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PRESENTERS: The official ProductCamp Austin Summer 09 PowerPoint TEMPLATE (.potx) is now available in WHITE and BLACK. You are not obligated but are highly encouraged to use it - it helps recognize our great sponsors!
Here are some other PPT formats as well:
PowerPoint 94-2004 Presentation - WHITE (.ppt) PowerPoint 2007 Presentation - WHITE (.pptx)
PowerPoint 94-2004 Presentation - BLACK (.ppt) PowerPoint 2007 Presentation - BLACK (.pptx)
Below you will find a full list of sessions offered at this summer's ProductCamp Austin. Read and consider which sessions you would most like to attend!
SORRY, NO MORE ADDING SESSIONS! WE'RE COMPLETELY FULL AND NEED TO MARKET THE SESSIONS WE HAVE. IF YOU'D LIKE TO OFFER A SESSION, PLEASE CONSIDER IT FOR THE NEXT PRODUCTCAMP THIS WINTER!
Session Schedule - Saturday Aug 15th
A sorted list of sessions by track
Agile (3)
Marketing (17)
There are 10 easily identifiable signs to watch for that can help forecast if a product launch may be in trouble. Signs you can address and fix before the launch becomes a disaster. Your company may be spending millions on the next product. Spend 45 minutes with me to find ways to prevent a train wreck!
Current events have a way of capturing the attention of millions of people, from local to worldwide scales. Products can be designed around certain news stories to take full advantage of this already captivated audience. In this session, we’ll discuss strategies, pitfalls, and marketing techniques for both new and existing products.[T]
Pay-per-Click marketing is one of the simplest yet most powerful tools available to marketers and product managers today. It can be used to slash research budgets, shorten feature research, and play a role determining advertising tactics. Unfortunately, very few companies use it to its full potential. Learn how Pay-Per-Click (PPC) can be used not only to sell products, but assist with the design process, all for a fraction of the price of traditional methods. This tactical session will focus on providing an introduction into the Google adWords interface, sales and research strategies, and examples of their use. Attendees will leave ready to launch their first campaign.
Explore 9 + study-backed tools of social influence used in product and personal promotion.
You may have learned them in college – but how are you using them now?
How do you see others using them?
How can/do you use them with high integrity?[T]
Topics will include the following:
* List building
* Joint ventures and affiliate partnering
* Email marketing
* Social media and community buzz
* Sales funnel development
[T]
Requirements (6)
The Requirements Value Chain, Using Requirements to Improve the Overall Performance of the Company (John Mansour)
Personas to Production: The Role of Design Briefs, Storyboards, and Wireframes in the Ideation/Design/Build Process (Paul Sherman)
Requirements at the Speed of Thought (Tony Chen)
From Word docs to wikis. Use cases to story cards. Shall statements to user stories. How do requirements change in a world of agile development methods? The real goal of project managers, business analysts, developers, and users is project success. Understanding what users need is, and always will be, crucial to any software. How, then, can business analysts work within agile methodologies to help them succeed? What do requirements look like without all of the overhead? What is the right balance between agility and rigidity? This presentation will provide tips and techniques for how requirements can add value in an agile world.
Sizing, Segmenting, and Forecasting Markets (Paul Teich)
[Novice | Intermediate] Business is driven by accurately defining how many customers there will be for your product over time, how much they are willing to pay over time, and what will make them break their current habits to pay for your product. Then throw in a healthy dose of competition and the concept of “market windows.” Top-level requirements and persona prioritization are derived from these fundamental definitions.
Creating Scenarios for Uncertain Futures (Paul Teich)
[Intermediate] Scenarios deal with mitigating risk – the risk that you’re addressing the wrong market or have incorrectly defined your requirements for a changing market. This is especially relevant for long lead-time products in rapidly changing industries, generational hand-offs, and economic disturbances. For agile software developers this may not be so much of a benefit, but for people who are building services or are actually making physical stuff it’s an issue.
