Blog

All the news and updates, straight from the pony's mouth.

Why you should scratch your own itch

Next up in our line-up of awesome keynote speakers: Brad Fitzpatrick. Even if you don't recognize Brad's name you will recognize (and probably have used) some of the tools he's built including memcached and LiveJournal.

Throughout his career Brad has faced a number of interesting challenges and had created a variety of tools to meet those challenges. From this experience Brad has gained an appreciation for scratching one's own itch. In this keynote Brad will discuss the rationals, costs, and benefits of the tools he's written, why you should scratch your own itches, and how to grow the community around and eventually pass off ownership of the tools you create. Along the way there will be some fun anecdotes (e.g. subverting the business models of large enterprise vendors) and practical advice on community management.

Should make for some excellent food for thought.