Proposed and Presented* Sessions for ProductCamp Austin 18
Presentations for sessions that were provided to PCA by the session leaders are linked under the session column.
*The 25 sessions designated with a (V) next to them received the most votes and were presented at PCA18 on Feb. 11, 2017.
| Category | Title | Audience | Session | Session Leader |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Requirements Definitions | 1 – Ack! I’m a New PO and I need a Product Backlog, Stat! (V) | PM Essentials | Presentation | Betsy Stockdale |
| Product Strategy | 2 – Strategic Roadmaps vs. Product Roadmaps – The Destination and Turn-by-Turn Directions (V) | PM Advanced | Presentation | John Mansour |
| Product Development | 3 – Onshore Product Requirements in an Offshore Development World | PM Advanced | Presentation | Stan Geiger |
| Data Analytics | 4 – Data Visualization 101: How to display data with tools you already use (i.e. PowerPoint) (V) | PM Essentials | Presentation | Tanya Feinstein |
| Prod Mgmt Careers | 5 – Make a Better Career Transition Faster – Answer The 3 Questions | PM Essentials | Workshop | Alex McCarthy |
| Go-to-Market | 6 – Hi-Tech Product Launch Strategies | PM Advanced | Presentation | Shivansh Chaudhary |
| Customer Experience | 7 – Personal Mobile App Development | PM for Entrepreneurs | Workshop | Sean Bauld |
| Entrepreneurship | 8 – Create Your 2017 Product PLAYbook | PM for Entrepreneurs | Workshop | Jeneth Blackert |
| Prod Mgmt Careers | 9 – Product Manager – small vs. big company | PM Essentials | Presentation | Doug Fierro |
| Go-to-Market | 10 – Using Metrics in Product Marketing: Going Beyond Content (V) | PM Essentials | Presentation | Stephen Bergmann |
| Prod Mgmt Careers | 11 – Mastering the Product Interview (V) | PM Essentials | Panel Discussion | Dan Corbin |
| Growth Hacking | 12 – Outcomes Over Output: Using Metrics and OKRs to Ensure Product Success (V) | PM Advanced | Presentation | Dan Corbin |
| Go-to-Market | 13 – Set Yourself Up For Victory With Win Loss Analysis (V) | PM Essentials | Presentation | Brooke Grimes |
| Go-to-Market | 14 – Great Product Managers Are Great Story Tellers!! Which Stories Are You Telling? | PM Essentials | Presentation | Tom Evans |
| Product Strategy | 15 – Why you should be using Facebook’s new technology for mobile and web based products | PM for Entrepreneurs | Case Study | Ryan Vice |
| Product Strategy | 17 – Information is Energy! | PM for Entrepreneurs | Town Hall | Michael A. Hill |
| Prod Mgmt Careers | 18 – Improv & Product Management: Building Team Mind Flow, Connectivity, and Trust | PM Essentials | Workshop | Samantha Schak |
| Customer Experience | 19 – Page types for your pattern library | PM Advanced | Presentation | A. Litsa |
| Prod Mgmt Careers | 20 – We are women, not expensive men | PM Essentials | Town Hall | A. Litsa |
| Prod Mgmt Careers | 21 – Why I Won’t Recruit You (V) | PM Essentials | Presentation | Bertrand Hazard |
| Product Strategy | 22 – Keys to a successful Internet of Things Development (V) | PM Advanced | Presentation | Mike Boudreaux |
| Requirements Definitions | 23 – Managing Product Backlogs at All Levels of the Enterprise (V) | PM Essentials | Presentation | Candase Hokanson |
| Prod Mgmt Careers | 24 – Why Are You Not Being Found? Try Thinking Like a Recruiter (V) | PM Essentials | Presentation | Marc Miller |
| Product Development | 25 – An Outsider’s View Making Agile Work (or not) | PM Essentials | Presentation | Stephen Bergmann |
| Requirements Definitions | 26 – The Jobs-to-Be-Done Framework: What Every Product Manager Needs to Know (V) | PM Essentials | Presentation | Roger L. Cauvin |
| Product Strategy | 27 – Secrets of Customer Discovery (Part 1): How to Beat the Odds and Build Products That People Want (V) | PM Essentials | Workshop | David Eckoff |
| Product Strategy | 28 – Secrets of Customer Discovery (Part 2) Advanced Methods – All New Material (V) | PM Advanced | Workshop | David Eckoff |