The Balancing Act of Getting Manageability and Maintainability Features onto the Roadmap (Cary Peele)
[Intermediate | Expert] The balancing act of getting non-end user product features for Manageability and Maintainability onto the roadmap and actually completed:
Product Strategy (15)
Using the voice of the customer to drive innovation (Steven Haines)
Getting past the product roadmap to broaden your perspective (Steven Haines)
How Product Mgmt. and Product Mktg. Can Drive Company, Market and Product Strategy (John Mansour)
Doing product management and product marketing the same old way (in product silos) produces the same old results – frustrated tactical product teams competing for resources that ultimately limit a company’s ability to grow. Learn a unified approach that eliminates product silos and puts product management and product marketing in a position to drive the strategic direction of the company. Priorities and execution become much easier.[T]
Roundtable Discussion on Pricing (Mahendra Mavani)
Ever since I entered software industry after finishing my college, Pricing is the golden question I have faced every now and then. Even after 8 year of working in this industry it still remains bigger mystery for me. How about you? Have you ever wonder how product companies are setting their base unit price? Or How does Service companies come up with fix bid for their service? Even further, how does many consultants bid for their hourly rate? If you are one of those, who have faced this challenge, then let's get together and share our ideas. Our round table will include discussion on topics of base unit price for product, bid for fix price projects, incremental cost based on iteration/scope and anything else that follows from there.
Attaining usability and a great user experience for big, enterprise-level product lines (Paul Sherman)
What’s next? How to not be a deer in headlights when positioning your roadmap with stakeholders (Chris LaPoint, Denny LeCompte)
Integrated Marketing Strategy & the role of Product Management (Kurt Ballard)
Marketing strategies that are not integrated with product efforts and sales teams produce inconsistent value propositions, extended buying processes and produce meager sales results. No matter how much effort you put into your marketing planning and strategy, ultimately the execution will fail miserably if your communications are not tightly integrated with your strategy, products and your internal teams. We will discuss the roles Product Management plays in the development and delivery of integrated marketing plans that gets your message to your target customer wherever they may be.[T]
Case Study: How to get people to click the buy button for your product when you have not developed your product yet. (Jonas Lamis - Tech Ranch Austin)
Roadmaps: The Bridge Between Strategy and Tactics (Byron Workman)
Roundtable: Integrating IP strategy and functions into Product Strategy / To Patent or not to Patent (Don Jarrell)
Lots of people jump into filing a patent application without (1) understanding the mechanics, options, outcome realities, or costs (2) understanding the lifecycle and valuecycle of patents, or (3) having a clear view of how the patent or overall IP strategy should serve their product strategy or business objectives. Many end up frustrated or angry and share broad-brush tales of woe that create even more misunderstanding among other Product Managers. Simply engaging a patent attorney does not necessarily prevent or resolve this. In this session we'll clear up some popular misunderstandings, and share/analyze informative experiences in patenting among participants. I'll try to get a patent attorney to join in, but neither of us will be giving legal advice.[T]
Roundtable: Case Studies and Success Factors in Applying Social Media (Pat Scherer)
Effective Competitive Analysis (Ashish Malpani)
Roundtable: Good to Great = Soft Issues ? (Don Jarrell)
Your technologies and business models are both the very latest, the company is fully invested in the Pragmatic Marketing Framework, your development and release is as Agile as it can get, and your requirements are managed to three decimal places of precision. But you’re not retaining customers as well as you want and your costs are still at issue. Is it something that the hottest tools and methods can help, or is it something about the soft issues of the way in which smart people are working hard ? We’ll discuss needs for balance among competing good attributes (market-driven products, design-driven products and business operations constraints; what works, what leads and what sustains in the product strategy; & others)[T]
Beyond gut feel - Tying product decisions to strategy (Mike Boudreaux, Mark Suchanek, Derick Workman)
Career (8)
Domain Knowledge vs. Product Knowledge Roundtable Discussion (John Mansour)
It all started on the AustinPMMFForum with a product manager job posting. Poor Mike. He just wanted a few good candidates for a PM job and started a passionate discussion (or perhaps a brushfire) about the balance of product expertise vs. market expertise. Let's continue the the discussion live. Bring your passion.[T]
Birds-of-a-Feather Panel: Product Marketing and Management Consultants (Colleen Heubaum, Vicki Flaugher, ?? )
Employee to Entrepreneur: Learn how to make the leap from being employed to launching your own venture. (Kevin Koym - Tech Ranch Austin)
Product Management in Software Startups – A personal view on how it differs from larger organizations (Oliver Schmelzle)
Is the Standard Departmental Structure Hazardous to Product Success? (Brandon Hudgeons)
NetWORKing (Steve Whiteford)
- Share best Austin networking forums and news
- Hone and practice that vital minute pitch
- Discuss and receive new tips for “Working a Room” and developing courage and balance for the frey.[T]
Workshop: Effective Time Management for Product Managers (Colleen Heubaum, Tom Evans)
There’s no avoiding them. At most companies, all employees at all levels participate in employee performance reviews at least once a year. In this tough job market performance reviews should not be taken lightly or viewed as just another HR process. Whether they tell you or not, companies use performance reviews to make decisions that can help or hurt your career, including promotions, transfers, compensation, terminations, and even downsizing. Tenure and job performance are no longer guarantees for job security. Learn HR tips on how you can use the performance review process to recession proof your career.
