Bos2010

I was lucky enough to be at Bos2010 last week and still feeling a bit shell-shocked by it all. There are some really good write-ups here, here , here and here so I would like to list some of the personal things and less obvious things I noticed.

1. There is no road map. Lots of people gave contradictory advice on specific steps they took – Jason Cohen in particular summarized how he broke every 37 signals rule for success.

2. You need to know who you are dealing with. Several talks were very good technically but fell flat simply because they were aimed at the wrong audience.

3. Powerpoint is not a key tool. This was a talk to technically very savvy people and the talks were excellent. And yet they made minimal use of clever ‘Powerpoint’ tricks in their talks. One speaker sat on a stool with static slides and talked to his audience while another sat at a desk with no slides – he just talked candidly and engaged with his audience. They were the 2 best talks for me.

4. Sales is not just for sales guys. A key message from several speakers, especially Paul Kenny and Jason Cohen, was that sales and marketing are not ‘separate’ functions but part of everyone’s jobs. And in a small operation, the founders have the twin advantages of knowledge and passion.

If you attended the conference, what was your favourite bit?