| Go-to-Market | 29 – How To Sell Anything (V) Best Session | PM Advanced | Presentation | Jeffrey Fry |
| Product Strategy | 30 – In The Land of the Blind You will Need a Plan | PM for Entrepreneurs | Presentation | Jeffrey Fry |
| Prod Mgmt Careers | 31 – The Ideal Product Management & Marketing Org Structure: Value-Focused vs. Product Focused (V) | PM Advanced | Presentation | John Mansour |
| Prod Mgmt Careers | 32 – The Paradox of Potential (V) Runner-Up | PM Essentials | Workshop | Thom Singer |
| Product Strategy | 33 – Tales from the Dark Side – of Product Management | PM Advanced | Roundtable Breakout | Diane Pierson |
| Requirements Definitions | 34 – Happy Devs, Happy Life: How to (finally) give clear requirements using Zeplin.io (V) | PM Advanced | Presentation | Beto Juarez III |
| Customer Experience | 35 – Incorporating a UX perspective into early stage product development (V) | PM Essentials | Presentation | Corey Dulimba |
| Prod Mgmt Careers | 36 – Product Management For Real: Real World Stories of Getting Stuff Done (V) | PM Essentials | Panel Discussion | Joel Greenberg |
| Customer Experience | 37 – UX Army of One (V) | PM Essentials | Town Hall | Janna Hill |
| Opportunity Analysis | 38 – How to Trump Marketing – 5 lessons from the 2016 Elections (V) | PM Essentials | Presentation | C.K. Kumar |
| Requirements Definitions | 39 – User Story Bootcamp (V) | PM Essentials | Workshop | Megan Jackson Stowe |
| Marketing Execution | 40 – How to Craft A Cold Email | PM for Entrepreneurs | Workshop | Arash Zafarnia |
| Product Strategy | 41 – Optimal Product Decisions – Letting the Genie out of the Bottle | PM Essentials | Town Hall | Andre Piazza |
| Product Strategy | 42 – 5 Lessons I Learned from the Star Wars Saga | PM Essentials | Town Hall | Andre Piazza |
| Entrepreneurship | 43 – Validate your ideas before building them. | PM for Entrepreneurs | Town Hall | Charu Krishnan |
| Go-to-Market | 44 – Recipes for the PERFECT product launch! | PM Advanced | Presentation | Harsha Kalapala |
| Marketing Execution | 45 – Better Content drives more traffic & conversions (V) | PM Advanced | Case Study | Craig Andrews |
| Prod Mgmt Careers | 46 – Managing your Career for a Great Life (V) | PM Essentials | Presentation | Donna Imam |
| Entrepreneurship | 47- Right Customer + Right Pricing Strategy + Right Incentives = Success | PM for Entrepreneurs | Workshop | Jan Triplett, Ph.D. |
| Entrepreneurship | 48 – Business Plan Secrets | PM for Entrepreneurs | Workshop | Jan Triplett, Ph.D. |
1 – Ack! I’m a New PO and I need a Product Backlog, Stat!
You just started a new job as a product manager, and are working to learn a new product. As you attempt to quickly learn the product, the next release date has already been set, and the dev team is waiting for you start the product backlog, so they can start development. So how do you come up to speed quickly, make sure that you don’t forget any key user stories and ensure that they are elaborated appropriately along the way? Let’s explore the ways to make this all possible.
Presenter: Betsy Stockdale Betsy is a Business Architect at Seilevel. She is responsible for leading projects to develop requirements following Seilevel’s Requirements Modeling Language (RML). Betsy’s experience includes developing requirements for a variety of systems and customers She is an active trainer for numerous organizations, and presented at events such as IIBA and PMI chapter meetings and Product Camp Austin.
2 – Strategic Roadmaps vs. Product Roadmaps – The Destination and Turn-by-Turn Directions
When there’s no destination for your product portfolio (the strategic roadmap), every set of turn-by-turn directions (product roadmaps) can look attractive and take you on endless detours! Learn how to get your products from point A to point B without all the starts, stops, U-turns traffic jams and detours.
