So I recently built out an entire marketing program (for free of course) for a local merchant who complained that his business was being wiped out by the internet.
I'm happy to do that again. (I've also done it for a prenatal yoga studio).
It doesn't sound like much but considering it takes me at least 8 hours and companies pay me for it, it strikes me as a good deed.
I am student at Sacramento University finishing my MBA. I will volunteer 2-3 days at local shelter for women and children (http://www.stjohnsshelter.org/) teaching them computer and business skills.
Sergei O. - svetmiru@yahoo.com
Our company is a supporter of Utah PRIDE, a non-profit organization committed to standing up for the rights of Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, and Transgender citizens of our great state. UP maintains a small office where we donate our software to ensuring that their systems are secure, and continually operating.
After reading about Neil's offer, I realized that we could go a couple of steps further and actually go into their organization and give them free training and ongoing support in securing their computers.
We've attended the BoS '08 and '09 conferences and loved them, but our sales have taken a very dramatic decline in the past 14 months, and the decision was made in early spring to opt out of this years conference. It was purely economical.
I pledge to take what I learn at Business of Software 2010 to and pay it forward to the product manager community in Austin,TX in a session titled "Top five things I learned at BoS 2010 that can improve the Austin software community." I will give this session at ProductCamp Austin in January of 2011.
I am a software product marketing consultant - I left corporate employment two years ago to work independantly, helping software companies and entrepreneurs connect more effectively with their customers. Although I have been working steadily since the launch of my business, I am not yet at the point where I am able to afford to send myself to Business of Software.
I helped create http://TweetForHabitat.com a site created for the purpose of raising $70,000 to build a house for a family in the in the Memphis area. Along with the website launched a Twitter campaign where any tweet containing #Tweet4Habitat was counted and sponsors donated based on the number of tweets. Lastly we've found restaurants and bars in the Memphis area to host TweetUps for Tweet For Habitat to allow those who don't feel comfortable giving money online a place to drop some cash into the bin we had setup.
This is an on-going effort to raise the $70,000 for the Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis.
Purple Ant is a small company and was on the upswing of adding employees when the economy crashed almost 2 years ago. We've since closed our offices and now work out of our house, but still are working on our commercial products we eventually plan to sell, as well as supporting our consulting clients.
I have agreed to develop an iPhone application for a local Leadership Consulting firm (it's a husband and wife team). They have some fantastic Leadership and Teamwork training materials they hope to make available to a wider audience as an iPhone application. I agreed to do the development for free. If it takes off, we'll work out a profit sharing arrangement, but I don't expect to ever make any money from it. Check out www.calliopelearning.com to see who they are. We hope to have the app live in mid-September.
I'd like to attend BoS 2010 but I've given my conference budget away to members of my development team for this year, so I won't be able to attend otherwise.
I'll help a local little league team set up a registration system so parents can register online instead of with paper. The result will be that the registration process will go much faster on registration days and the organizers won't have to shuffle 300 sheets of paper and type it all into Excel. It may mean we go with someone else's solution but they usually cost more than the web budget and require the use of credit cards for payments (and you have to charge parents more to handle the extra fees). I want to also minimize the hosting charges for the team and move them to a cheaper host (maybe using Wordpress instead of the team software they have now but no one uses) and set up accounts so the parents (or at least more than just some designated web guy who never wants to do anything because he's too busy) can add content to the site.
The reason I can't buy my own ticket is, well, I'm unemployed at the moment. It's good in that I have time to go to the conference in the first place but bad in that I'll have to stay in a cheap hotel (and the flight is free thanks to my wife who works for an airline).
I love to help start-up companies market software. My personal superhero talent is developing marketing programs for early stage technology (especially software) companies. It is SO fun to leverage new marketing tools and set up efficient processes to compete reasonably with much bigger companies! I'm doing it now for my own start-up and I'd love to help a few other entrepreneurs get their marketing foundations in place and start fueling their sales funnels.
Does offering free licenses of my product to non-profit orgs counts? In the past year and a half, I've given more than a few dozens of licenses to organizations, schools or people who simply could not afford to buy a $99USD worth license. I haven't kept a strict list of all licenses given away. I usually give and forget.
