider sharing something you are passionate about with a great group of software people.
So how to do it? Lightning Talks follow a simple format – every speaker gets 15 slides and 30 seconds per slide to talk about a subject of their choice. The slides advance automatically. Warning, they are a challenge!
Patrick McKenzie, winner of the Lightning Talk Competition in 2010 (‘Hello Ladies’) and a speaker the following year (Engineering your marketing outcomes) was very clear when we spoke that he found the Lightning Talk to be the most challenging, (I think he said in fact, “terrifying”), by far. It is a challenge worth rising to though and Lightning Talk speakers over the years have told us that doing a Lightning Talk has been of real value to them – not least because those talks have often been a platform to a lot of other speaking opportunities.
Send an email to Hermione@thebln.com and enclose:
Your name
The title and description of the talk you propose
A link to a video of you speaking – ideally about what you want to do a Lightning Talk about.
We will review all of the submissions, and pick what we feel will be the most appropriate ones, to talk live at BoS UK 14.
To enter, make sure you send us your submission on or before 20th May 2014.
HOW TO PREPARE YOUR LIGHTNING TALK – THE ALUMNI SPEAK.
Lightning Talk alumni have been generous with their advice and support for anyone considering entering the process this year. Here’s some of the points that were frequently raised:
Treat your submission video seriously. ‘I filmed about a dozen takes of me trying to say it. The submission itself is work and you should set aside a few hours to do it.’ Tim Cull.
Practice, practice, practice – should go without saying, really. ‘Practice helps, but that’s table stakes. Everyone expects you to have practiced.’ Des Traynor.
Don’t get clever with powerpoint – ‘Your slides are context not content’. Joe Corkery.
Get feedback – ’you also need to have the support of a friend who will give you candid feedback and support (I would be happy to be that person for any BoSer, BTW, just give me a shout).’ Jody Burgess.
Prepare for disaster and be OK with it. ‘If you watch the video of my talk, there’s a point in the first third where I’m just standing there like a dummy saying nothing in front of a room full of 300 people. It lasts for about fifteen agonizing seconds’. Tim Cull
Was it worth it?
‘It was a great experience and a serious confidence booster.’ Jody Burgess
‘I got a lot out of the process, way more than just my linkedin profile picture! I got to meet a great group of Lightning Talkers, many of whom I’ve stayed in contact and discussed projects with. It was a great icebreaker to chat with other attendees and presenters’ Gregory Menvielle
‘First and foremost, giving a lightning talk is awesome and totally worth the effort’ Tim Cull
‘I gave a Lightning Talk at the 2010 conference and for me it was one of the absolute highlights of the conference.’ Joe Corkery
‘If you’re considering attending BoS, I strongly recommend you apply to give a lightning talk. I wasn’t sure I could do it well, and I’m still not sure I did, but it was a great experience. Give it a try.’ Des Traynor
If you want more top tips on preparing your Lightning Talk, then I particularly recommend these blogs as a bottomless pit of information and inspiration (plus they made me laugh):
Des Traynor: Talk: They’re all just perspectives
Tim Cull: How to be a Lightning Talk speaker
Jo Corkery: Preparing for a Lightning Talk
Go on, give it a go! What’s the worst that can happen in 7 minutes and 30 seconds? Remember the deadline for submissions is 20th May 2014.
This post was originally written for BoS US, but we are using exactly the same process to select speakers for BoS Europe, so it seemed relevant.
So many people have asked us how we select speakers, or how they propose speakers for Business of Software Conference that we thought we would offer some thoughts that are relevant, not just to Business of Software specifically, but to any approach or submission to a conference. We have seen some terrible proposals and some brilliant ones. What are the common characteristics? We get several hundred proposals a year. How can you stand out?
If you would like to be considered as a speaker for Business of Software, please READ THIS CAREFULLY before you send a proposal or idea as we don’t want you to be frustrated and we cannot deal with the amount of inappropriate inbound inquiries for speaking. We don’t have speaker submission deadlines but we have a very limited number of speaking slots and so we try to craft a coherent set of talks rather than fill the slots. If that means the final slot is filled two weeks prior to the event, so be it. Sometimes these things take time.
Business of Software isn’t like some conferences that seem to measure their value by (a) the number of speakers and sessions or (b) the number of attendees. We think these are absurd vanity metrics. Over two days, there are around 12 speakers. We try to curate a balance of perspectives that cover all aspects of growing a successful software business – culture, people, marketing strategy, growth, staying sane, sales – that are not necessarily covered well at other conferences where the emphasis is often on technology and finance.