Presenter: John Mansour John Mansour is the founder and managing partner of Proficientz, Inc., a training and consulting firm that specializes in B2B Product Portfolio Management & Marketing. John has more than 25 years experience in high technology product management, product marketing, marketing communications and sales in B2B and has worked with more than 2000 organizations in a consulting capacity.
3 – Onshore Product Requirements in an Offshore Development World
As a Product Manager you typically write requirements and if there are any questions you walk down the hall and talk to development. What do you do if development is on the other side of the world or across time zones. You have to change how you write the requirements as well as how you interact with your development team. This interactive presentation will look at how to deal with these challenges with real world use cases as well as interactive discussions among the group.
Presenter: Stan Geiger Sr. Manager, Product Management at IDERA. I manage a team of PMs responsive for a product line at IDERA. Responsible for setting product strategy and ensuring that products are delivered on time and on budget while meeting customer and market expectations. Work with product managers to ensure that products are competitive and meet quality standards.
4 – Data Visualization 101: How to display data with tools you already use (i.e. PowerPoint)
Practical guidance for how to display your data using PowerPoint. We’ll discuss rules for making good graphs and how to avoid common mistakes.
Presenter: Tanya Feinstein Tanya is a cognitive psychologist and CX/UX researcher. She spends a a lot of time making graphs and teaching others how to display data.
5 – Make a Better Career Transition Faster – Answer The 3 Questions
Considering a job transition? Already in one? Most jobs are found before they are posted or a recruiter is hired. They are found by people giving you access to their network. Most people will not let you access their network unless you have clear and compelling answers to The 3 Questions. People like helping others – having great answers helps them help you. Everyone wins. In this workshop, you’ll learn The 3 Questions and start developing your answers. Bring a pen – you’ll need it.
Presenter: Alex McCarthy Alex McCarthy has worked in product management, software, marketing and sales at companies ranging from early-stage startups to global publicly-traded companies – most recently as VP Product Management at American Innovations. He built successful PM teams for hardware, software and professional services. Alex recently started Navigate Next to help leaders navigate to careers where they are passionate and engaged.
6 – Hi-Tech Product Launch Strategies
Have you ever seen a TV commercial that promotes devices that can test the accuracy of a power amplifier which is embedded in the circuits of your iPhones? Clearly, traditional product launch strategies do not necessarily apply on Hi-Tech products. The strategies for launching these products is well differentiated in product messaging, value proposition, target audience and influencers. In this session, we will discuss the key strategies and initiatives that can lead to a successful hi-tech product launch, based on my experience of launching a multi-million dollars’ product line at National Instruments. We will also evaluate the importance of competitive analysis, global coordination and customer user stories/personas – before, during and after a product launch. You should attend this session if you are or you want to become an entrepreneur, product manager or product marketer in Hi-Tech industry!
Presenter: Shivansh Chaudhary Shivansh is a Product Manger for the most financially successful product line at National Instruments (NI) and has been working with NI for over 5 years. He is a graduate in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology and is a recipient of the IEEE Peterson Award 2015 for outstanding research in his field of wireless communications.
7 – Personal Mobile App Development
Design and build mobile apps. Use your app with small groups or leverage as a prototype to more sophisticated app development with reduced development costs and greater speed to market. Build for a working app – your app – for iOS and Android in less than an hour! Make apps for specific events, presentations, and audiences. Leverage push notification tools, gps, calendars, ratings, comments and more.
Presenter: Sean Bauld Sean Bauld Thinking about empowering a generation of makers and creators.
8 – Create Your 2017 Product PLAYbook
I’m the creator of a process called Playbook Sessions is both a pragmatic system designed to change how you create in business. The approach is to explore innovation and creative play; unlike any other productivity program out there. Instead of looking solely at tasks, it digs deeper to uncover art of creation through planning games and questions. Imagine following a web of questions that brought out more innovation and creativity. Imagine always knowing the next question to ask and the next step to take so you never got stuck. Imagine having a system that included your inspiration and the clients desires. That’s what Playbook Sessions offer.
Presenter: Jeneth Blackert Over the past decade, Jeneth Blackert, known as “The Change Agent” has become a preeminent creative productivity facilitator. Her wildly successful global change movement, Real Raw You, encourages people around the globe to open to greater energy, more radiant lives and expanded healing possibilities.
