Looking forward to it :)

[Rachel Andrew]

Just booked travel and hotel for Drew McLellan and I - looking at the site it mentions lightening talks the evening before to decide the schedule. What time will that be? We're coming from London and I have to give a presentation at midday to a bunch of Princes Trust young people so we won't get into Edinburgh until about 7.30pm.

Drew and I are the developers of the small CMS Perch (http://grabaperch.com) so we have lots to share from technical know-how, to general business stuff. I'm very excited about Bootstrapd as I recently wrote this blog post: http://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2012/04/05/a-community-for-the-bootstrappers/ bemoaning the lack of support and community for people like us! I'm very keen to help other people down the road of self-financing - and also to learn from other people with different experiences.

Anyway, just thought I would say hello!

Rachel Andrew

[Matt Wynne]

Hi Rachel,

Welcome!

On 21 May 2012, at 11:47, Rachel Andrew wrote:

Just booked travel and hotel for Drew McLellan and I - looking at the site it mentions lightening talks the evening before to decide the schedule. What time will that be? We're coming from London and I have to give a presentation at midday to a bunch of Princes Trust young people so we won't get into Edinburgh until about 7.30pm.

The feedback we've had so far is that it's a bit ambitious to try and get all attendees together the evening before, so the current plan is to run the lightning talks first thing in the morning. I will update the website now.

Drew and I are the developers of the small CMS Perch (http://grabaperch.com) so we have lots to share from technical know-how, to general business stuff. I'm very excited about Bootstrapd as I recently wrote this blog post: http://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2012/04/05/a-community-for-the-bootstrappers/ bemoaning the lack of support and community for people like us! I'm very keen to help other people down the road of self-financing - and also to learn from other people with different experiences.

Great, I'm really happy we've found some more kindred spirits!

Anyway, just thought I would say hello!

Can I suggest that we use this thread to each post introductions to ourselves, what we're hoping to get out of the event, and any ideas we have for sessions we'd like to run or see run?

cheers,

Matt

--
Freelance programmer & coach
Author, http://pragprog.com/book/hwcuc/the-cucumber-book
Founder, http://www.relishapp.com/
Twitter, https://twitter.com/mattwynne

[Jarkko Laine]

Hi everyone,

On 22.5.2012, at 1.38, Matt Wynne wrote:

Hi Rachel,

Welcome!

On 21 May 2012, at 11:47, Rachel Andrew wrote:

Just booked travel and hotel for Drew McLellan and I - looking at the site it mentions lightening talks the evening before to decide the schedule. What time will that be? We're coming from London and I have to give a presentation at midday to a bunch of Princes Trust young people so we won't get into Edinburgh until about 7.30pm.

The feedback we've had so far is that it's a bit ambitious to try and get all attendees together the evening before, so the current plan is to run the lightning talks first thing in the morning. I will update the website now.

Drew and I are the developers of the small CMS Perch (http://grabaperch.com) so we have lots to share from technical know-how, to general business stuff. I'm very excited about Bootstrapd as I recently wrote this blog post: http://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2012/04/05/a-community-for-the-bootstrappers/ bemoaning the lack of support and community for people like us! I'm very keen to help other people down the road of self-financing - and also to learn from other people with different experiences.

Great, I'm really happy we've found some more kindred spirits!

Anyway, just thought I would say hello!

Can I suggest that we use this thread to each post introductions to ourselves

I'm Jarkko Laine, a software consultant/freelancer from Tampere, Finland. I've spent the past eight years squarely in the Ruby/Rails land, doing everything from frontend tweaking to being a db admin and everything in between. I've been contracting for http://wildfireapp.com since 2008 and seen it grow up from a bootstrapped startup with only a couple people to a profitable company (which admittedly took a VC round later).

However, I've always wanted to build my own business as well (not just consulting). Thus I've cut back my consulting hours and building a web service for orienteers and other adventure athletes: http://navigeist.com. Since it's a very niche market, I have no illusions of explosive growth, but the market should still be big enough for a small company that can support a family or two.

