Post MicroConf 2013 thoughts

When Rob Walling and I put together the first MicroConf in 2011, we knew what we wanted to do, but weren’t quite sure if we could pull it off. Start to finish, we put it together in about 10 weeks. The following year, we gave ourselves six months and it still seemed like everything came…

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Free ticket to MicroConf from Microsoft

One of the single, best experiences I have each year comes out of MicroConf, the conference for self-funded and bootstrapped startups that I put together with Rob Walling. If you’re extremely serious about building your software business, this is the place to be. In just two years, MicroConf went from being a completely unknown conference,…

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How my product could have prevented Adobe from being hacked

One of my podcast listeners forwarded me an interesting article from Adobe Software about how they had been hacked. It turns out that Adobe had a build server in their environment which had been compromised. This build server had apparently not followed their corporate standards for security, so when this server was deployed it was…

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Your opinions are hurting other entrepreneurs

Last year at the Business of Software conference, I found myself in several conversations where I was either asking for an opinion on one of my ideas or giving an opinion on someone else’s. I thought I was being a good conference attendee. I thought I was offering people a different perspective and expanding the number…

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Amateurs Study Tactics. Professionals Study Logistics

A good friend of mine who owns the Ben & Jerry’s in Saratoga Springs, NY once told me: Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics. It’s interesting that so many people are looking for tactics to get ahead and do a better job than someone else. As if there’s some magical thing that you can do…

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Marketing Monday

As part of my speech at MicroConf 2012, I took a look at putting together processes for your business that can help you to get more things done. I actually think that Patrick McKenzie said it a lot better than I did during his speech, so I’ll blatantly steal borrow a line from him: A…

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MicroConf 2012 Review

I can’t begin to describe the feelings I have now that MicroConf is over. But I’m going to try anyway. MicroConf 2012 was somehow better than last year. I spoke with several others and we couldn’t quite pinpoint why, but it was better. We upgraded the venue, we seriously upgraded the Monday night party (Thank…

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New Laptop

Back in August, I was doing some work in a hotel room on my laptop and things started going “weird”. The system would appear to freeze up a bit, or the colors would go all trippy, or windows wouldn’t refresh. After five or ten seconds, I would see the following error message: “Display driver has…

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Developer Fail

As you can see from the date of this post and the date of the previous post (about 5.5 months between them), my goal of getting AuditShark to alpha status at the end of July was, needless to say, a bit late. In fact, I wasn’t particularly thrilled by the sound of that self-imposed deadline…

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MicroConf: How it all went down

About three months ago, Rob Walling and I announced that MicroConf was coming to the Riviera in Las Vegas. Two weeks ago, it happened. And more than 100 people descended on the hotel for a conference we put together from beginning to end in a mere three months. If I saw you there, then I…

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