9 – Product Manager – small vs. big company
Are you considering being a product manager or are you a new product manager? Have you thought about the differences of being a product manager at a small company vs. a large one? While all product manager roles share some common skills and responsibilities, you may find that your strengths and interests are a better fit to work in one type of organization vs. another. Come and attend this interactive session led by a seasoned product manager who has worked at local start-up companies, large public corporations, and some in-between.
Presenter: Doug Fierro Doug Fierro has over 20 years experience in the high-tech industry and over 10 years experience in product and marketing roles. He was the the first product manager at two locally based start-companies and also worked as a product manager at two companies in the Fortune 500. Mr Fierro was a previous presenter at Product Camp Austin #11.
10 – Using Metrics in Product Marketing: Going Beyond Content
How often have you seen Product Marketing roles talked about only in terms content generation? Or Sales Readiness? Product Marketing is a pivotal part of your Product team, sitting at the intersection between Sales, Marketing, and Product Development. Your PMM is privy to unique customer, sales, marketing and product insights that can make or break your products in the market place. In this session, we’ll discuss leveraging Metrics and Agile Methodologies to better integrate product marketing and help your products succeed in the market.
Presenter: Stephen Bergmann Stephen Bergmann is the Head of Marketing/Product Marketing Manager for MxToolbox, the leading provider of tools and monitoring solutions for IT administrators. With a dozen years of experience in product marketing, product management and B2B technology companies across two continents, Stephen has experienced the fun and challenge of bringing dozens of products to market in diverse industries.
11 – Mastering the Product Interview
Whether you already have product experience or are looking to land your first job in product management, this session is for you. Interviewing can be nerve-wracking and stressful, especially if you aren’t properly prepared. However, if you know exactly how to prepare, interviewing can be incredibly and rewarding. This session you teach you: – What research to complete before the interview – How to craft the best possible answers at a product management interview – Ways to distinguish yourself from other candidates and get noticed – What’s required to get the job offer you really want
Presenter: Dan Corbin Dan Corbin is the Sr. Product Manager for Context.IO. He is a Certified Scrum Product Owner and a Certified Scrum Professional with over 15 years of product development experience. Dan is also the founder of The Product League meetup, co-organizer of the Agile Austin Product SIG, instructor for Agile Austin U, and a frequent contributor to other local meetups.
12 – Outcomes Over Output: Using Metrics and OKRs to Ensure Product Success
Too often companies prioritize the output of new features instead of focusing on the key performance indicators that truly drive a business forward. In this session, we’ll dive into how you can use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to make sure you’re working on the right things at the right time. By doing so, you’ll avoid becoming a feature factory for a failing product. Life is too short to build something people aren’t going to use. Learn how OKRs can help make sure your work doesn’t go to waste!
Presenter: Dan Corbin Dan Corbin is the Sr. Product Manager for Context.IO. He is a Certified Scrum Product Owner and a Certified Scrum Professional with over 15 years of product development experience. Dan is also the founder of The Product League meetup, co-organizer of the Agile Austin Product SIG, instructor for Agile Austin U, and a frequent contributor to other local meetups.
13 – Set Yourself Up For Victory With Win Loss Analysis
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Sun Tzu said in The Art Of War. The best way to really get to know yourself and your enemy better is through win/loss analysis. During this session, we will walk through what it means to create a successful win/loss report that everyone in your business can use in battle. First, we will dive into the logistics of how to set up a battle plan to tackle this project. Who will make the calls? How will you know which contacts to reach? Who is your audience for the report? Second, the audience will discuss together what good win/loss questions look like. You will walk away with some great ideas about how to maximize the time you spend conducting win/loss interviews. Finally, you will have access to templates of real-world win-loss reports!
Presenter: Brooke Grimes Brooke is the Director of Marketing at AcademicWorks, one of the fastest growing companies in Austin. Before leading the marketing team, Brooke was a Product Marketing Manager for companies in the nonprofit and edtech space. She believes in enabling sales teams to help them win, creating killer content, and working cross-functionally to bring products to market.
14 – Great Product Managers Are Great Story Tellers!! Which Stories Are You Telling?