, what we're hoping to get out of the event

My largest problem has been that I've been pretty much alone in what I do, so I'm trying to take every opportunity to meet likeminded people and learn from them, from Schnitzelconf to Amy Hoy's 30X500 class.

So I don't have anything specific I'd like to see, will be happy about all nuggets of wisdom I can gather and new and old friends I'll meet.

I'll be in Edinburgh from the Sunday prior to the event, doing the whole conference trilogy of ScotlandJS, Bootstrapd and Scottish Ruby Conf, combined with a couple of days in the highlands afterwards with the family.

Looking forward to seeing you all soon.

//jarkko

--

http://jlaine.net

http://twitter.com/jarkko

[Rachel Andrew]

Can I suggest that we use this thread to each post introductions to ourselves, what we're hoping to get out of the event, and any ideas we have for sessions we'd like to run or see run?

I guess I have already introduced myself a bit, but our bootstrapped product is the mini content management system, Perch (http://grabaperch.com) and Perch is almost 3 years old making up the majority of our company turnover. I'm actually off to Sud Web in Toulouse tomorrow to do a talk on how we moved from being a service business to a software company without investment.

I am very happy to lead a session on anything relevant - whether that is just general tips on how to launch a product on a shoestring, to more technical things. Something we put a lot of effort into is technical support and we've learned a lot about doing that, so that might be of interest depending on the type of products people have.

Personally I love hearing other people's stories. How they did things, what problems they faced, what worked, what failed. So I'm just looking forward to hearing what everyone is doing :)

Rachel
 

[Graeme Mathieson]

On Monday, 21 May 2012 at 23:38, Matt Wynne wrote:
> Can I suggest that we use this thread to each post introductions to ourselves, what we're hoping to get out of the event, and any ideas we have for sessions we'd like to run or see run?

Hi, I'm Graeme and I'm, well, not really bootstrapping anything right now, just plotting. I've got a tonne of things I want to build, but seem to continually lack the time/energy to get them done. I'm not really after vast wealth and IPOs, I'm just looking to build something that means I can generate a sustainable income for my family (preferably with me working less than 6 days/week).

So that's where I'm at. From Bootstrapd, I'm kinda looking for the kick up the arse to get on with it. :-)

I've gotten really interested in thinking more about software design and domain modelling recently. I'm by no means an expert (though most of what I've read seems like common sense that I've been practising for years) but I'd be keen on contributing to a discussion around that if anyone's interested? Dunno if that's getting a bit out of scope.

Cheers,

Graeme.
--
Graeme Mathieson

Follow me on Twitter: <http://twitter.com/mathie>
Blog: <http://woss.name/>
Telephone: +44 (0)7949 0777 44

[Rachel Willmer]

Hi everyone

I'm gutted that I can't be there; this conference sounds just like what I've been looking for. So if the bootstrapd community exists beyond the conference, I'd like to be part of it.

I run a website http://luzme.com, an ebook search engine. Last year, it made me a decent salary; my current goal is to see whether I can turn that into a sustainable business.

Like others, I'm not necessarily looking for a mega-bucks super-growth business; just a sustainable business that I control without using Other People's Money to build it. So far, it's all self-funded; in my previous company, I went down the route of getting in external investment, and while I may do that again, I'd like the investment to be because of who the investor is and what they can add to the enterprise, not just because I need the money!

cheers

Rachel

[Alan Gardner]

Can I suggest that we use this thread to each post introductions to ourselves, what we're hoping to get out of the event, and any ideas we have for sessions we'd like to run or see run?

Hi, I'm Alan and I don't Bootstrap (per se).

I work for New Context (nee EdgeCase) in Edinburgh and I'm hoping to get an insight into the full product lifecycle from start-to-end. At New Context we have the opportunity to test the market for personal projects by developing MVPs for them. We also have the concept of nanoproducts which allows us to build a working MVP for a client in a very short period of time. I think that I would be better able to contribute to both of these things if I understood the full process a bit more. I've not long finished a nanoproduct and would be happy to give a talk on how that went, lessons learned and how it has changed the way I look at software development.

Hope the fact that I am gainfully employed doesn't mark me out as an imposter! :)

Cheers,

Alan