We just got back from the National Chimney Sweep Guild convention in Louisville, KY. Louisville offers a lot more to do then I had imagined it would. This convention, billed as much bigger then our last one (the northeast) actually seemed to be a bit smaller in terms of people. In hindsight, this makes sense since a lot more sweeps are within driving distance of the northeast, and thus don't have to take several days away from their businesses.

It was also different this time because we had competition there...lots of it! We counted 5 other software companies. We were one of the first to register, and two of our "competitors" (really only one other does close to what we are trying to do...in other words we are the only real chimney sweep software not a generic scheduler, etc..) setup shop right accross from us. I'm not sure if it was intentional or a coincidence, but it really worked out great for us. The way the floor was laid out, most people bounced off them right to us, and its great to show our product side by side. We got a lot of people that would be running between our booth and another with "wait...now they do this, do you have that? Yes? Ok, well let me ask them if they do what your doing here...". And several "You guys are the best product i've seen here". It helps to do one thing really well, rather then try to be a jack of all trades.

Also version 1.2 of ChimSoft was released yesterday. One more major release in the next month or two will put us past where we have what 90% of sweeps and their businesses need.