"Not! Tell me ...! ”Or eleven tricky questions about the ISDEF conference
Is the software business alive or dead? How to make useful contacts with colleagues in the industry, being an introvert? What is common between attending a conference and a date with a girl? Denis Zhuravlev, an independent software developer, talks about these and other issues so interestingly that we could not refrain from publishing his thoughts on our blog. Actually, here:
Our small company designs and develops its own software products and sells them all over the world on its own. But today I will not talk about our products, I will not even name them. Today I want to talk about something else.
In various online and offline communities, people often ask me whether it is necessary or not necessary to attend the ISDEF conference ( 2014.isdef.org ), where independent software developers have traditionally gathered for nearly fifteen years in a row, and what is the use of it. Some ask with genuine curiosity, some - with a slight sarcastic skepticism, some - with undisguised bile soreness.
')
On the one hand, I am not the founder and non-member of the ISDEF board and I have no reason to praise the association, invite everyone to join it as soon as possible and attend it without fail. Therefore, sometimes you just want to give up on skeptics, do not argue and say: "Yes, as you please."
On the other hand, as a member of this professional club, I, of course, are interested in ISDEF continuing to live, develop, change after the industry, and be filled with fresh blood. Therefore, before I give up, I still try to first clarify my personal subjective position.
In order not to spread thoughts on the tree, I simply collected the most popular questions that I heard about ISDEF and tried to answer them.
The most popular question and at the same time the most difficult.
This is a question from the category “What is the probability that I will marry this particular girl if I go on a date with her today?” Even if it seems to you that everything will go down by 146%, in fact your confidence does not guarantee anything. And the cause of failure can be a number of events - from the banal mutual hostility or mild stomach upset at one of you at the crucial moment to the wrong time you dropped sarcastic jokes about her hairstyle. No guarantees! In this case, if the marriage did not work for you, then it’s not a fact that your rival will not succeed. And vice versa. However, if you do not go on a date with her, then today and the following evenings you will surely spend the time not in her arms. I hope the analogy is clear, even if you are already married or you are a girl.
Sales growth is rarely the result of a single action, even such a useful one as a visit to ISDEF. However, participation in ISDEF often launches a chain of correct actions, which sooner or later will have a positive effect on your IT business. For me personally, this chain looks like this:
1) I heard -> 2) I wondered -> 3) I formulated the question -> 4) I asked again and clarified -> 5) I collected additional information -> 6) I formed a hypothesis -> 7) I implemented it -> 8) I evaluated the results.
Almost all the steps in this chain, except for the last two, are much easier and an order of magnitude faster to go if you are already in a prepared environment that promotes and acts as an accelerator. This environment for me is the ISDEF community.
I agree. There are many great IT events that bring together several hundred participants. However, the question arises: “Who are all these people?”.
For example, there is a wonderful tusa called 404fest, which I also try to visit and which annually gathers almost a thousand bright and creative characters related to IT. However, if you look closely, most of the participants are designers, developers, project managers, headhunters, SEO managers, startups and public figures of various stripes. Excellent and interesting guys, but there is practically no one to talk about the software business.
In contrast to sneakers and bright sweatshirts that dazzle 404fest, the audience of another well-known SECR event is characterized by a higher density of jackets, plain sweaters, ties and expensive cufflinks. And again we see a huge number of smart and interesting people - professors and university professors, students, developers, architects, business analysts, managers, officials. Are there business owners there? Of course! Only to find these few people among hundreds of participants and make contacts with them oh, how difficult it is, even technically.
Let's be honest - ISDEF is unlikely to collect much more than a couple of hundred people. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian events also badly damaged the associations and many Ukrainian vendors will not come to the conference in the past composition. But even with a relatively small number of participants, the whole cymes of the situation is that if you stick your finger at ISDEF with a person who drinks coffee next to you and chews a cookie thoughtfully, then he will most likely be the owner of the software business and you will definitely to talk
American lawyer and CEO of the Russian grocery company, the usual picture for ISDEF
There are very few entrepreneurs in our society. IT entrepreneurs even less. Relatively successful IT entrepreneurs who have consistently earned their services and products for several years, the cat wept in general. So ISDEF is trying to find them all, collect them in one place and introduce them to each other. The collection of such specific and unique people can not be large by definition. And there is nothing wrong with that. This is just a fact.