The best Product Managers and Product Marketers tell great stories. They are able to tell great stories because they know which stories they should be telling and how to structure them to communicate the right information. Come and learn as we discuss which stories to tell at which time, and how to develop and tell those stories, putting you in a position to be a much more effective Product Manager, or Product Marketer.
Presenter: Tom Evans Tom Evans is Principal at The Lûcrum Group and is an internationally recognized leader in product management, global marketing, business partnerships and entrepreneurship. In his extensive experience, he has helped start-ups through Fortune 500 companies create and launch winning products and has led business development efforts in the US and global markets.
15 – Why you should be using Facebook’s new technology for mobile and web based products
Recent studies show that people are spending 65% of their time online on mobile devices and while on mobile they are spending 90% of their time in Apps. This means you should be considering native forms for your products in addition to web. However, having Web, IoS and Android versions of your product can cause your cost to triple as you need different engineers for each platform. Facebook is leading charge in creating technology that allows using the same engineers and code across platforms allowing significant reductions in production cost. In this talk we will introduce you to this new ecosystem of technologies that includes React and React Native and share case studies of how people have benefited from their use.
Presenter: Ryan Vice Ryan is an award wining technologies and author living Austin who has helped several companies launch products and is currently working through MVP efforts for two products.
17 – Information is Energy!
We will examine the premise with analogies and comparisons to other traditionally recognized forms of energy. Then we draw some conclusions about how to apply the concept to resolve product management issues such as time-to-market and internal team rivalries. Brainstorming follows, with coaching, to address some of your own product issues..
Presenter: Michael A. Hill CEO of Torix Corporation, specializing in technology leadership, planning and innovation.
18 – Improv & Product Management: Building Team Mind Flow, Connectivity, and Trust
If you think improv only belongs onstage or Who’s Line Is It Anyway, think again. In this brief presentation, you’ll get a crash course into the basics of improv. We’ll go over what you’ll learn in any intro class and how to use it within your organization. The skills and tips will help you in leading internal meetings, presentations, client phone calls, and basically anywhere else you interact with another human. By the end of the night, you’ll walk walk away with a handful of exercises and games to take back to your team (and purpose for each one).
Presenter: Samantha Schak Samantha Schak is a native Chicagoan with a deep love for the lone star state. She’s been performing, teaching, and directing improv comedy for almost 6 years. Her pet project, Shameless Dames, improv based on Broad City and Girls, debuted last year. Currently, she is a senior project manager at a boutique digital agency, digiTech Web Design.
19 – Page types for your pattern library
Pattern libraries sometimes fall short of helping enterprise teams build different products the same way. These palettes of components (toolbars, pop-ins) and patterns (searching, navigating) can be assembled into any number of UIs, leading to too many right answers. While the public pattern libraries like Google Material must accommodate countless unimagined applications, our private libraries can serve us better. We have special insight into our own users’ workflows. A page type is a layout and set of patterns packaged together according to the workflow they support. If your pattern library is a basket of ingredients, your page types are the recipes. Learn how to augment your pattern library with page types.
Presenter: A. Litsa A. Litsa is a User Experience Design Lead with over 10 years of creative experience, including prototyping and testing large enterprise application suites.
20 – We are women, not expensive men
The Tech community is investing a lot in us. The T in STEM is working extra hard to achieve gender balance. Why? If we take the old-fashioned feminist stance that women are just as good as men, then really what we’re saying is women are expensive men. Raising and recruiting women technologists is hard. So what justifies the cost? What’s really going on here? In this town hall discussion, we’ll explore pragmatic reasons R&D leaders want more women on their teams.
Presenter: A. Litsa A. Litsa is a User Experience Design Lead with over 10 years experience. She has worked with many enterprise suite and consumer application teams to bring successful products to market. She is now focused on team building and collaboration.
21 – Why I Won’t Recruit You
Looking for the next job? Wondering why you are not getting an offer? Let me give you my perspective … and a few advices along the way, not as a recruiter, not as a consultant but as someone who has interviewed a lot of people over the last 15 years for various marketing and management positions. Again and again I see candidates making the same mistakes. They all fit on one slide.
