[Note: this article was automatically posted from a blog feed. The original post can be found at http://www.riverblade.co.uk/blog.php?archive=2008_11_01_archive.xml#5802144723523228443].

Last night we descended en-masse on Berliner Republik, a quirky bar where the beer prices go up and down according to demand (they even have a mini stock exchange - watch for the crashes and run for the bar!). Really good food, too.

OK...onto today's sessions:

Using Networking, trade shows and organisations to enhance your business (Sharon Housley and Mike Dulin)

This session was (to my mind) pretty commonsense stuff. Mike and Sharon discussed some of the trade organisations and conferences you can use to improve the effectiveness of your business, including:

• Association of Shareware Professionals (a trade association)
• ISDEF (Russia - good for marketing to developers, apparently)
• Software Industry Conference ( USA)
• European Software Conference (Western Europe)
• Business of Software Conference (USA)

To that I'll add ACCU which holds an annual conference in Oxford - particularly if you are trying to reach a technical audience or improve your development processes.

Marketing during a recession - (Dave Collins/Sharon Housley/Mark Iverson)
This panel discussed current market conditions and steps you can take to maximise sales during a resession.

Opening comments:

• Sharon Housley: B2C products will be affected more than B2B products
• Mark Iverson: Digital River are not seeing a drop in sales volumes, but signs of significan discounting (remember DR mainly serve B2C products)
• Dave Collins - Expects that the B2C sector will see a drop in sales across the board. B2B products will (by and large) hold steady or grow (though possibly more slowly than previously). Pricing is not likely to be a factor.

Dave also made the interesting point that many Google AdWords accounts are poorly managed and therefore only marginally cost effective - hence as revenues drop and those companies cut back on their spending AdWords prices seem to be dropping across the board.

Sharon suggested looking for recurring revenue streams. In the case of NotePage, for a $200-$3000 product they offered a $395/year premium support subscription (which gave a 4 hour support callback guarantee during business hours as well as free product upgrades). This is effectively a superset of an upgrade protection subscription scheme, which are usually priced at 10-15% of the price of the full product.

Overall, it was a very interesting discussion. Let's just wait and see, shall we?


Microsoft Blueprints and More (Mike Lehrman - Microsoft)
Mike is a longstanding ESWC attendee, and previously introduced initiatives such as Project Glidepath. In this session he gave us updates on developments at Microsoft which may affect ISVs.

First up, and most promising for new MicroISVs, is BizSpark, a new programme designed to assist startup ISVs during their first three years of operation.

It provides free software and server licences for startups, with no up-front costs. Unlike the Empower programme, Visual Studio Team System is provided as part of the package and the server licences can be used for line of business purposes, rather than just development. There is a small ($100) exit fee, and potentially ongoing licence fees for line of business server licences.

Mike also talked about new platform opportunities including the Azure cloud computing framework, the Live Framework, Windows 7, Visual Studio 2010 and the forthcoming browser based version of Office.

Finally, there is Microsoft Blueprints. This appears to be a development of the core concepts of Project Glidepath, aimed at producing task driven SDKs, and looks very interesting (think project wizards with the ability to add functionality to existing projects rather than just new ones, and with additional guidance.

It could just be that Microsoft as an organisation has finally started to focus on ISVs...


So, you haven't got a Test Department yet? (Ian Hunter)
Ian started with a very funny story about the incredibly poor software supplied with the HP C6100 printer, and how that has coloured his opinion of HP (we've seem the same with Samsung mobiles - the software really is utter garbage).

After this very funny introduction, Ian described some of the consequences of inadequate testing, and what you can do about it. A key point is that - just as in coding, development processes etc. - in testing there are fads and fashions - among which is scripted UI testing (incredibly fragile and high maintenance, but often sold to executives as a panacea).

An interesting session, and I did like the comment about the plug...

After lunch we had very enlightening sessions on Amazon Web Services by Simone Brunozzi and Mac programming by objectpark.net, before the closing session:

Web Statistics and Metrics (Dave Collins)

This session is a departure from Dave's "Web Design Mistakes" session of previous years, but as entertaining as ever. The session focused on why you need analytics, what to measure and which tools you might want to consider.

And that's it for this year. As ever, we've learnt a great deal, made some interesting contacts and eaten and drunk far too much. Oh, and did I mention that not having coffee making facilities in hotel rooms where an ISV Conference is a crime? (OK, I did - but it's a big enough deal for me to advise any developers travelling to Berlin next November (yes, we're coming back! ) to bring a travel kettle with them...