From July 13-15 I’ll be in Reno, Nevada, attending ISVCon, a conference for independent software developers and vendors. It’s actually a reboot of the Software Industry Conference (SIC), which the Association of Software Professionals (of which I am currently President) purchased and is hosting for the first time.
I’m not only attending, but I’m also going to be part of a panel of game developers talking about how games are different from other types of software. I’ll be joined by Gregg Seelhoff of Digital Gamecraft and Christopher Williamson of DreamQuest Games. Each of them also have their own talks about quality assurance and mobile app development, respectively.
In 2008, I attended SIC for the first time, and I met a lot of great people there. A lot of those people I still interact with regularly today, and I find these kinds of connections well worth the cost alone.
This year’s conference reboot looks to have a fantastic set of sessions for independent software developers, including talks on marketing basics, social media marketing, best practices in freelance and outsourcing, Cloud-related technologies to help your business, mobile platforms, Software as a Service (SaaS), and more. Learning about trends and best practices from experts in all of these domains in one place is hugely valuable.
If you can make it, I’d encourage you to register at http://isvcon.org. I’d love to meet up with you. In fact, as a thank you for being a reader of my blog, you can sign up with coupon code “GB2012” and get 10% off of the registration price.
There is a discounted room rate in the ISVCon hotel block at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa, which is where the conference is being held, and the deadline for getting a room in that block is June 28th. You can get your room rates at $69 (weekday) and $99 (weekend) a night, plus you get the $12 per night resort fee waived, instead of paying up to $150 a night with a $12 resort fee (per night!) added on top.
Also, besides saving on hotel rates, the cost for registering for ISVCon bumps up on July 1st, so there’s two good reasons to sign up today instead of waiting until the last minute.
I’m really looking forward to ISVCon. Will I see you there?