One of our employees visited the European Software Conference 2010 (ESWC) that took place in Vienna on a weekend from November 6 to November 7. This year the conference had an anniversary – it was the tenth time that it was organized. We at Mihov.com have attended this conference twice now – the first time was in 2008 in Berlin.
The main topic of the conference was, of course, software. The conference is aimed at small software vendors, mainly individuals who write shareware programs or at smaller companies (micro) with up to 10-15 employees. It used to be about shareware, but with writing shareware comes knowing and using new programming languages and platforms, testing, web promotion, analytics, marketing and sales, a/b testing, knowing sales channels and other important things. If you’re a small company, writing software for end customers means also promoting and selling it successfully.
The conference consists of several parts:
- presentations, where participants present selected topics (this part of the conference lasts both days from morning till evening)
- stands, where sponsors have the possibility to tell the participants more about their products and services
- awards, where a special epsilon award is presented each year
- events, mainly at the evenings, where participants have the possibility to network and get to know each other
The topics of the presentations were very interesting and informative. I wish that there was more time for the presentations, specially for deep discussion about topics of interest. I was not surprised too see that many software developers need many services that our company offers: web site design, web promotion / internet marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). Some of the topics were aimed at companies with more employees and different approach to software development, including the presentation of Budapest University and IBM Jazz. Again, very interesting and informative presentations were from Shareware Promotions about AdWords advertising and ad conversion optimisiation. Also, the participants got a $200 coupon for free advertising in a brand new ad network from Softonic called SoftonicAds, that was premiered at the conference. Mihov.com web solutions Ltd. used a conference for some self promotion as well – the participants got a free designer bookmark by Petra Kern that is promoting our new on-line book store fastbooks.eu. Check it out!
We also met the organizer of the conference David Boventer who we know personally, which makes a visit even more interesting. He and his wife organized a great conference with interesting topics and interesting attendees.
Next year (2011) the conference will take place in London, probably also in November. We hope we’ll attend so please drop us a note so we can meet there.