Just ISDEF has become different.
Previously, the threshold for entering your own software business was determined by programming skills, availability of school English and $ 20 per domain and hosting. Therefore, many trousers associated with student crafts and business on a stool. The majority of users were geeks, who primarily looked at the functional, and only secondarily at the package. It was easier to sell them “products”, and a monthly salary of a couple thousand dollars in the early 2000s provided a level at which you could quit your job and proudly consider yourself a successful businessman.
The time of geek users has passed. Now housewives, young people, taking pictures of food and sneakers, retired people, harsh businessmen from offline, officials, military, students ... In the face of fierce competition, it became difficult to purposefully target them and sell them technical “products” designed for geeks. In addition to the technical solution as such, the consumer already requires an exclusive design from vendors, impeccable customer service in their native language, non-boring marketing and a warm tube sound.
Most of the first sharovarschikov were techies. They just liked coding. Engaged in sales, marketing, personnel, customer focus, business processes and other, as they thought, the husk they had no desire. They failed to reach a new level in terms of income on one programming and many went back to hired developers when the salaries of programmers began to be calculated in four-digit amounts in dollars. Someone ate competitors. Someone left IT at all. Someone betrayed product development and, having entered the sect of witnesses of a successful startup, began to run after investors with the project of the next mobile social network. It was different for everyone.
In general, sharovar as an activity of developing and selling its own software products has not died. It simply ceased to be a student circle, where it was accepted at will, and became a full-fledged business, where it is necessary to buy entrance tickets, although some still manage to slip through for free.
The fact that in recent years, more people have left independent software engineering than it has arrived is a fact. At least, if we talk about single developers. But those who come are indeed not random and extraordinary people. They ventured to buy this entrance ticket and are serious about paying it back. With such people it is worth to at least meet, because us with them exactly along the way.
And then everything is just simple, although I would not say that there are no tuses there. They just hang out differently. Business owners, especially techies, are mostly dull, introverted, pragmatic, calculating people, who have already seen and experienced a lot. They are more interested in the essence of things, rather than their form. They do not need to publicly light, fluff feathers and prove to others what they are creative, bright and extraordinary. Their energy goes not to the hipster “cool” ones, but to their businesses and products. Every day they prove their coolness through their work. A kind of sublimation, if you want. Therefore, having met their peers, they most often just calmly communicate over a teapot of brandy or a hookah. But, if you want, they can ignite. But only if they want.
ISDEF is valuable not so much by reports, as by listeners. The main mistake is to come to ISDEF as a traditional conference to listen to the reports, and in the evening go home or to another hotel. Reports and speakers are just triggers that designate topics, create additional reasons and provoke further communication. The most interesting thing on the ISDEF, as a rule, begins at one o'clock, when the sun goes below the horizon and, as the classic said, darkness descends on the Grimpen quagmire. For some indistinct grounds, participants begin to spontaneously form groups that occupy the bars, lobbies and corridors of the hotel. These groups are constantly on the move. People are smoothly mixed, moving from one gathering to another. They meet, talk, discuss daily reports, scorch topics, argue, ruin furniture, poison bikes, treat each other with beer, hookah, puer and lard. And all this can happen almost until dawn. Most go to ISDEF for several years in a row precisely for this atmosphere.
Alawar founder Alexander Lyskovsky reveals the great mystery of a successful IT business
In fact, it is much easier to get acquainted with colleagues at ISDEF than at other conferences. At many conferences, people see each other only on reports and standing in line for sandwiches at half-hour coffee breaks.