For each speaker, we probably review at least 15 hours of talks – in person, online via video etc. We choose a speaker line up that we hope will cover the things that our customers want to know about. this often means making VERY hard decisions to cut potentially brilliant speakers if we are already covering the topic they want to talk about.
In short, the best proposals/ideas are short, to the point, evidence skill as an entrepreneur and speaker, address a point with clear takeaways for the audience and are ‘lucky’ in that they fit the conference agenda. The worst ones, don’t.
Here are some guidelines for submitting talk ideas that are specific to Business of Software Conference but having spoken to a lot of other conference organisers, this might give you the extra edge in getting a speaking slot at other events too.
This is really simple.
• SUBMIT a short idea for a talk if you want to give the talk yourself, not on behalf of someone else.
In 100 words or so, let us know who you are, what you want to talk about, why you have a unique or special insight into the issue and what our customers will take away from your talk. Why are you passionate about this?
[This is the format we prefer, respect the format that the conference asks for].
• SUBMIT a link to at least one video of you speaking
It doesn’t have to be a video of you giving the talk you propose but definitely don’t send a link to a panel discussion where you feature in passing. We want to get a sense of style, passion and content. It is exceedingly rare for a great speaker to have nothing online.
We like to be loved and we like to think we are getting the attention of the person we would be working with for something that we take as much trouble to put together as Business of Software. It is always great to see some evidence that the person proposing the talk has a clue what our conference talks about.
[Other events may not insist on video but if you have it, you will get double points].
• DO NOT SUBMIT an idea for a panel discussion, or apply to be on a panel.
Business of Software doesn’t do panels. It never has and has no plans to do so in the future. This usually means someone doesn’t understand what we do and hasn’t bothered to do the research. We have so many approaches like this we can’t respond to them all. We don’t want to upset people but we just don’t have the time to enter into the discussions – “But you should do panels!”, “But my CEO has a great story to tell”, “Their material is better in a panel format” etc. All great but please respect our format.
Our experience has been that people submitting panels don’t usually have a clue what Business of Software is about. Not surprisingly, this counts against you.
[Respect the event you are applying to. If it that obvious you don’t have a clue what it is about and how it works, don’t expect the event producer to waste effort in responding].
• DO NOT SUBMIT a speaking idea on behalf of your CEO especially if you are in marketing
(Or even worse, ‘one of our senior executive team’). It doesn’t make us feel special, it doesn’t make us think your CEO/senior exec team member/whoever, has a clue who we are, why we exist and what our customers want to know about. We cannot recall a single time when the opportunity to put someone on stage to hear about the launch of the new cloud-enabled (or whatever) version of some piece of software is launched has appealed to us. Ever. Sorry. Our experiences of this happening have almost always been sub-optimal in other events.
(And I say this as someone who is, ‘in marketing’. It does not mean if you are in marketing and have something relevant to say that could be exciting, then approach us about that. Just don’t ask your boss to do it for you – we strongly prefer one-to-one interaction with the speaker, not a 3rd party).
Business of Software has never, to my knowledge, booked a speaker on the basis of an approach from a company’s marketing department or PR Agency. We are human beings so we can’t help but recognise patterns. Sorry.
[There are lots of events that love working with marketing teams. Even those events are likely to take a direct approach from a CEO with a higher level of seriousness.]
• DO NOT send abusive notes about our lack of intelligence if you don’t get selected.
Seriously, don’t. It moves you from, ‘Interesting, wish we could fit them in this time but will call first next year’, to ‘Doofus’.
We get inundated with applications to speak, we miss a huge number of great speakers every year and this makes us sad mainly because we know so many potential speakers are both brilliant but don’t fit the agenda we have. Speaking slots aren’t like software, I can’t just sell more at zero incremental cost. We are always open to engaging with potential speakers through guest blogs too.
[I suspect this is the case with other events too.]
Follow us on Twitter @BoSconference for details and more updates. Contact info@thebln.com if you would like to submit a proposal though substitute ‘info’ for ‘berenice’ you should bypass any spam filters.
Many people are familiar with Business of Software from the videos of talks from previous editions, freely available on the site for the US event here.
This post is for those who are not BoS regulars and want to get an idea of the topics, advice and perspectives that we deal with in every event. We’ve picked a selection of talks, highly rated by the BoS audience, that deal with a variety of topics. But first, an introduction to our community:
Quite simply, brilliant. Not a talk about the mechanics of product development, but a call to arms for a completely different, user centric, approach to selecting the products you should be producing. Which, by the way produces products with baked in competitive advantage. Sound good? See more here:
Mikey learnt about company culture the hard way on the day every member of his 8 man team quit on him. Since then it’s fair to say he’s given it a lot of thought. Here he proposes a simple, 3 step framework for building and staffing a world class culture
Beware – Jeff knows words that could offend some, but his understanding of the pricing dilemmas faced by many software businesses is second to none. This is a sharp and funny talk on one of the most frequently requested topics at BoS.
