Session Proposals for ProductPotluck Austin: October 2010
Session 1: "Find a Friend: Creating Strategic Alliances"
Description:
Why go it alone when you can use an ally. This can focus on co-marketing, co-branding, joint venture, or even creation of channel partners of various kinds. You've got to be careful and know what you're doing or you can get in deep trouble. You've got to have a plan and a qualifying system so you don't waste time, money and effort. Let's talk about this.
Topic: Marketing
Format: Town Hall Meeting
Presenter:
Leader & Bio: Jan Triplett, Ph.D. - Since 1982, Jan Triplett, CEO, Business Success Center, has launched & grown businesses & evaluated their potential for debt, equity, & grant sources. She is the co-author of Thinking Big, Staying Small & Networker's Guide to Success, serves as a Austin Entrepreneur Network First Looks mentor, & co-teaches the Owners MBA pre-funding course..
Session 2: "The Hidden Overlooked Customer Touch Point: Your Receipt/Invoice"
Description:
Every B2C and B2B company uses receipts/invoices to bill their customers. However, some B2C companies really get it and use their receipts to reach out and touch their customers. We will evaluate different receipts and see which of our favorite B2C companies get it and which ones are way off the mark. Also, we will be talking about loyalty programs. Lastly, we will have an open discussion on how to take our B2C lessons and apply them to B2B scenarios. This is an interactive session and prepare to laugh, cry, and critique your favorite eateries, shopping sites, and other random businesses. POS - It does not stand for Piece of S**T but it is your marketing friend.
Topic: Marketing
Format: Presentation
Presenter:
Elizabeth Quintanilla - Elizabeth is a is not just your average Austin girl and the founder of EQ Consultants Group, LLC. Also, a Business Detective focused on determining why customers don't buy products or services or finds waste through inefficient operations. She focuses on understanding the customer perspective and bringing that to businesses.
Session 3: "How to be a Product Marketing Genius, Ninja, Guru, Rock Star, Wizard, [Insert Buzz Word Here]"
Description:
There has never been a more rewarding, yet challenging time for Product Marketers to engage with customers. The social media world has opened a new land of opportunities to tell your story. The question however is where one should focus its efforts given limited time/resources to be the most effective? Led by two Product Marketing practitioners, this Town Hall discussion, will focus on the what's working today and what to look for in the future. The presenters will give examples from the industry and their experience while highly encouraging audience participation.
Topic: Marketing
Format: Town Hall Meeting
Presenters: Josh Duncan, Bertrand Hazard
Bertrand Hazard is VP of Product Marketing at Troux Technologies. He is known for his 'franc-parler' and can-do attitude. Bertrand spoke at the March 2010 ProductCamp on "Why Social Does Not Matter", http://www.slideshare.net/productmarketer/why-social-does-not-matter , and was recently invited to speak at Forrester's Technology Product Management and Marketing Executive Council. You can follow Bertrand on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/productmarketer.
Josh Duncan is a Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Zenoss working on the next generation of Enterprise Monitoring tools. Josh won best presenter for his ProductCamp March 2010 presentation, "Start with the Story", http://www.arandomjog.com/2010/04/product-camp-austin-recap/ . You can find Josh on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshua_d and at his blog, http://www.arandomjog.com/.
Session 4: "Salespeople do the darndest things - and it just might be product marketing's fault!"
Description:
Product marketers are constantly amazed at the things salespeople will do, from chasing long shot opportunities to promising impossible benefits and non-existent functionality to prospects when trying to close a deal. Even though we like to blame the sales team for behaving in this manner, it may really be product marketing's fault. Product Marketing should own the message and then enable the sales team to take this message to the market. Unfortunately, sales enablement has become one of the most overlooked functions of the product management role. In this presentation, we'll address four key components of effective sales enablement tools.
Topic: Marketing
Format: Presentation / Workshop
Presenter:
Tom Evans - Tom Evans is Principal at Lûcrum Marketing and brings over twenty years of successful hi-tech business experience helping start-ups as well as Fortune 500 companies create and launch winning products. Tom's experience covers numerous vertical industries, technologies and international markets.
Session 5: "Protecting IP On A Bootstrap Budget"
Description:
This session shows entrepreneurs how to protect their intellectual property given the limited resources available during startup and product launch phases of a company. While it is not always possible to protect your IP without some significant expenditures some steps can (and probably ought to) be taken while you await funding. This session will explore such topics as identifying your intellectual property (IP), focusing your research and development on marketable IP, budgeting for protecting IP, planning for protecting IP, approaching potential financiers and IP, avoiding IP ownership issues, and preserving IP-related evidence.
Topic: Product Strategy
Format: Presentation
Presenter:
Robert L. Villhard - Bob is a rocket scientist turned patent attorney. He founded and serves as the CEO of the Villhard Patent Group. He has over 8 years of patent law experience coupled with over 15 years of experience as an engineer. Recently, he filed his fourth personal patent application and founded a company to market related products.
Session 6: "7 Easy Steps to Start a Million Dollar Business"
Description:
Everyone has had this fantastic idea once in a while. How does one take this idea and turn it into a Million+ dollar business? This is a presentation/workshop that provides 7 steps (including key principles and frameworks) to put your idea through the entrepreneurship paces. This would also be an excellent session to brainstorm on new ideas or watch the ideation of the next exciting startup.
Topic: Product Strategy
Format: Presentation
Presenter:
Robert L. Villhard - Bob is a rocket scientist turned patent attorney. He founded and serves as the CEO of the Villhard Patent Group. He has over 8 years of patent law experience coupled with over 15 years of experience as an engineer. Recently, he filed his fourth personal patent application and founded a company to market related products.