ISDEF participants hold conferences almost all the time together, not leaving home after the reports, but living in a hotel and continuing to communicate in a confined space for several days. Joint gatherings in bars, breakfasts, dinners, riding in elevators and night walks around the neighborhood imperceptibly take the relationship to a new level, which is simply impossible to switch to during the coffee break. Therefore, a simple technique called “approaching people and getting into the company” is the most effective and even worked for me, but my acquaintances are very difficult. Believe the introvert with the experience.
If you come to ISDEF and you don’t know anyone there, you can start dating me, and I’m happy to help you get into different companies. You know me now. I personally invite you to come to ISDEF. :)
Specifically or not - I do not know, but it turned out that the principle of partnership now lies at the heart of the ideology of ISDEF. Nobody is interested in teaching you something to learn. ISDEF is not engaged in coaching as such, but ISDEF is interested in growing all members of the club. If you are interested in growth, you will be helped. They help me. If not, no one will preach anything by force. ISDEF is not about that.
This is, perhaps, the eternal philosophical question not about ISDEF specifically, but about the benefits of attending conferences in principle. I will also answer in a philosophical way.
We ourselves do not always know what we really need. We can infinitely ask questions in forums or friends, the answers to which, we believe, will help us advance. But are the questions themselves correct and will the answers greatly help us? Perhaps we are just looking in the wrong place and looking in the wrong place. Sometimes just a stranger's gaze from the side or familiarity with someone else's experience helps to see a completely different direction of movement and to formulate completely different questions. To do this, we need the right conferences, for which there are people with different experiences who can take a different look at your situation from the outside, suggest a different direction and different ways of moving. ISDEF in this sense is the right conference.
It is hard for me to object here. If you have a truly unique niche, if you are alone in it, if you earn well in it, if your decision is easily copied, and if a competitor’s appearance kills your business, then you probably don’t make sense to come to ISDEF. Just keep chopping cabbage and guarding your cabbage field.
ISDEF is communication, and you will simply not be comfortable. You will be in constant tension, trying not to blurt away too much, and see others around a potential threat. From the side it is noticeable and causes a strong backlash. Few people like to communicate with people who want to get something from others, but at the same time consider these others as potential enemies, and therefore they are not ready to share themselves or at least are divided only according to the “bash na bash” scheme.
In general, consider whether your fears are justified in order to lock yourself in a professional vacuum. We have a lot of people who are direct competitors of each other. And nothing. Meet, communicate and coexist normally.
OK. Specifically. Communicating with other vendors on ISDEF, I have greatly enriched my arsenal of techniques in such practical issues as software pricing, email distribution and working with the user base, building an effective system of restrictions on free versions of products, creating product lines and bundles, creating special offers , fighting seasonality, investments, finding new niches, localization, working with the domestic market, fighting piracy, after-sales, A / B testing, developing SaaS solutions, working with employees, working with freelancers, S EO, work with resellers, offline promotion, technical support organization, goal setting skills and proper self-motivation.
Much of this arsenal still awaits its turn. Much has already been applied. Something is underway. Not to say that the result of introducing something concrete was explosive growth. I consider the result to be good if the testing of the hypothesis shows an increase of at least a few percent, and this I have definitely observed more than once. Specifically, I manage to achieve this, for example, through pre-sales, working with the base and playing with price levels. I have a lot of small and specific examples, but they are not for the article.
However, for me personally, a clear understanding of where I need to go and how to do it is much more important. ISDEF gives me that understanding. About the value of personal contacts that ISDEF gave me, I just keep quiet.
And now, after all that has been said, I can just give up and say: “Yes, as you please!”. But I would be glad to meet you there.
Our small company designs and develops its own software products and sells them all over the world on its own. But today I will not talk about our products, I will not even name them. Today I want to talk about something else.