Dan, a former editor of Newsweek best known for his ‘Fake Steve Jobs’ blog, gave us a brilliant hour on how tech media really works. The last 20 minutes in particular has some of the best, most actionable advice on how to engage the media I’ve seen.
Serious strategy for serious businesses. Some useful takeaways: there will always be room for disruptive entrepreneurs. The job your product actually does for customers may well not be what you think it does.
This is a small sample of the 60 plus BoS talks available to the public. If you would like some more of the highest rated delivered direct to your inbox, plus updates on the BoS UK and US events, then you can sign up for our free ‘best of BoS’ series on the BoSUK home page.
If you are coming to BoS UK 14 (and if not, why not? Just take a look at our programme and speakers from BoS 13!) then you’d be well advised to book your hotel options as soon as possible. Cambridge is particularly busy in late June with conferences and the University Graduation ceremony, and it’s not a city that is rich in good hotel deals.
Here’s our (not exactly impartial) set of recommendations for all budgets and links to what the good folks at TripAdvisor say
Budget:
The cheapest option would be to stay in Robinson College itself; we have reserved 100 of their student rooms, 95 Standard Plus Rooms and 5 Best Rooms (twins) all with en-suite bathrooms. Rooms are available for delegates coming to BoS UK 14 on the 24th and 25th June, for £69 per night we think this represents very good value for money. (The twin rooms are just a few more £’s) They are very basic but also very handy as they are on-site! Please use this promotional code when booking directly with Robinson College: 22325
Alternatively, quite a lot of colleges have rooms available for visitors, but the rules vary on whether you need to be connected with the university to book them. This site is a good guide to what’s available
Mid level/business hotels:
The Travel Lodge on Newmarket Road – It’s brand spanking new so should be pretty comfortable, modern and pretty good value for money.
The Regent Hotel is small and affordable. Gets good reviews (and burnt down – and rebuilt – about 6 years ago, so its facilities are quite new)
The Best Western Gonville is rather short on charm but generally well run, clean, good service.
Cambridge City Hotel (ex Crowne Plaza). Bit dated, but big and very central location.
Bit of charm, more upmarket, more expensive
Doubletree is right by the river, and close (10 min walk) to the actual conference venue.
Hotel du Vin is lovely and priced accordingly
Varsity has best roof garden in town and some stunning views from the rooms higher in the hotel.
Finally, an interesting alternative is a short stay apartment, such as this one which is very popular.
There we have it: hopefully there is enough variety here to meet all needs and budgets. Please note we don’t recommend sleeping on a punt – the ducks have a nasty habit of trying to come aboard at 1.30AM.
I honestly had no idea that my daughter had done so much interviewing behind the scenes at Business of Software Conference. Quite the scene stealer. This does a pretty good job of capturing some of the reasons we love putting Business of Software Conference on.
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BOS Summary – Complete Version with some outtakes from The BLN & Business of Software on Vimeo.
Ever wondered how big the Internet of Things? What will the market size of the Internet of Things be in 10 years? What research is worth reading? What research is worth paying for? The Internet of Things has got to a point now where more reports are being produced about the market size than there are companies being created. Panic not. This is normal in any emerging industry sector. Here are some of the most notable we have seen. Is paid research’ a la Garner, IDC etc the only source of useful information? Absolutely not, in fact, most of the really useful content is being produced and distributed online, for free. You could spend over $10,000 on this lot but you would probably be wasting money.
Here are some of the most notable efforts on the Internet of Things. A quick overview of some of the information out there with an arbitrary *-***** rating for usefulness and content. A wide range of useful and hopeless, paid and free. Any we missed? Any worth paying for?
Register for ‘FREE’ Trial ($499), download report, cancel ‘FREE trial’. Read generic report derived from lots of other obvious sources of information cobbled together. Don’t waste your time unless you want a quick and generic overview and are happy to pay for it.
Considers applications, attitudes of corporate players. Extensively researched (almost 800 interviews) and wisely avoids a ridiculous headline splashing, ‘the market will be worth X $Gazillion next year’. Hype.
“The five main factors that fuel IoE Value at Stake are: 1) asset utilization (reduced costs) of $2.5 trillion; 2) employee productivity (greater labor efficiencies) of $2.5 trillion; 3) supply chain and logistics (eliminating waste) of $2.7 trillion; 4) customer experience (addition of more customers) of $3.7 trillion; and 5) innovation (reducing time to market) of $3.0 trillion.”
Pretty good overview of strategic drivers behind IoT.
