business of software conference was a great success - pierre even took home a macbook air

I can't thank Joel Spolsky and Neil Davidson enough for putting on such a great conference. Granted, I was only able to stay for the first day of it, but if that was any indication, day two could have been presented entirely in Coptic and it still would have been interesting.

Be sure to catch up on what you missed on the Business of Software wiki and keep your eye on Neil's blog for video and future updates. I do hope you two will do this again next year.

I should also divulge that I'm a bit biased, as this was the first conference I came back from with a prize. Well, I didn't win it, exactly, but Pierre Francois did. Admittedly, whereas the rest of the presenters opted for intelligent, helpful presentations, I chose something much less useful.

Pierre Francois (of 74 Signals) gave a Pecha Kucha presentation (that's 20 slides with only 20 seconds a slide - also not pronounced like you think) entitled Keeping it Real: Starting, Running, and Selling a Web 2.0 Startup. A number of folks asked me to put it online, so you can find it all at 74 Signals, including the very first Pierre talk from 2006. I'll blog about the video of this most recent presentation once it goes live. I've also been advised to create t-shirts. We'll see...

The audience voted it the winner and Pierre walked away with a brand new MacBook Air that he loves almost as much as he loves himself, which is saying a lot.

i'm (pierre francois) speaking at joel spolsky's business of software conference

This is going to be fun. I was pleased to learn that I was accepted as one of the 8 finalists to speak (perform?) during the Pecha Kucha portion of the 2008 Business of Software Conference in Boston.

I didn't know what Pecha Kucha meant either, so here's a synopsis:

The speaker gets 6 minutes and 40 seconds: no more, no less. You submit exactly 20 slides. Each one is shown for exactly 20 seconds and then flips automatically. At the end, even if you're almost done and just have one more thing, the mic cuts off and you sit down.

It seemed like just the thing for Pierre Francois, Web 2.0 guru. We haven't seen him since BarCamp Boston a couple years ago, but he's got a lot to say (in exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds) about starting, running and selling a web 2.0 startup.

Thanks for the opportunity -- Pierre shalln't disappoint. He's genetically incapable of anything less than 110%.