In various online and offline communities, people often ask me whether it is necessary or not necessary to attend the ISDEF conference ( 2014.isdef.org ), where independent software developers have traditionally gathered for nearly fifteen years in a row, and what is the use of it. Some ask with genuine curiosity, some - with a slight sarcastic skepticism, some - with undisguised bile soreness.
')
On the one hand, I am not the founder and non-member of the ISDEF board and I have no reason to praise the association, invite everyone to join it as soon as possible and attend it without fail. Therefore, sometimes you just want to give up on skeptics, do not argue and say: "Yes, as you please."
On the other hand, as a member of this professional club, I, of course, are interested in ISDEF continuing to live, develop, change after the industry, and be filled with fresh blood. Therefore, before I give up, I still try to first clarify my personal subjective position.
In order not to spread thoughts on the tree, I simply collected the most popular questions that I heard about ISDEF and tried to answer them.
How much will sales increase after attending an ISDEF conference?
The most popular question and at the same time the most difficult.
This is a question from the category “What is the probability that I will marry this particular girl if I go on a date with her today?” Even if it seems to you that everything will go down by 146%, in fact your confidence does not guarantee anything. And the cause of failure can be a number of events - from the banal mutual hostility or mild stomach upset at one of you at the crucial moment to the wrong time you dropped sarcastic jokes about her hairstyle. No guarantees! In this case, if the marriage did not work for you, then it’s not a fact that your rival will not succeed. And vice versa. However, if you do not go on a date with her, then today and the following evenings you will surely spend the time not in her arms. I hope the analogy is clear, even if you are already married or you are a girl.
Sales growth is rarely the result of a single action, even such a useful one as a visit to ISDEF. However, participation in ISDEF often launches a chain of correct actions, which sooner or later will have a positive effect on your IT business. For me personally, this chain looks like this:
1) I heard -> 2) I wondered -> 3) I formulated the question -> 4) I asked again and clarified -> 5) I collected additional information -> 6) I formed a hypothesis -> 7) I implemented it -> 8) I evaluated the results.
Almost all the steps in this chain, except for the last two, are much easier and an order of magnitude faster to go if you are already in a prepared environment that promotes and acts as an accelerator. This environment for me is the ISDEF community.
There are many IT conferences that gather under a thousand participants. What is the point of going to ISDEF, where there are not so many participants?
I agree. There are many great IT events that bring together several hundred participants. However, the question arises: “Who are all these people?”.
For example, there is a wonderful tusa called 404fest, which I also try to visit and which annually gathers almost a thousand bright and creative characters related to IT. However, if you look closely, most of the participants are designers, developers, project managers, headhunters, SEO managers, startups and public figures of various stripes. Excellent and interesting guys, but there is practically no one to talk about the software business.
In contrast to sneakers and bright sweatshirts that dazzle 404fest, the audience of another well-known SECR event is characterized by a higher density of jackets, plain sweaters, ties and expensive cufflinks. And again we see a huge number of smart and interesting people - professors and university professors, students, developers, architects, business analysts, managers, officials. Are there business owners there? Of course! Only to find these few people among hundreds of participants and make contacts with them oh, how difficult it is, even technically.
Let's be honest - ISDEF is unlikely to collect much more than a couple of hundred people. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian events also badly damaged the associations and many Ukrainian vendors will not come to the conference in the past composition. But even with a relatively small number of participants, the whole cymes of the situation is that if you stick your finger at ISDEF with a person who drinks coffee next to you and chews a cookie thoughtfully, then he will most likely be the owner of the software business and you will definitely to talk
American lawyer and CEO of the Russian grocery company, the usual picture for ISDEF
There are very few entrepreneurs in our society. IT entrepreneurs even less. Relatively successful IT entrepreneurs who have consistently earned their services and products for several years, the cat wept in general. So ISDEF is trying to find them all, collect them in one place and introduce them to each other. The collection of such specific and unique people can not be large by definition. And there is nothing wrong with that. This is just a fact.
ISDEF is no longer a cake! Here before! And in general - the bloomer died. I agree?