Global IoT opportunity is approximately $32 Trillion (Global GDP is approximately $70 trillion). Some good analysis of drivers, high level opportunities etc. Similar in feel to Cisco report though different charts. (also suggest IoT could add about $10 trillion of value to the world economy).
“Gartner predicts that the total economic value add for the Internet of Things will be $1.9 trillion dollars in 2020, benefiting a wide range of industries, such as , healthcare, retail, and transportation.”
“Digital changes the IT market in a big way through the Internet of Things,” Mr. Sondergaard said. “In the technology and telecom sectors, revenue associated with the Internet of Things will exceed $309 billion per year by 2020.”
(Reasonably well researched though very high level). Scores low as very expensive reporting. Almost nothing available that isn’t out in public already.
Another report from one of the big research houses. Typically generic and expensive. $4,500.
Noticeably less flashy than some of the big research house reports, Machina are the source of probably the best research on IoT issues out there. Very analytical but with a deep understanding of the space, they seem to understand what is driving the industry from the bottom up. Seem like they know what they are talking about and we wish they would produce an industry overview and distribute it for free…
Regardless of the overall numbers, and they are likely to be big, the only meaningful analysis of the opportunity has to cover Total Addressable Market, not the overall market size.
Big news for the Internet of Things (IoT). Wolfram Research, producers of of Mathematica have launched Wolfram Connected Devices, initially to allow consumers to choose the most appropriate devices for their projects. They already claim over 2,000 devices from over 300 companies in their system.
Managing the data produced by such devices in the wild is an obvious next step.
“We’re working hard to make the Wolfram Connected Devices Project an important and useful resource in its own right. But in the end our goal is not just to deal with information about devices, but actually be able to connect to the devices, and get data from them—and then do all sorts of things with that data.”
Wolfram Research has an outstanding track record of making data valuable by making it accessible and Stephen Wolfram is both a visionary and has a proven track record of successful execution so it will be interesting to see where this goes.
“Within the Wolfram Language we have a rich symbolic way to represent the world. And with connected devices we have a way to attach this representation to real things in the world. And to make the Wolfram Language become a complete language for the Internet of Things.”
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The world will be a better place now I can monitor my teeth brushing activities via a mobile app. Welcome the world’s first connected electric toothbrush from Kolibree. Coming Q3 2014.
“With its Bluetooth connectivity and unlike anything that exists today, Kolibree’s smart toothbrush has a unique technology to analyze your brushing uses and display your progress on mobile dashboard for easy access on your smartphone. With Kolibree’s smart toothbrush & mobile app, you can take control of your teeth & have a fun experience.@kolibree”
“Making sure that all teeth are properly brushed is critical. Kolibree might very well be the next evolutionary step in dental prevention that clinicians, who have patients that need to improve oral hygiene, have been waiting for.” Dr. Holly Hasegawa, DDS, MS (Seattle, WA)
Just what the dentist ordered an d just what consumers are waiting for to turn their daily brushing routine into a motivating experience.
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All together at Robinson College to connect, debate and learn from each other about the commercial future of the IoT.
IoT13 looked at the commercial potential of the IoT market, where it was headed, how IoT businesses are making money and some of the challenges they are facing on their journey.
Now we are planning IoT14 (see below), we’ve put together a selection of the highlights of the event, as rated by the people who were there.
It was a fantastic day, really enjoyable – you pulled it off in style. Packed audience, great speakers, great networking, and all very slickly organised. Pilgrim Beart, AlertMe
I met a lot of useful people, and I enjoyed the pitches and panels. Alex Van Someren, Amadeus Capital
I learned a tremendous amount at the conference and looking forward to seeing what happens next with many of the companies showcased. Ben Keyser, O2
The exhibition space was full of demonstrations and discussion among the delegates. Guests came from IoT companies (start ups to established businesses), investors in the space and larger corporate adopters. Among other things, we discussed some big questions:
The day also featured showcase presentations from some of the most promising businesses in the IoT: Good Night Lamp, Unioncy, Xively, Chirp.io, Concirrus, Electric Imp, Sigfox, Bleep Bleeps, Etherios, Thingworx, Berg, Clickslide Abacus and Datownia. Slides from all of our company presentations can be found here. If you would like to review the full programme for the day, it can be found here IoT13 schedule. The whole event was made possible by the support of our sponsors, committed to helping the growth of this exciting sector – BDO, Rackspace, UKTI, Taylor Wessing, DFJ Esprit, Erevena, Sigfox and Xively.
We are running IoT14 on April 15th next year, at Robinson College Cambridge. If you’d like to know more and get involved, the site is here. Questions to Hermione@thebln.com.