Presenter: Bertrand Hazard Bertrand Hazard is VP of marketing at TrustRadius where he leads all marketing functions. Previously, he led a team of product and demand generation marketers as senior director, market strategy for the systems management business unit, at Solarwinds. Bertrand also served as vice president of marketing at Troux Technologies overseeing brand, product marketing and demand generation efforts.
22 – Keys to a successful Internet of Things Development
Innovation, creativity, and leadership are required to be successful in an innovative Internet of Things development. Mike will share insights from his experience leading an innovation process for an IoT startup inside a Fortune 500 company, from concept to launch to continuous enhancement. Mike will talk about forming teams and partnerships, testing concepts, get funding, pivoting models, and developing MVP’s.
Presenter: Mike Boudreaux Mike Boudreaux is Director, Connected Services for Emerson Automation Solutions. Prior to his current role, he has held various roles in engineering, product management, marketing and sales at Emerson, Alcoa, and AkzoNobel. He holds a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University Houston and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
23 – Managing Product Backlogs at All Levels of the Enterprise
As companies roll out agile to their entire enterprise, they often run into issues of scaling product ownership from the team level (with one team and one PO) to the program or even portfolio level. And, once a scaling method has been determined, those previous product owners or product managers now in charge of programs, value streams or portfolios have to figure out how to manage the product backlog at their level, which, especially in terms of dependencies, can be a monumental feat. In this talk, we’ll have a guided discussion about some of the more popular approaches in the market for scaling product ownership to the program and portfolio levels, and share how using visual models help in understanding dependencies and value across all levels of the enterprise.
Presenter: Candase Hokanson Candase is a Senior Product Manager who trains and coaches product owners and product managers on agile approaches as well as championing products in those roles for clients. She works with teams to unite every member around the goal of delivered business value to save millions of dollars in development costs for features that don’t contribute to the business value.
24 – Why Are You Not Being Found? Try Thinking Like a Recruiter
Most of the time, the reason you are not being found is because you are not thinking like a recruiter. Recruiters are using LinkedIn to search for talent using specific strategies. Think of this like dating. If you want to find a mate, you need to hang out where the opposite sex can find you. When I was a young man, that meant belonging to social organizations or clubs and hanging out with friends. When I got older, it also meant going to bars and doing other activities—I met my wife playing volleyball through an informal Sunday evening volleyball group. If you want to be found by recruiters, then you need to understand the strategies recruiters use to search LinkedIn. This way, you can be found by recruiters…just like you wanted to be found by the opposite sex.
Presenter: Marc Miller Marc Miller is the founder of Career Pivot which helps Baby Boomers design careers they can grow into for the next 30 years. Marc authored the book Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for Baby Boomers. He has been featured on Forbes.com, FlexJobs, Mashable, and PBS’ Next Avenue.
25 – An Outsider’s View Making Agile Work (or not)
Adopting the right Agile approach for your business can be a challenge. Sometimes, it’s hard to see reality when you’re down in the weeds. As a Product Marketing Manager, in the past 10 years I’ve seen dozens of different approaches to Agile from the outside. From marathon “standups” to projects managed with Kanban to wildly successful Scrum implementations, my experience as an outsider and now as a Product Owner has given me a unique view into making Agile an integral part of your business. In this session, I will discuss a few common and several uncommon tips and tricks for making Agile work for you, along with some cautionary stories about where it went frighteningly wrong.
Presenter: Stephen Bergmann Stephen Bergmann is the head of Product Marketing for MxToolbox, a specialist in online tools and monitoring solutions for IT administrators. He has brought to market high tech B2B products in a wide variety of industries including (big) data and customer intelligence, and cloud management. His philosophy incorporates agile PO practices into marketing enabling rapid responses to changing market conditions.
26 – The Jobs-to-Be-Done Framework: What Every Product Manager Needs to Know
If you don’t know what the jobs-to-be-done framework is, or if you want to take it to the next level, this session is for you. Product leaders are increasingly recognizing that the jobs-to-be-done framework is critical for managing all forms of products. In this session, we’ll cover: 1. What is the jobs-to-be-done framework? 2. How to define product requirements in terms of jobs to be done. 3. How to take jobs-to-be-done to the next level.
Presenter: Roger L. Cauvin By empowering teams to make smart product decisions, Roger creates products that transform people’s lives. He is the founder and Director of Products at Dadnab, a mobile application that he grew to 2.5 million annual user queries. Roger is a past winner of the “best session” award at ProductCamp Austin.
