I'll be at this year's Business of Software Conference on 21-22 May. Will you?

This will be my third visit to this annual conference organised by Mark Littlewood. And it's always been a cracker - chock full of great content, good food, interesting conversations and actionable insights. This year we're at the Barbican and I'm really looking forward to hanging out with everyone again. It makes a change to be at someone else's event and not organising it!

If you fancy a speaker slot, then there's still just about time to apply for one a spot in the lightning talks session. Read on for details on how to apply, more about the conference and a discounted ticket offer (I've been given a few discounted tickets).

So what's this all about then?

Why would you want to come? Because you want to spend time learning how great software  companies are built at a conference where the attendees are not the product.

What is it? A single-track conference to help you build great software and a profitable business. In depth talks, curated content. Zero sales/sponsor pitches or panels. If you're looking for coding sessions, this one isn't for you.

This year's theme: How to make product, culture, innovation, strategy, marketing and sales drive sustainable, profitable, growth.

Sessions and Case Studies
• Wade Foster, Zapier: A High Growth, Remote Working, Profitable Company
• Bruce McCarthy, BPMA: Why Product Culture Beats Execution Culture
• Tom Adeyoola, Metail: Why Your ‘Brilliant’ Technology Fails to have Impact
• Tendayi Viki, Benneli Jacobs: Clever Ideas are not Enough for Innovation
• Alison Coward, Bracket Designing High-Performing Teams
• Carl Ryden, PrecisionLender: Iron Man Suits vs Robots – Product Strategy and AI
• Tim Barker, DataSift: “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times.” Every CEO Ever
• Laura Roeder, MeetEdgar: Building Business Against Well-Funded Competition
• Jane Austin, Moo: 10 Ways to Make Design Irrelevant to Your Business
• Nilan Peiris, Transferwise: Building a High-growth Startup Sustainably
• Stephen Allott, NED: Rules and Tools for Scaling Software Sales
• Bill Janeway, Warburg Pincus: The Fall and Rise of Enterprise Software
• Plus, Lightning Talks, Lunchtime Table Talks and the legendary hallway track.

I'm particularly looking forward to hearing about product culture from Bruce, Laura's session on building a business against well-funded competitors and the fall and rise of enterprise software from Bill.

Schedule – You can view more details on timing, speakers and session content here.

Sunday 20th May, Pre-event drinks and laid-back mingling.

Monday 21st May
• 08.00: Registration, coffee, tea, networking
• 09.00-18.00: Conference Keynotes Commence
• 18:30: Drinks, Networking Join us and our speakers for an evening to meet new
contacts and make new friends.

Tuesday 22nd May
• 08.00: Registration, coffee, tea, networking
• 09.00: Conference Keynotes Commence
• 17.30: Conference close

Who Comes? A potent mix of Founders, CEOs, CMOs, CTOs, COOs, CPOs and emerging leaders in scale-up and grown-up software companies, a few people from innovative corporates who want to embrace change, some smart investors. The common thread - people interested in getting better at what they do and learning new ideas that will impact their businesses and careers.

Fancy speaking at the conference? Well, it's too late to join one of the main sessions, but applications are still being accepted for a spot during the lightning sessions. If you'd like to put yourself forward for one of those spots, you can find out how to do that here

FAQs and background to the conference here. Also, here's the full schedule and link to the speakers.
Hope to see some of you there.

And lucky for you, I have a few discounted tickets available with my special registration link where you get 20% off the April rate of £795 + Fees/VAT (The price goes up nearer the date). If you're prompted for a code, please use TechnoKitten. Not only that, there's a guarantee of quality. BoS offers you a full refund of the ticket price, if at the end of the conference you decide you did not get value out of it. You have nothing to lose!

The FT 1000 - The Complete List of Europe's Fastest Growing Companies 2018

For those of you interested in start-ups and growth businesses, this list will be invaluable. It's a link to the FT 1000 which lists the companies in 31 European countries that have achieved the highest compound annual growth rate in revenue between 2013 and 2016. Note the measurement is revenue not profit.

It's worth a glance if you have any interest in business. The data is downloadable as a spreadsheet and searchable. The FT also shares their methodology.

Top line findings:

• Technology dominates the list with 155 entries and Deliveroo at #1 replacing Germany's HelloFresh
• London has held on to its position as the most popular base for HQ with 74 entries (Paris has 62, Milan 25).
• Fintech has performed well (Good news for London).
• UK, Spain, Germany and France all have a strong presence in the Top 20.
• The lowest average growth rate in this year's ranking was 34.6% vs last year's 16.1%.
• Germany leads the way in the advertising sector as they also do in the Automobile sector. I would have expected the latter but not the former. I wonder why British advertising companies aren't showing similar growth.

I haven't heard of the majority of these companies. Am I out of touch? Maybe. Or is that successful companies very often get there completely under the radar? Or maybe it's down to my focus and visibility of British companies. I'm thinking probably the latter. Something for me to ponder on over a cup of tea...

You can find the list here.

What do you do when your boss is an algorithm?

I was lucky enough to go to Business of Software's great event in London with entrepreneur and best-selling author, Eric Ries, talking about his new book, The Startup Way. The house was absolutely packed which is a testament both to the popularity of Eric Ries and how well Mark Littlewood and his team organise their Business of Software series of events.

I'm still mulling over much of what Ries was saying and I haven't yet read his book. The question that really stuck in my mind was about what workers will do when their boss is an AI or an algorithm. I've thought quite a lot about working with an AI as a colleague. Arguably, we're already doing that to some degree with our use of online tools such as search, productivity tools, graphic design software etc.

My boss is an algorithm
But what if the algorithm is our boss? Ries cited the example of an Uber driver. Who is the driver's boss? Who do they report to? Who tells them what to do? The answer, to all intents and purposes, is an algorithm (putting aside recent UK legislation about their legal status).

Imagine the scenario whereby a customer uses the app to hail a taxi in a high traffic area where there is a choice of driver. The algorithm decides which taxi driver(s) to show that too. That could be based on reviews (perhaps unverified), where the driver was the previous night, how frequently the driver chooses to drive for Uber, how safely the driver drives, who the driver is connected to on social networks and much more. And in that instance, who do you complain to anyway and what could they do? These algorithms are getting ever more complicated and anyway, this isn't a technical bug, this is an ethical question as much as anything.

I'm afraid, I don't have the answers, but I'm thinking about the implications of this in different aspects of work life.

Free book giveaway
Everyone at the BoS event last week got a copy of The Startup Way. I was lucky enough to come away with an extra copy which will be given away tomorrow evening at Swedish Beers in London as part of the Robot Ping Pong challenge. I do hope you can join us!

Eric Ries' Lean Startup talk & BoS archive
You can see Eric Ries's talk for BoS from 2010 when he'd just written Lean Startup. It's well worth revisiting.

Business of Software has archived all their previous talks and it's a fantastic resource. You can check it out here.

Day 21/30 NaBloPoMo (publishing a little ahead of schedule!)