You can't imagine how much I'd love to see Peldi and Jason Cohen speaking! :-)
Well, the thing is that sales are low for me. Here in Romania we have such an young entrepreneurial culture that we just start learning how to build and sale our products. I'm so keen to learn more and more. I've been working hard in the past year to build this product, but yet I need to learn so much more about promoting and selling it.
If more people find out about my product, than more will take advantage of my "free for non-profit" policy.
Plus, I'm planning to share all my knowledge with my fellows Romanian starting entrepreneurs. Through blogging, video interviews, podcasts etc. Romania has a potential to go beyond the outsourcing destination label, and I'll be happy to bring my contribution.
I am setting up a wordpress site for a non-profit organization, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Minnesota. They need to upgrade a site that they use to nominate 25 hispanics from the area of Minnesota that have achieved some sort of success. The website to be upgraded is http://www.25ontherise.com. I will also develop a custom app to help them manage this nomination, votes, nomination, etc... I will post more details when I am done with it, or at least when I have something to show. Thanks for the opportunity.
Here's what I have so far... http://25ontherise.wordpress.com/
This non-profit organization is happy with what they see, I am now working in the custom application to manage nomination entries and votes.
This year, I quitted a lucrative job (I'm 27) so that I could create my own web agency. My goal is to bootstrap myself so that I can create an online software in the printing industry (I also work with my father who own a small printing company).
I never would have dream to be able to go to this conference (need to pay for food and rent) but I know that it would really help me create my product.
What I commit : I already work with a non profit organization here in Quebec. They help adolescents/young adult to connect with cybermentors. I gave more than 50% discount on our services (new website) and if I get a ticket, I also commit myself to give them free printing services.
I am a developer and entrepreneur from Zagreb, Croatia. Besides that core, I've been active in organizing local startup community -- I've organized the Web.Start conference in 2007 and 2008 (Joel was our keynote speaker at the first one), and initiated the movement behind the local OpenCoffee Club (Zagreb was third after London and Dublin) and BarCamp Zagreb, and am a co-founder and technical administrator of CRANE, the first angel network in Croatia (completely non-profit).
I am a 23 year old small software co owner. I have 3 children and am married. My wife just lost her job with servicemagic.com and I have taken on a great deal of a load. One of my web apps we are building www.Registr8.com got put on hold while being ranked in the top 10 of the submissions to David Cohen's TechStars because of the sacrifices I have to make financially to take care of my family. Nothings more beautiful then my family, so I'm not complaining. Although it will not stop me from building my small company and our web applications.
I will put up a wordpress website that advertises giving 10 non-profit organizations a free website. They will need to explain why a website would help and expand their initiatives. We will post the organizations and allow the public to vote on the orgs. The top 10 voted for after 1 month will receive the free websites. :-) I love helping and giving. Sometimes when the load is too heavy, sometimes you have to give a little to lighten it up and move forward. :-)
I make my living in corporate IT, but have been trying to get a software product development company off the ground on a moonlighting basis for several years which has been very difficult due to the lack of precious focused time that such a venture requires. With little revenue to speak of from my entrepreneurial side venture, there is no budget for a conference such as Business of Software and I am certain that the subject matter will help me amplify my entrepreneurial plans and productivity; being in the presence of so many kindred software entrepreneurs will undoubtedly inspire me and help me throw off the soul-numbing shackles of corporate life.
If I win this conference pass, I will pay the good deed forward by continuing to provide free technical and online marketing consulting assistance to non-profit organizations, which I currently do thanks to the NPower program (which matches IT volunteers with non-profit organizations).
I am an experienced(7 years) middleware developer making a living working for the man. I have experience in Performance, scalability, high availability, Caching and the JEE/J2EE application protocol stack.
I harbor a desire to lean boostrap my own entrepreneurial venture and become profitable with no resources other than my own sweat equity. After getting customers and becoming cash flow positive I want to grow the startup and exit in a meaningful way.
I need help in understanding how to do market research, how to identify a target market, if a problem is important to solve and whether it is worth solving. I need a reality check to see how I measure up with other entrepreneurs.
The BOS conference will be an ideal avenue to learn from illustrious programmers and techies who have already overcome these challenges and self-doubts. BOS will show me the way and put me on the path to eternal enlightenment.
Why I cant afford it.
Monetary situation + principles. Rule #1 of lean startup is to "Not spend money you don't have".