27 – Secrets of Customer Discovery (Part 1): How to Beat the Odds and Build Products That People Want
The mortality rate for new products and businesses is stunning. In this introductory session, you’ll learn a practical set of actions you can follow to dramatically improve your odds of building products people buy and use. ► Learn a customer discovery process to get you moving fast. ► Find out the most common big mistakes people make in assessing customer demand. ► Discover a powerful approach to testing your ideas. ► Learn simple but non-obvious hacks you’ll love. You’ll experience a fast-moving hands-on program led by an entrepreneur/product guy who has done it himself – and is dedicated to teaching you. For product managers and startup founders in companies of all sizes. “David Eckoff is a cannonball of energy, delivering passion and engagement through his presentations. Mr. Eckoff is a boon to any conference that values itself as speaking truth, not fantasy.” – Chris Brogan, New York Times Bestselling author
Presenter: David Eckoff David Eckoff specializes in working with teams to develop and launch industry-changing businesses. He’s defined go-to-market strategies and led teams in companies from startup to Fortune 500. Previously, VP New Products, Turner Broadcasting; pioneered online sports broadcasting, music, movies and games at Real; SVP, Rivals.com. David’s sessions have been voted “Best Session” and “Best Presenter” multiple years at ProductCamp Atlanta.
28 – Secrets of Customer Discovery (Part 2) Advanced Methods – All New Material
At “Secrets of Customer Discovery (Part 2)”, you’ll learn advanced methods to dramatically improve your odds of building products people buy and use. ► Find out what real desire for a product looks like (it’s not what you’d think). ► Discover the one thing you can rely on your customers to do (you can bank on this). ► Learn how to not get fooled by false positives that lead to expensive business mistakes. ► Discover a little-recognized behavior in your customers (that might be the most important thing you can learn before building a product). You’ll experience a fast-moving hands-on program led by an entrepreneur/product guy who has done it himself – and is dedicated to teaching you. For product managers, startup founders, marketers, and investors, in companies of all sizes. Expect an outstanding seminar. David Eckoff’s sessions have been voted “Best Session” and “Best Presenter” at ProductCamp Atlanta.
Presenter: David Eckoff David Eckoff specializes in working with teams to develop and launch industry-changing businesses. He’s defined go-to-market strategies and led teams in companies ranging from startup to Fortune 500. Previously, Vice President New Products, Turner Broadcasting; Senior Director, RealNetworks, leading teams pioneering online sports broadcasting, music, movies and games; Senior Vice President at Rivals.com, the leader in online college sports.
29 – How To Sell Anything
So, you have a GREAT idea, a super team, lots of money, .. but NO customers.. how am I supposed to sell this?
Presenter: Jeffrey Fry Jeffrey Fry has over 30yrs of high-tech business experience within F250 technology companies as well as helping over two dozen startups develop and market their products. Mr. Fry is considered an expert in marketing, sales, and go-to-market strategies. Mr. Fry received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Lafayette College, & attended St. Edwards University as part of his MBA studies.
30 – In The Land of the Blind You will Need a Plan
Why should to Write a Successful Business Plan? How do I do one and what is it good for?
Presenter: Jeffrey Fry Jeffrey Fry has over 30ys of high-tech business experience within F250 technology companies as well as helping over twenty startups develop and market their products. Mr. Fry is considered an expert in marketing, sales, and go-to-market strategies. Mr. Fry received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Lafayette College, and attended St. Edwards University as part of his MBA studies.
31 – The Ideal Product Management & Marketing Org Structure: Value-Focused vs. Product Focused
There’s a new way to structure your product management & marketing team that centered on market & customer value. The end result is higher value products/services and greater team efficiency, regardless of size.
Presenter: John Mansour John Mansour is the founder and managing partner of Proficientz, Inc., a training and consulting firm that specializes in B2B Product Management, Product Marketing and Sales Enablement. John has more than 25 years experience and has worked with more than 2000 organizations that span high technology, business services, telecom, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing and many others.
32 – The Paradox of Potential
Potential does not equal results. For an individual or an organization there is often a gap between what is expected because of potential and the eventual outcomes. This interactive session will make you examine your own potential and identify what may be holding you back from achieving your best levels of career success.
