Last week, I talked with Lauren Sell and Josh Dilworth of Porter Novelli Austin about doing PR for tech startups. My primary interest was figuring out what the day-to-day life of a tech PR person is, and to figure out and lessons learned. In this first part, we primarily talked about establishing trust and relationships with the press, helping being the eyes and ears for clients by keeping up with relevant news, and also how flexible plans for PR campaigns work with startups whose own plans change frequently.

Cote talks with Zane Rockenbaugh of Liquid Labs about selling software in the banking market. As Zane comments, the banks are quite conservative in their technology purchasing as their business model assures steady income and, thus, they avoid change. The need for change comes, however, largely from external demands such as regulations or new banks using technology (like online banking in the 90’s) to compete with existing banks.

After discussing the market for banking software, Zane tells us several methods of bank fraud that one of his company’s applications — Fraud Sweep — help banks detect. In doing so, he gives us a rare glimpse into the several ways that people try to defraud banks. Most interestingly, he comments, losses from straight up fraud with commercial accounts far out-weigh losses from identity theft.

Coté talks with Zane Rockenbaugh of Liquid Labs about the company’s business model for working with clients — namely, sharing the IP of the resulting the code. Additionally, Coté and Zane talk about growing a small software shop from one person to a team, and the challenges in making that jump.

Coté speaks with Divakar Jandhyala of eVapt about what IT management for Software as a Service (SaaS) looks like and needs. Conversation also turns to the effects of SaaS on the IT department, and what the IT department of the future may look like. Finally, they end up talking about the effect of wider use of SaaS on open source thinking: for example, what open services would look like and the freedoms they would enable.

Coté talks again with William “whurley” Hurley about his thoughts on commercial open source. They discuss permissive licensing, choosing a license based on the desires for software and marketing thereof, avoiding using software licenses for political agendas (e.g., patents), and open source as a fad.

Michael Cote talks with Chip Holden about applying and using Agile Software Development in large scale projects. Chip tells us about his experience applying it over the years and across three different teams. His comments at the beginning about Agile software accentuating Conway’s Law are an interesting, counterintuitive observation. The discussion then concludes with the role of a software architect in Agile development.