MicroConf 2011 – Website teardowns and wrapup

By Stephen Kellett
22 August, 2011

In this final article about MicroConf I’m going to cover the speakers at MicroConf that I haven’t written about – Todd Garland, Marcus McConnell and David Hauser.

David Hauser

David Hauser runs grasshopper.com. He was going to speak about generating buzz.

David arrived at MicroConf then had to leave before he could speak due to a personal emergency. I hope that things worked out well for him.

Todd Garland

Todd Garland is founder of BuySellAds.

Todd’s story is a rather unusual one. He grew BuySellAds from nothing to $1.5 million in 11 months, while at the same time holding down a 9-5 job at Hubspot, a rapidly growing inbound marketing company. Most people working somewhere like Hubspot probably would not look to jump ship, but that is ultimately the decision Todd had to make.

I didn’t record Todd’s speech. I can’t remember why. I have a few brief notes. The key points are:

  • Overcome fear by doing.
  • Automate everything.
  • Do not do one-off work for customers. It is better to discard such work as it keeps you focused on the business and keeps the product simpler to use and simpler to maintain.
  • Invest in customer happiness and good vibes.

Marcus McConnell

Todd Garland is founder of BV Software.

I didn’t record Marcus’s speech or take any notes during his speech. I think this was because it was about a shopping cart and I thought it wouldn’t be interesting. I was wrong. But I have no notes or recording to recall the interesting bits of the speech.

I apologise if this leaves you feeling empty handed, but my initial reason for recording was for personal use. It was only afterwards that I decided to write up my notes and audio.

Website Teardowns

Due to the space left in the programme by David Hauser being unable to speak at the conference Rob and Mike decided to have a couple of website teardown sessions where different speakers would provide feedback to anyone brave enough to put their website forward for critical analysis.

The following URLs were the subject of tear downs in the audio. Its probably a good idea to look at the website in question as you listen to the audio. Note that some of these websites may have changed appearance since the talk because the authors acted on the criticism provided by Hiten and Patrick.

Conclusion

I cross the Atlantic and the USA to go to MicroConf. No one else from Europe could be bothered. No one from Asia came except for Patrick McKenzie. I’m glad I made the effort. The people, the place, the information, its all good. Would I do it again? For sure. Will I attend in 2012? Almost certainly.

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