For the last few years, I've provided free tech support for the Saskatoon Sexual Health Centre (http://www.sexualhealthcentresaskatoon.ca/index2.htm). It started out with them having some PC problems, but ended up turning into writing some custom statistic-tracking and client-management tools that have significantly reduced their paper burden around the office. We're just getting started on putting together appointment-management software, so that they can finally move away from their last big paper-based system.
I'm currently a M.Sc. student in Computer Science, with a huge backlog of startup/project ideas that I've been keeping on the back burner while I work on my thesis. I've got good technical skills, but would love to learn more about the business side.
Because I did already asked you for a free ticket for BOS 2008 and none were available at that time.
Since I never take no for an answer,I give it another shot :
"Hey Neil, may I have a free pass for BOS 2010 ?"
I am working on a social project http://socialpulse.com to educate and empower students and ordinary people how to build social capital by documenting all their social community and academic activities in one place. This will help them to get admission to a good university, get a job as well as build social branding, reputation and even build an online business. The site is free for individuals and organizations and it is connected to Facebook and Twitter. We spend a lot of time doing great things (also volunteering) but we do not document it properly with the date, time, venue and agenda which is very important to build your personality and social standing on an ongoing business. You can create a web profile about anybody or any topic and post your thoughts which get attached to the profile and your wall as well as manage all your social networks on a dashboard on SocialPulse.com
I want to build a website that can help you visualize your impact upon the world. It can be summed up by calling it Pay-It-Forward for books. It's called MindSpread.
In essence you buy a book and give it to someone else on the promise that they will give it another person and so-forth. Each person can input the email address of the person they gave it to. A Google map would track the book, thus allowing the person to visualize their impact.
It would be 100% open-source and community driven. However, I think it's a great idea, but I'm not sure that others do because I have solicited for feedback and have received little.
I can't afford the conference because I'm trying to save every penny in attempt to someday bootstrap my company.
Thanks for your consideration. Also, I would love it if anyone else had feedback on MindSpread.
I volunteered over 100 hours of free software development for the initial release of the National Standards Project conducted by the National Autism Center in Randolph, MA. I intend to make a similar commitment for the second release of this analysis as well. This organization does not have the funds to pay for my attendence and my current employer does not reimburse for these types of events and I'll probably have to take personal time off.
Upon earning a ticket to the BOS 2010 I will organize an inner city program to help teach kids programming and graphic design.
Two years ago I stumbled into a park building in downtown Greenville that inner city kids use for their after school program. They have 4 computers all 486 crappy machines. I was surprised by how interested the kids were in the computers.
I asked the consulor how popular the computers were and she said it is everything to them. These kids do not have computers at home.
It got me thinking that more kids with the right exposure and teachers could become hackers.
So upon returning from BOS 2010, I will get the local ad agencies to dedicate their lead designers to teach basic design. Get local developers to do a little basic programming class for these kids and work with the YMCA in town to create an after school program.
I launched LavaBlast Software (http://www.lavablast.com) a few years ago and we're growing via bootstrapping. I'd love to attend the conference and would pay it forward by mentoring another startup in the Lead To Win ecosystem (http://www.leadtowin.ca). This ecosystem helps accelerate startups in the Ottawa (Canada) region.
My partner and I have participated in coders4charities.org the last few years and will pledge to help again in 2011. Coders 4 Charities is a wonderful event that has helped dozens of non-profit organizations with their web development needs.
At the moment, I am heavily committed to my current venture, but I will pledge two weekends (32 hours) to help a non-profit (preferably one on this board) that is in need of a CMS website using the WordPress platform. Just provide the hosting account, content, and existing (if available) graphic assets and I will handle the rest - including the design and skinning of the site.
In the past I have helped with numerous other non-profit sites including children.org and various youth league and team sites such as potentialplayers.com and jayhawkinvitational.com (including a registration system processing over 30K each year for the foundation).
I would really appreciate the opportunity to attend this year's BOS conference. My partner and I have been neck deep in development of our current app since February, while at the same time juggling full-time jobs and families. We have been saving every penny to bootstrap our company and do not have the extra capital to send me on our dime this year. We can afford to spend the travel and hotel expenses and if chosen, will gladly send verification of my airline ticket.
We have a launch date of February 2011 and feel this conference could help us with many of the marketing/pricing/capital/going out on your own types of questions we are facing.
