ProductCamp Austin Board of Directors

Since the first ProductCamp Austin in 2008, PCA has been an ad-hoc organization focused on delivering the highest quality ProductCamps to the Central Texas product management and marketing community. During that time, the community has asked for ProductCamp to become more and provide more – and ProductCamp has delivered, adding new events like ProductPotluck and ProductParty. Now, ProductCamp Austin has made the next step in its maturation, forming a corporate entity chartered in Texas, moving from an informal planning team to a Board elected by its participants – in a style congruent with the origins of ProductCamp Austin events, and working toward becoming an official 501c(6) non-profit organization.

The following Members, and specific roles, on the ProductCamp Austin Board of Directors were elected at the organization’s second General Meeting, held on July 20, 2013 during the ProductCamp Austin Summer 2013 event.

President
Responsible for leadership and overall direction of PCA. Presides over board meetings and PCA planning team functions. Moderates planning committee, builds consensus and breaks ties where required. Serves as the public face of PCA. Responsible for understanding what makes ProductCamp a special group and event and preserving that spirit.

Time Commitment: Ranges from 5 hours a week between events to 10+ hours/week during heaving planning.
Qualifications: Must have served as a PCA planning team lead/board member at least once.

Melissa Muckenthaler (email) (LinkedIn) (Twitter) (Facebook) Melissa Muckenthaler is a multi-lingual marketing professional with expertise in strategic business planning and global marketing. Melissa returned to the US after working in Europe and Asia the last 16 years. Her marketing background, primarily for a global health care company based in Germany, includes building up and mobilizing marketing and sales teams as Marketing VP in Bangkok, Thailand. Parallel, she oversaw Bayer Asia’s New Product Launch Team (Hong Kong, Australia and SE Asia). Prior to this, Melissa held various product manager and sales roles in Germany. Melissa holds a BA in Economics from UT Austin and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. On the weekends, you can find Melissa training at the motocross track on her Yamaha or wakeboarding on Lake Austin. Melissa is an active member of the ProductCamp organizing committee and is eager to help launch the group into its next boom phase.

Treasurer  
Responsible for managing PCA’s budget and accounts payable and receivable. Provides quarterly updates to the board about PCA’s budget status. Signatory for PCA checks. Responsible for non-profit filings with IRS and State of Texas.

Time Commitment: Varies.

Cliff Vars (email) Cliff manages the Product Management team for HomeAway Software for Professionals. He has previously worked in product management roles at Lombardi Software and IBM. Cliff has no formal accounting background, no prior service as a treasurer, and he remembers very little from high school accounting. However, he does have an engineering degree which means he cannot be that bad at numbers.

Sponsors Chair
Responsible for the recruitment of new and existing PCA sponsors. Drives funding for PCA as an organization and for PCA events. Main point of contact for sponsors and is responsible for establishing, building, and maintaining sponsor relationships. Defines value proposition for sponsorship and sponsorship tiers. Manages sponsors team.

Time Commitment: Ranges from 1-2 hours/week between events to 10+ hours/week during the 2 months before PCA.

Marketing Chair
Responsible for driving messaging execution for PCA events via a variety of channels: social and traditional. Manages the marketing team, and the PCA event website, facebook, and twitter accounts. Coordinates with the Sustainability Chair between events for ongoing website updates.

Time Commitment: Ranges from 1-2 hours/week to 10+ hours/week leading up to events.

Greg Kincade (email) (LinkedIn) (Twitter)
Greg Kincade is a product manager responsible for market strategy and product life-cycle management on the Dell Enterprise Storage Marketing team. Prior to his current role, Greg designed marketing strategies for Dell’s portfolio of data center infrastructure products. Prior to Dell, he has held roles in software development, systems engineering, project management, product management and product marketing for a diverse set of companies from the Fortune 500 to the privately funded startups. Greg holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Rice University and a MBA from the McCombs School of Business at University of Texas at Austin.
Over the past two years Greg has been actively involved with the ProductCamp Austin Planning Team and has worked with the previous Marketing Chair, Brian Hull, as the Marketing Team lead. Greg was captivated by his first ProductCamp Austin experience and is committed to helping to shape and drive the organization’s vision for the future.
Logistics Chair
Responsible for the recruitment and coordination of PCA volunteers for a variety of activities. Runs PCA registration, setup and teardown, onsite vendor coordination, timekeepers and note-takers, materials and giveaways, and coordination with the PCA venue(s). Manages logistics team. Maintains PCA master project plan.

