The best conference I went to last year was the Business of Software Conference, organized by Neil Davidson of Red Gate Software over in Cambridge, England. It had a great lineup of speakers [PDF] including Guy Kawasaki, Eric Sink, Tim Lister (coauthor of Peopleware), Rick Chapman, Hugh MacLeod, and others, a great collection of real software businesses in attendance, and almost no fluff. Plus, my first 5.6 earthquake, experienced from the top of a highrise hotel. Great fun.

This year when Neil approached me about co-sponsoring the conference, I thought, why not? It’s exactly the kind of conference I would organize if I were organizing a conference about the software business, which, thankfully, I’m not, but Neil is, and he’s doing a bang up job.

So this year, it’s going to be called “Business of Software 2008: A Joel on Software Conference.” It’ll almost certainly be in Boston some time in the fall, but nothing is even remotely final yet. Sign up for the mailing list at that site, and they’ll let you know when a time and place are set.