Software East News Feed
SOFTWARE EAST - THURSDAY 22ND JANUARY 2009
This event had as its focus a panel session on Building a Software Business.
Our panellists were:|
Neil Davidson Neil Davidson is co-founder and Joint CEO of Red Gate Software, a Cambridge-based software company. Red Gate is privately funded, bootstrapped and profitable and has been in the Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies to work for two years running. Neil also runs the annual Business of Software conference and the Cambridge Business Lectures series. His blog is at blog.businessofsoftware.org. |
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Van Emmenis My career in programming has spanned 30 years - using many different technologies on a wide range of applications and, with that large body of experience behind me, I think I can honestly say that I still haven't quite got the hang of it. Despite this evident lack of ability, I remain an enthusiastic hacker. Over the years I never fail to be excited by the latest shiny bauble dangled in front of me - structured programming, object oriented programming, object databases, agile development - my current crush is functional programming. Originally a mathematician, I started my career in cartographical software at the MOD and then moved to computer aided design and modelling working for ten years at the CADCentre (now Aveva) in Cambridge. I then moved to Gemstone, an object oriented database company and worked applying that technology in financial applications and then as an independent consultant for various financial organisations in the City. Along the way, I have worked for three start-up companies and have seen at first hand the problems that such organisations face. I am currently CTO for another start-up - Comply Serve Ltd (www.complyserve.com) and, despite the evidence of the past, confidently expect this one to be a great success. |  |
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Allan Kelly Allan Kelly started his career as a software developer before moving into management. He believes that creating effective software products starts with effective business models. Today he helps software companies adopt Agile methods in development and in business processes. He is the author of “Changing Software Development: Learning to become Agile” and is currently developing a series of Business Design Patterns. More about Allan, his patterns and other writing can be found on http://www.allankelly.net. |  |
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John Melotte John Melotte is Regional Director at Corum Group, a global leader in merger and acquisition services specialising in selling software and information technology companies. John has been involved in the software industry since the late 70s, working with Logica, Process Computing (which John co-founded and led to a trade sale) and Kewill Systems, developing advanced modelling software and Logistics and ERP systems. With Kewill John instigated the acquisition of a number of US and UK based software companies. In the late 90s John became a Partner at MTI Partners, one of the UK’s leading early-stage technology VCs with over £150m of active investments, covering materials science, life science, as well as ITEC. John invested in and managed software business covering Application Acceleration, Database Predictive Performance Analysis, File Encryption and Security Policy Management, Primary Healthcare Infomediary, Data Mining and Business Intelligence. John joined Corum Group from MTI Partners in 2008. |  |
WHAT PEOPLE SAID ABOUT OUR OTHER EVENTS
We also organise the annual Code Generation conference. Here's what people said about that:
"a great opportunity to meet with influential practitioners in the field."
"thoroughly enjoyable and very informative"
"a very good selection of speakers"
"the combined—for that matter, individual—expertise present was remarkable, and presented a tremendous opportunity for knowledge exchange."
"the presentations were all top quality... The wealth of knowledge present at the event was impressive, not only from the presenters, but from the other delegates as well."