Just ISDEF has become different.
Previously, the threshold for entering your own software business was determined by programming skills, availability of school English and $ 20 per domain and hosting. Therefore, many trousers associated with student crafts and business on a stool. The majority of users were geeks, who primarily looked at the functional, and only secondarily at the package. It was easier to sell them “products”, and a monthly salary of a couple thousand dollars in the early 2000s provided a level at which you could quit your job and proudly consider yourself a successful businessman.
The time of geek users has passed. Now housewives, young people, taking pictures of food and sneakers, retired people, harsh businessmen from offline, officials, military, students ... In the face of fierce competition, it became difficult to purposefully target them and sell them technical “products” designed for geeks. In addition to the technical solution as such, the consumer already requires an exclusive design from vendors, impeccable customer service in their native language, non-boring marketing and a warm tube sound.
Most of the first sharovarschikov were techies. They just liked coding. Engaged in sales, marketing, personnel, customer focus, business processes and other, as they thought, the husk they had no desire. They failed to reach a new level in terms of income on one programming and many went back to hired developers when the salaries of programmers began to be calculated in four-digit amounts in dollars. Someone ate competitors. Someone left IT at all. Someone betrayed product development and, having entered the sect of witnesses of a successful startup, began to run after investors with the project of the next mobile social network. It was different for everyone.
In general, sharovar as an activity of developing and selling its own software products has not died. It simply ceased to be a student circle, where it was accepted at will, and became a full-fledged business, where it is necessary to buy entrance tickets, although some still manage to slip through for free.
The fact that in recent years, more people have left independent software engineering than it has arrived is a fact. At least, if we talk about single developers. But those who come are indeed not random and extraordinary people. They ventured to buy this entrance ticket and are serious about paying it back. With such people it is worth to at least meet, because us with them exactly along the way.
Why is there no such bright tusi on ISDEF that there are on other cones?
And then everything is just simple, although I would not say that there are no tuses there. They just hang out differently. Business owners, especially techies, are mostly dull, introverted, pragmatic, calculating people, who have already seen and experienced a lot. They are more interested in the essence of things, rather than their form. They do not need to publicly light, fluff feathers and prove to others what they are creative, bright and extraordinary. Their energy goes not to the hipster “cool” ones, but to their businesses and products. Every day they prove their coolness through their work. A kind of sublimation, if you want. Therefore, having met their peers, they most often just calmly communicate over a teapot of brandy or a hookah. But, if you want, they can ignite. But only if they want.
Well, I was at ISDEF. Well, I listened to the reports, well, I talked about coffee breaks. Nothing special. What did I do wrong?
ISDEF is valuable not so much by reports, as by listeners. The main mistake is to come to ISDEF as a traditional conference to listen to the reports, and in the evening go home or to another hotel. Reports and speakers are just triggers that designate topics, create additional reasons and provoke further communication. The most interesting thing on the ISDEF, as a rule, begins at one o'clock, when the sun goes below the horizon and, as the classic said, darkness descends on the Grimpen quagmire. For some indistinct grounds, participants begin to spontaneously form groups that occupy the bars, lobbies and corridors of the hotel. These groups are constantly on the move. People are smoothly mixed, moving from one gathering to another. They meet, talk, discuss daily reports, scorch topics, argue, ruin furniture, poison bikes, treat each other with beer, hookah, puer and lard. And all this can happen almost until dawn. Most go to ISDEF for several years in a row precisely for this atmosphere.
Alawar founder Alexander Lyskovsky reveals the great mystery of a successful IT business
I do not know anyone in ISDEF. It's hard for me to make acquaintances. I can not just go to strangers and get into their company. And what will I do there alone?
In fact, it is much easier to get acquainted with colleagues at ISDEF than at other conferences. At many conferences, people see each other only on reports and standing in line for sandwiches at half-hour coffee breaks.