Time Commitment: Ranges from 1-2 hours/week to 10+ hours/week leading up to events. Is usually the first person to show up and the last to leave from PCA events.

Brian Rhodes (email) Brian Rhodes is an experienced product and program manager responsible for delivering products that solve business problems. Brian has provided strategic direction to international enterprises and tactical team leadership solving marketing automation, stakeholder collaboration and service delivery problems. Marketing solutions that foster one-to-one relationships have been delivered to verticals such as photo processing and the Texas maritime industry. Collaboration solutions created a competitive advantage for law firms by enabling them to work with engineers, insurance companies and architects to complete contracts for buildings, roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects. At Cisco Systems, Inc., Brian created services for international service providers that enabled them to drive revenue in enterprise video. Currently, Brian is a Product Manager at ServiceMesh defining go-to-market strategies and developing market driven solutions to drive growth in US and global markets.Brian graduated from Texas A&M University with a BBA in Marketing and South Texas College of Law with a Doctor of Jurisprudence. He is an alumni of both Pragmatic Marketing and the 280 Group training and certification programs and is a Project Management Professional (PMP). On the weekends, you can find Brian on the golf course at Twin Creeks. He’s usually the one looking for his ball in the woods or at the bottom of the nearest water hazard. Brian has been an active volunteer for logistics over the past year and is eager to make future ProductCamp Austin events successful.

Sessions Chair
Responsible for the recruitment of volunteer-led sessions at PCA events. Determines what types of sessions are in-demand, and drives PCA members to offer sessions. Runs the voting process on the day of PCA events where applicable. Manages the sessions team.

Time Commitment: Ranges from 1-2 hour/week to 10+ hours/week leading up to events.

Jeremy Gorr (email) (Twitter) (LinkedIn)
Jeremy is currently a Senior Product Manager at Seilevel, where he leads consulting projects for software products in a wide variety of industries. Prior to Seilevel, he worked as a Product Manager for several building materials manufacturers. He has also done software development consulting, as well as stints at both IBM and Hewlett Packard.Jeremy has been an active volunteer on the Sessions team for every Product Camp in the last two years, and has been that team’s planning lead for the last year.

Sustainability Chair / Secretary
Responsible for defining the ongoing strategy and path to sustain and grow PCA as a mature organization for the product management and marketing community. Manages the non-event PCA website, responsible for capturing and maintaining PCA event content after-the-fact, and advising the board on how to evolve the PCA organization for the future. Manages the sustainability team.

Time Commitment: Ranges from 3-5 hours/week.

Andjelo Cherty Mwembya (email) Prior to gaining 15 years’ experience in engineering management, marketing, business development in both the private and government sectors Andjelo received a B.S. in electrical and computer engineering from UNC at Charlotte. He is a trailblazer in the raw mineral trading and mining industry, and is very involved in telecom/IT and real estate investment circles across many international borders. Over the years Andjelo has developed initiatives and opportunities aimed at increasing the quality of business in the African emerging markets. His expertise includes business development, customer relationship management, and project management and Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA). Within the MoZiKi concept, he has developed techniques for analytic and strategic decision making process.

Emeritus Advisors
Appointed by the Board, Emeritus Advisors have previously served on the Board, or as Team leads on the Planning Team. TAdvisors are non-voting members of the Board for consultation and use of their all-important contacts.

Paul Young (email)		Bertrand Hazard (email) (Twitter)

Former President