Thank you for giving all of us this opportunity to attend!
Please shoot me the details by email and I'll take a look - I've had a few others inquire as well and will let everyone know by the end of next week who I decided on.
I am working on an idea to increase blood donations, as a background project, and I'll be continuing on that whether I receive a free ticket or not. In our local Ruby community, one of our guys asked for blood donations for a family member, and we started discussing possibly doing a group development project to help. I posted some ideas for a social web app that could help back in May:
The group project never happened, but I think it has some real possibilities. I started to approach the local blood banks and their social media advocates, but then I realized the idea is too hard to visualize for non-developers, and the protocol is just complicated enough that a prototype was needed. I am working on a demo, and I'm learning about the simplest (hah!) Facebook app.
The basic idea is that when A holds secret information about B, and A cannot release it, there should be a protocol for B to use a secure token presentable to A to confirm that claim. Thus, A is maintaining data security by not actively releasing the information, but B cannot lie about the information because the claim is verifiable.
My ulterior motive is by posting in this thread, I might recruit someone else that finds this project interesting, or knows details about protocols as described above.
At BoS, I'm sure I would absorb a lot of new details about marketing social software and what techniques work to help spread apps among friends.
My consulting business is slow and I'm in a pre-startup phase on a bigger project, nailing down the IP, so BoS is way out of my price range. In fact, if I got a free ticket, I'd get there but I'd also be immediately googling for a cheap couch in the area.
52 comments
[ 6.4 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadI'm happy to do that again. (I've also done it for a prenatal yoga studio).
It doesn't sound like much but considering it takes me at least 8 hours and companies pay me for it, it strikes me as a good deed.
After reading about Neil's offer, I realized that we could go a couple of steps further and actually go into their organization and give them free training and ongoing support in securing their computers.
We've attended the BoS '08 and '09 conferences and loved them, but our sales have taken a very dramatic decline in the past 14 months, and the decision was made in early spring to opt out of this years conference. It was purely economical.
I am a software product marketing consultant - I left corporate employment two years ago to work independantly, helping software companies and entrepreneurs connect more effectively with their customers. Although I have been working steadily since the launch of my business, I am not yet at the point where I am able to afford to send myself to Business of Software.
This is an on-going effort to raise the $70,000 for the Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis.
Purple Ant is a small company and was on the upswing of adding employees when the economy crashed almost 2 years ago. We've since closed our offices and now work out of our house, but still are working on our commercial products we eventually plan to sell, as well as supporting our consulting clients.
I'd like to attend BoS 2010 but I've given my conference budget away to members of my development team for this year, so I won't be able to attend otherwise.
The reason I can't buy my own ticket is, well, I'm unemployed at the moment. It's good in that I have time to go to the conference in the first place but bad in that I'll have to stay in a cheap hotel (and the flight is free thanks to my wife who works for an airline).
You can't imagine how much I'd love to see Peldi and Jason Cohen speaking! :-)
Thanks! Cristian Pascu (cristian@flairbuilder.com)
What are you going to do in the future that you wouldn't already be doing?
Neil
If more people find out about my product, than more will take advantage of my "free for non-profit" policy.
Plus, I'm planning to share all my knowledge with my fellows Romanian starting entrepreneurs. Through blogging, video interviews, podcasts etc. Romania has a potential to go beyond the outsourcing destination label, and I'll be happy to bring my contribution.
http://speakerwiki.org
This year, I quitted a lucrative job (I'm 27) so that I could create my own web agency. My goal is to bootstrap myself so that I can create an online software in the printing industry (I also work with my father who own a small printing company).
I never would have dream to be able to go to this conference (need to pay for food and rent) but I know that it would really help me create my product.
What I commit : I already work with a non profit organization here in Quebec. They help adolescents/young adult to connect with cybermentors. I gave more than 50% discount on our services (new website) and if I get a ticket, I also commit myself to give them free printing services.
I will put up a wordpress website that advertises giving 10 non-profit organizations a free website. They will need to explain why a website would help and expand their initiatives. We will post the organizations and allow the public to vote on the orgs. The top 10 voted for after 1 month will receive the free websites. :-) I love helping and giving. Sometimes when the load is too heavy, sometimes you have to give a little to lighten it up and move forward. :-)
If I win this conference pass, I will pay the good deed forward by continuing to provide free technical and online marketing consulting assistance to non-profit organizations, which I currently do thanks to the NPower program (which matches IT volunteers with non-profit organizations).
