I just got back into town from the Business of Software 2008 conference. It was awesome. Nearly every speaker had something meaningful and inspiring to talk about. Even though the conference was just two days, I am absolutely worn out because I can’t stop thinking about everything I learned.
So, in order to actually finish this post, I am going to give three sentences on a few speakers I really enjoyed.
Seth Godin: We live in a cluttered world, where most people settle for adding more clutter to compete. Make something remarkable, and people will talk about it. Don’t find customers for you products, build products for your customers.
Jason Fried: Keep your momentum by being iterative and not planning because decisions are temporary. Red flag words like need, can’t, easy, everyone, and nobody are bad because they usually not true. Interruption is the enemy of productivity.
Dharmesh Shah: Measure everything, otherwise you have no idea what works and what doesn’t. You can guess how happy your customer is, because you know their usage information. If your not embarrassed about your product, then you waited too long to release it.
Steve Johnson: Product management must know who is and who is not shopping and why. Find the potential customers and stop thrashing on competitors customers.
Steve Krug: Analyze what people are searching for on your website, because that indicates where you are lacking. The biggest problem with web design is the disparity between what we think people are doing and what they really do. Do usability testing and keep it so simple you can’t skip it.
Joel Spolsky: Make people happy while they use your product. Obsess over aesthetics, because something that looks good helps make users happy. Misattributes are awesome :)