Here are my reflections on the recent Business of Software (BoS) conference I attended in Boston. First, this tweet summarizes what I think a lot of the speakers at BoS conveyed to us:
But passion is just one side of the equation; being thoughtful is the other. When you combine passion and thoughtfulness, you get art or human creativity.
The speakers at BoS were all artists, both very human and creative. My favorite stories were from:
But most of all, I was moved by Joel Spolsky, one of the founders of Fog Creek and Stack Overflow. Joel gave a very personal accounting of the founding of Stack Overflow and many of the challenges the idea and software blossomed. Several ideas rang out for me from Joel’s story:
Though each of the speakers was very different and had different stories to tell with different lessons to be gleaned, each of them showed us their artistry, which stood out because we see what they’re doing as true.
For me, this year, the Business of Software conference was less about any clever insight than it was an inspiration to continuously learn and explore how our software business is the business of life. It’s about people: Our customers, employees and everyone we touch. And how each of these people want to create value. That’s the business of software.