I harbor a desire to lean boostrap my own entrepreneurial venture and become profitable with no resources other than my own sweat equity. After getting customers and becoming cash flow positive I want to grow the startup and exit in a meaningful way.
I need help in understanding how to do market research, how to identify a target market, if a problem is important to solve and whether it is worth solving. I need a reality check to see how I measure up with other entrepreneurs.
The BOS conference will be an ideal avenue to learn from illustrious programmers and techies who have already overcome these challenges and self-doubts. BOS will show me the way and put me on the path to eternal enlightenment.
Why I cant afford it. Monetary situation + principles. Rule #1 of lean startup is to "Not spend money you don't have".
I'm currently a M.Sc. student in Computer Science, with a huge backlog of startup/project ideas that I've been keeping on the back burner while I work on my thesis. I've got good technical skills, but would love to learn more about the business side.
Thank you Tom Vellaringattu, tomvell@gmail.com
In essence you buy a book and give it to someone else on the promise that they will give it another person and so-forth. Each person can input the email address of the person they gave it to. A Google map would track the book, thus allowing the person to visualize their impact.
I wrote about it here: http://techneur.com/post/635311152/announcing-mindspread
Why a person would use it: http://techneur.com/post/915916816/what-would-motivate-you-t...
It would be 100% open-source and community driven. However, I think it's a great idea, but I'm not sure that others do because I have solicited for feedback and have received little.
I can't afford the conference because I'm trying to save every penny in attempt to someday bootstrap my company.
Thanks for your consideration. Also, I would love it if anyone else had feedback on MindSpread.
Two years ago I stumbled into a park building in downtown Greenville that inner city kids use for their after school program. They have 4 computers all 486 crappy machines. I was surprised by how interested the kids were in the computers.
I asked the consulor how popular the computers were and she said it is everything to them. These kids do not have computers at home.
It got me thinking that more kids with the right exposure and teachers could become hackers.
So upon returning from BOS 2010, I will get the local ad agencies to dedicate their lead designers to teach basic design. Get local developers to do a little basic programming class for these kids and work with the YMCA in town to create an after school program.
Steven Wagner, Founder Dealer Ignition
At the moment, I am heavily committed to my current venture, but I will pledge two weekends (32 hours) to help a non-profit (preferably one on this board) that is in need of a CMS website using the WordPress platform. Just provide the hosting account, content, and existing (if available) graphic assets and I will handle the rest - including the design and skinning of the site.
In the past I have helped with numerous other non-profit sites including children.org and various youth league and team sites such as potentialplayers.com and jayhawkinvitational.com (including a registration system processing over 30K each year for the foundation).
I would really appreciate the opportunity to attend this year's BOS conference. My partner and I have been neck deep in development of our current app since February, while at the same time juggling full-time jobs and families. We have been saving every penny to bootstrap our company and do not have the extra capital to send me on our dime this year. We can afford to spend the travel and hotel expenses and if chosen, will gladly send verification of my airline ticket.
We have a launch date of February 2011 and feel this conference could help us with many of the marketing/pricing/capital/going out on your own types of questions we are facing.
Thank you for giving all of us this opportunity to attend!
update: randy@embarkco.com
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Houston-RoR/message/2493
The group project never happened, but I think it has some real possibilities. I started to approach the local blood banks and their social media advocates, but then I realized the idea is too hard to visualize for non-developers, and the protocol is just complicated enough that a prototype was needed. I am working on a demo, and I'm learning about the simplest (hah!) Facebook app.
The basic idea is that when A holds secret information about B, and A cannot release it, there should be a protocol for B to use a secure token presentable to A to confirm that claim. Thus, A is maintaining data security by not actively releasing the information, but B cannot lie about the information because the claim is verifiable.
My ulterior motive is by posting in this thread, I might recruit someone else that finds this project interesting, or knows details about protocols as described above.
At BoS, I'm sure I would absorb a lot of new details about marketing social software and what techniques work to help spread apps among friends.
My consulting business is slow and I'm in a pre-startup phase on a bigger project, nailing down the IP, so BoS is way out of my price range. In fact, if I got a free ticket, I'd get there but I'd also be immediately googling for a cheap couch in the area.