Title of Session/Topic

Description

Session Host

Product Management Under Attack 

What is the strategic role of product management and why is it under attack from SaaS, agile, and sales-driven cultures?

Steve Johnson  

Product managers and marketers often complain that they are "too busy" to do strategic work, then complain that their departments lack the authority needed to do their jobs. This session will suggest 5 practical steps that your team can take to move from company "player" to "coach" for the product.

Alan Armstrong

(onproductmanagement.net)

To achieve growth targets, we need to look beyond product features! This interactive session will provide a straightforward method to help you identify the areas of the business that need attention in order to improve top-line sales. The tools presented will help you review product performance in the sales channel, identify constraints, conduct focused research, and target initiatives for improvements across the organization. The session will be interactive and topics can be shaped by participants. Bring your questions and tough problems.

Alan Armstrong

(onproductmanagement.net)

How Product Mgmt. & Product Mktg. Can Drive Company, Market & Product Strategy 

Voted best session at ProductCamp Austin Summer 2009 and ProductCamp RTP 2009!

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.

John Mansour   

Product Managers and the FDA: What role can we play?  Download Slides/Summary            

Overview of regulatory strategies for commercializing medical devices. Conventional wisdom says that product managers are concerned only with achieving their claims. We will discuss opportunities for earlier engagement for product teams in usability and clinical trial design.

Neil Henry                                                                                               

Product Sustainability in an Open Source Environment 

Guidance on some of the choices that drive product sustainability in Open Source since feature differentiation is somewhat blurred. Also, how the ecosystem can help shape the viability and success based on those choices. 

Shaan Bagchi             

Naming, Logos, and Tag Lines

Dancing with death when it often doesn’t even matter.  Picking a company or product name can be a sinkhole into which the entire senior management team can descend for weeks on end.  Or, it can be done in an instant – usually badly.  We will talk through some principles for naming, creating logos, and maybe even the dreaded “tag” lines.

Stevan Vigneaux

Mock-ups Made Easy (using FlairBuilder) 

I will show Product Managers how they can significantly improve the speed and efficiency of mock-up creation using the great, inexpensive GUI prototyping tool FlairBuilder. Presentation attendees will be given a 5-day promo license code, and I will also have several free licenses available to hand out as challenge prizes!! 

Jason Miceli   

Sustainability in Next generation products and services - Opportunities and Threats 

Discuss the implications of sustainability requirements on new products and services. 

Badhri Uppiliappan

Cross functional teams and customer interaction 

Companies (and sales) seem to control the customer and are reluctant to allow the product teams face time. Engineering dept. heads don't let their engineers out of the building. What's right and how do you garner what's needed? 

Barbara Finer  

Agile product requirements 

How to develop product requirements when your customer doesn't really know what their new product will be. 

Four Hewes   

Roundtable: Productivity in Virtual Teams 

Let's share experiences with geographically distributed teams from the POV of the Product Manager... 

Wendy Moldauer   

Solution Marketing Best Practices 

TOPIC #1: SOLUTION MARKETING BEST PRACTICES: It's not just about products... Solve a customer's business problem and you'll have a fan for life. Learn about solution marketing and how it's different from product marketing. We'll also take a look at a few solution-oriented companies. TOPIC #2: THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN YOUR PRODUCT ORGANIZATION How is social media affecting your organization? Share your experience and best practices in the use of customer/market-facing social media in your product management/product marketing organization.

Steve Robins   

Round Table

Successful strategies for today's Consumer Electronics

Dave Robbins

Usability Sessions

How to run them, and what to do afterwards

Robin Zaragoza  

Customer Visit - Why and How to do them? 

One of the best (if not the best) ways to understand market/customer needs is to visit your customers/prospects on-site. This presentation will focus on why it is important to do this, how to do them right, common pitfalls to avoid and how to get a budget for it. This will be based on my personal experience visiting 300+ customers (Fortune 100 to small businesses) in 10 countries over a 13 year career as a product manager. 

Gopal Shenoy  (productmanagementtips.com)

Implementing Product Management in a Creative Organization 

This would be a roundtable discussion of taking an organization which has been driven by "creatives" and putting in place product management. Discussion will focus on change management. 

Donal Toole   

Software Pricing & Licensing Roundtable (Brainshark pre-view)

Click here to download the slides

Discussion of software pricing & licensing models, value metrics & trends. Networking and collaboration with PM's involved in SW pricing. 

Chuck Anastasia 

Amy Konary

Jim Geisman

Personas 101: How to REALLY get started

There is no dispute that Personas are a useful tool for product managers and marketers. But, if you've never created one, getting started can seem overwhelming. Learn how to take the first steps in the iterative process to make user and buyer personas work for your needs...easily. 

Jennifer Doctor  

Ferreting out real customer needs -- roundtable

If you don't start with real customer needs everything else that follows is at risk. This will be a discussion of what methods to use under different situations to best get at the important needs customers don't even think to talk about.

Alan Chachich   

The Roadmap to Better Roadmaps

How do you know where to go if you don't know where you've been?  Here's a topic you'll want to learn more about.  In the end, it's all about in order to sharpen your strategic perspective. 

Steven Haines (Author, The Product Mgr's Desk Reference)

Market research

Market research: Quant vs. Qual

Laura Appleton