Other (1)
Panel Discussion: Do you hate Sharepoint? Alternative tools for sharing information with peers and stakeholders (Chris LaPoint, Denny LeCompte, Nick Crown - Sun Microsystems, Nick Bhavsar)
We need to fill ~30 session slots. Some will be filled by roundtables and will need facilitators; the rest will be offered by you - the ProductCamp participants. List your offered session here, if we end up with more than 30 offered sessions, than the sessions will be chosen by the participants in the morning. Please indicate the track that best matches your session.
ProductCamp only works if you get involved - that means speaking or presenting, moderating a panel or roundtable discussion, conducting a workshop, or being on a panel. Add your session here with your name in ()'s so we know who you are! Proposed sessions will be voted on by the ProductCamp participants with the most popular sessions getting best scheduling. If you can't think of a session to lead, check out the section below called "Topics I would like to hear about" for ideas, or check out some of the really cool sessions offered by people just like you at ProductCamp Austin in June 2008 and January 2009.
To add a session, you can send an e-mail to roger at cauvin dot org or edit this page as follows:
Check out the formats, tracks, and supply and demand for each track (shown below).
Click the 'Edit' tab near the top left corner of this page.
Scroll down to the list of sessions below and put the track name in brackets, the name of your proposed session, and your name in parentheses.
You can structure a session however you wish, but here are some potential session formats:
Presentation - You speak or give a Powerpoint presentation.
Panel Discussion - You either moderate a discussion of topics by a group of panelists, or you sit on the panel.
Roundtable Discussion - You moderate a discussion among all of the session attendees.
Workshop - You lead session attendees as they work through a challenge.
Here are some categories of topics in which registrants have indicated interest:
Agile (e.g. product owner and product management roles in scrum)
Marketing (e.g. social media, marketing programs, advertising versus PR)
Requirements (e.g. elicitation, concepts, documentation, tools)
Product Strategy (e.g. partnerships, roadmapping, positioning)
Career (e.g. how to interview, how to be interviewed, big company BS, working with internal stakeholders)
Other (e-mail your suggestions to roger at cauvin dot org)
The following chart shows how many people have expressed interest in each track (during registration) and how many sessions have been proposed (for each track).
As a presenter, you may want to consider this as a demand signal indicating topics of interest to the attendees, and propose a session based on knowing the balance of "attendee interest" to "already proposed sessions."
We are transitioning the primary goal of this page to be 'see what's coming', so now only showing the percentage view of the demand signal:
Some of these topics we got to, others we didn't. Consider these topics for a future PCA.
Tips for finding and interviewing customers and potentials
Using low/no cost methods to connect with the Market
Effective time management for PM's
Dealing with GUIs in requirements
Developing a 12 month strategy plan to drive awareness in the marketplace
How to best align a product management team internally to serve the different target markets. Enterprise, Consumer, SAAS, etc.
Product EOL planning, concerns
Product personas; useful methods of assessment, software v. web personas, impact on value proposition, market reach, product usability etc.
How segment and size markets
Product Management: Consumer vs. B2B
Product Management & Business Development
Product Management and Open Source: Mutually exclusive?
Just say No: When is it time to end of life a product? How to restrict bad ideas from ever becoming products?
Ethnography & Product Development
Effective Collaboration - How product managers are using wikis to share information with customers, developmers and/or stakeholders.
Build, buy or partner - Beyond the basic business case.
Does offshoring and outsourcing still make sense?
Launch strategy - customizing your product launch activities for your market
What's next? Career management for the product manager
Managing up: Working with executives vs. working with peers.
Hit the ground running: What to do in the first 30 days (in a new role, at a new company, with a new product)
add a topic...
There is nothing like leading a session at ProductCamp - it will be the most fun you can pack into a 45-50 minute conference session. Because ProductCamp is completely user driven, there are no "talking heads" or "keynotes." There is just you and your peers. That lends a realism to the sessions that you can't get anywhere else. Presenting at ProductCamp is fun, and an experience you will remember forever. Use this opportunity to polish your presentation and facilitation skills in a non-threatening environment, talking about problems that matter with people who "get it."
We learned at the first ProductCamp that certain types of sessions work better than others. These are guidelines, but feel free to break the mold and bring something new to the table.
Participants Liked:
Interactivity
Discussion
Use Cases/Examples
Whiteboards
Roundtables
Disliked:
Excessive Slideware (>10 slides is probably pushing it for most sessions!)
Pushing questions to the end
Anything Sales-y