This is slightly a plug for my conference, but is also the motivation behind it.
I've been in software dev for 18 years or so. I set up a small shop 12 years ago, went bust after 4 years, then went solo again in 2007. I've not expanded beyond myself (so far), but have been hopefully getting better at what I do, both in terms of software but also business skills.
A couple of years ago I started seeing an uptick in questions from people in the area: "How much do you charge? How do you decide what to charge? How do you write a contract? How do you get clients? How should I do XYZ? What tools do you use?", etc.
People who know me know I love to talk, so I'd happily answer. I started to realize though, that I was only giving one perspective. Even when I'd qualify that perspective as "this is just my experience", it didn't help them very much. I started getting other people I knew involved in the discussions, getting their perspectives, which were sometimes vastly different than mine, and they'd arrive at different conclusions. Eye-opening to say the least.
At the point, the idea of the conference (http://indieconf.com) was born - an event to bring people together to foster the learning, Q&A and networking which helps those questions get answered with far more perspectives than I could offer on my own.
Reading a book is not necessarily bad, but being able to ask questions about those books' ideas face to face, get answers, and have discussions about those topics has worked out decently for the conference over the past couple years.
I've been in software dev for 18 years or so. I set up a small shop 12 years ago, went bust after 4 years, then went solo again in 2007. I've not expanded beyond myself (so far), but have been hopefully getting better at what I do, both in terms of software but also business skills.
A couple of years ago I started seeing an uptick in questions from people in the area: "How much do you charge? How do you decide what to charge? How do you write a contract? How do you get clients? How should I do XYZ? What tools do you use?", etc.
People who know me know I love to talk, so I'd happily answer. I started to realize though, that I was only giving one perspective. Even when I'd qualify that perspective as "this is just my experience", it didn't help them very much. I started getting other people I knew involved in the discussions, getting their perspectives, which were sometimes vastly different than mine, and they'd arrive at different conclusions. Eye-opening to say the least.
At the point, the idea of the conference (http://indieconf.com) was born - an event to bring people together to foster the learning, Q&A and networking which helps those questions get answered with far more perspectives than I could offer on my own.
Reading a book is not necessarily bad, but being able to ask questions about those books' ideas face to face, get answers, and have discussions about those topics has worked out decently for the conference over the past couple years.