ISDEF participants hold conferences almost all the time together, not leaving home after the reports, but living in a hotel and continuing to communicate in a confined space for several days. Joint gatherings in bars, breakfasts, dinners, riding in elevators and night walks around the neighborhood imperceptibly take the relationship to a new level, which is simply impossible to switch to during the coffee break. Therefore, a simple technique called “approaching people and getting into the company” is the most effective and even worked for me, but my acquaintances are very difficult. Believe the introvert with the experience.
If you come to ISDEF and you don’t know anyone there, you can start dating me, and I’m happy to help you get into different companies. You know me now. I personally invite you to come to ISDEF. :)
Will business stars teach me life?
Specifically or not - I do not know, but it turned out that the principle of partnership now lies at the heart of the ideology of ISDEF. Nobody is interested in teaching you something to learn. ISDEF is not engaged in coaching as such, but ISDEF is interested in growing all members of the club. If you are interested in growth, you will be helped. They help me. If not, no one will preach anything by force. ISDEF is not about that.
If I need something, I calmly ask on the forum or from friends. Why spend money and time and go for konfa?
This is, perhaps, the eternal philosophical question not about ISDEF specifically, but about the benefits of attending conferences in principle. I will also answer in a philosophical way.
We ourselves do not always know what we really need. We can infinitely ask questions in forums or friends, the answers to which, we believe, will help us advance. But are the questions themselves correct and will the answers greatly help us? Perhaps we are just looking in the wrong place and looking in the wrong place. Sometimes just a stranger's gaze from the side or familiarity with someone else's experience helps to see a completely different direction of movement and to formulate completely different questions. To do this, we need the right conferences, for which there are people with different experiences who can take a different look at your situation from the outside, suggest a different direction and different ways of moving. ISDEF in this sense is the right conference.
Yeah, I'm drunk down my sleeping niche there, I have a cloner competitor and I will plant a family for beans. What for?
It is hard for me to object here. If you have a truly unique niche, if you are alone in it, if you earn well in it, if your decision is easily copied, and if a competitor’s appearance kills your business, then you probably don’t make sense to come to ISDEF. Just keep chopping cabbage and guarding your cabbage field.
ISDEF is communication, and you will simply not be comfortable. You will be in constant tension, trying not to blurt away too much, and see others around a potential threat. From the side it is noticeable and causes a strong backlash. Few people like to communicate with people who want to get something from others, but at the same time consider these others as potential enemies, and therefore they are not ready to share themselves or at least are divided only according to the “bash na bash” scheme.
In general, consider whether your fears are justified in order to lock yourself in a professional vacuum. We have a lot of people who are direct competitors of each other. And nothing. Meet, communicate and coexist normally.
These are all common words. Tell me, what exactly did ISDEF give you? Only specifically!
OK. Specifically. Communicating with other vendors on ISDEF, I have greatly enriched my arsenal of techniques in such practical issues as software pricing, email distribution and working with the user base, building an effective system of restrictions on free versions of products, creating product lines and bundles, creating special offers , fighting seasonality, investments, finding new niches, localization, working with the domestic market, fighting piracy, after-sales, A / B testing, developing SaaS solutions, working with employees, working with freelancers, S EO, work with resellers, offline promotion, technical support organization, goal setting skills and proper self-motivation.
Much of this arsenal still awaits its turn. Much has already been applied. Something is underway. Not to say that the result of introducing something concrete was explosive growth. I consider the result to be good if the testing of the hypothesis shows an increase of at least a few percent, and this I have definitely observed more than once. Specifically, I manage to achieve this, for example, through pre-sales, working with the base and playing with price levels. I have a lot of small and specific examples, but they are not for the article.
However, for me personally, a clear understanding of where I need to go and how to do it is much more important. ISDEF gives me that understanding. About the value of personal contacts that ISDEF gave me, I just keep quiet.
I did not understand. Should I ride an ISDEF?
And now, after all that has been said, I can just give up and say: “Yes, as you please!”. But I would be glad to meet you there.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/234301/
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