Business of Software 2008, day 2

Greetings from the second and final day of "Business of Software 2008, the first ever Joel on Software conference."

Yesterday was a hard act to follow, but today met the challenge. Today's roster:

• Steve Johnson, of Pragmatic Marketing
  
• Tom Jennings, of Summit Partners
  
• Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation
  
• Noam Wasserman, from Harvard Business School
  
• Mike Milinkovich, of Eclipse Foundation
  
• Steve Krug, author of Don't Make Me Think
  
• Joel Spolsky, of Fog Creek Software
  

Some of today's highlight ideas for me (again, with apologies to the speakers for the crude summarization):

• Nothing is difficult to someone who doesn't know what he's talking about. (Johnson)
• Creating more artifacts and meetings is no answer. (Johnson)
• Entrepreneurs are better entrepreneurs when they're not worried about their personal balance sheet. (Jennings)
• "In the software field, we don't have to deal with the perversions of matter." (Stallman)
• VCs say 65% of failed new ventures are the result of people problems with founding or management teams. (Wasserman)
• Websites are successful to the extent they're self-evident as possible. (Krug)
• Sensible usability testing is absolutely necessary and, better yet, possible and even inexpensive. You can even download a script at Steve's site. (Krug)
• The huge chasm between #1 and #2 is all about elements of happiness, aesthetics, and culture. (Spolsky)

Steve Johnson and Steve Krug gave truly superb presentations. Steve Krug I knew about beforehand, from his book. Steve Johnson I did not know, but I do now. These are people I'll take courses from someday. And of course, Joel Spolsky... I had seen him speak before, so I knew what to expect. He's one of the best speakers I've ever watched. I've asked him to keynote at Hotsos Symposium 2009. We'll see what he says.