Presenter: Thom Singer Thom Singer is an author and professional speaker who specializes in helping people reach their highest levels of human engagement and potential
33 – Tales from the Dark Side – of Product Management
Want to hear what product managers like you are facing in the real world? The war stories, lessons learned, cautionary tales and crazy situations – bring them all to Tales from the Dark Side and participate in this interactive session led by an experienced go-to-market expert. Diane will kick off with a lesson in product planning learned the hard way, then facilitate an open discussion. Share your story or ask the group to share on topics important to you. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn and share real information and actionable ideas.
Presenter: Diane Pierson Diane Pierson: I’m a launch and scale expert with executive experience across market verticals, business functions and technical product categories. I’ve identified reasons – and come up with remedies – for why good products fail to grow. Now loving life as an instructor with Pragmatic Marketing, I’ve worked at tech companies startup and behemoth from VerticalNet to D&B to LexisNexis.
34 – Happy Devs, Happy Life: How to (finally) give clear requirements using Zeplin.io
Tired of devs asking you for clarification on your carefully written requirements? Or worse, are you tired of devs that don’t ask enough questions? I have a product you should know about. Zeplin.io is changing the game by turning your Sketch designs into high-bandwidth requirements that help your development team go from in-the-dark to pixel-perfect code machines. This talk will go through one product and how a product manager can give a completed Zeplin.io product to developers that help them code more quickly and with more clarity.
Presenter: Beto Juarez III Founder at @NestMortgage. @Stanford and @MITSloan Alum. Proud Texan. Long-time Californian. College football, new music, and great cocktails are my vices.
35 – Incorporating a UX perspective into early stage product development
We’ll discuss how Product partnered with part time UX in early stage product development to accelerate learning and add value without compromising delivery. We’ll walk through the strategy, tools, and learnings to illustrate why UX compliments your existing Product methodology.
Presenter: Corey Dulimba Corey Dulimba is a Product Manager at Bazaarvoice responsible for front end analytics and client technical health. He is a Certified Scrum Product Owner with over 7 years experience helping to implement and build products at SaaS companies.
36 – Product Management For Real: Real World Stories of Getting Stuff Done
Experienced product managers talk about the challenges they’ve faced and solutions they’ve created bringing products to market in biotech, cleantech, and hi tech. With experience from startups to large corporations, from ad networks to SaaS, come hear war stories about learning about the market, defining products, balancing customer needs with management expectations, and motivating people to embrace your vision. Q&A to follow. Dr. Kathryn Blair, Joe Kendall, and Joel Greenberg are Offering Managers at IBM with experience in Design Thinking in a variety of fields and companies.
Presenter: Joel Greenberg Dr. Kathryn Blair, Joe Kendall, and Joel Greenberg are Offering Managers at IBM with experience in Design Thinking in a variety of fields and companies.
37 – UX Army of One
Imagine a hi-tech company with a whole stable of trained designers, humming along, testing, creating, collaborating in harmony for the betterment of their product, bringing joy to users. Now imagine one, lone designer, standing in the desert, watching a tumbleweed roll by, hoping to get one user to talk to them for 5 minutes so maybe their product doesn’t get worse. Now guess which one I am. Hint: I’ve grown to appreciate tumbleweeds. Maybe you’ve seen a tumbleweed yourself? Come hear how I created a UX Army of One out of that desert and what lessons I’ve learned when the design is all up to you, no matter your title. It will be UX from a firehose. We’ll talk about user research, UX, UI, challenges, strategies, and participation is encouraged!
Presenter: Janna Hill Janna is a Sr. UX/UI Designer at Mitratech and is her own Army of One for several enterprise legal management software applications. When she’s not designing legal software, you can usually find her chasing her husband and dogs around their twelve acres in the hill country.
38 – How to Trump Marketing – 5 lessons from the 2016 Elections
Do you think you understand people? Do you think you understand Americans? Whether you do or not, this fun, interactive, passionate session is geared for smart product managers and marketers who understand that marketing has always been at the intersection of business and pop culture. And to be successful in business, professionals need to have a deep understanding of people, their aspirations and their behavior. Using the past 2016 US presidential elections as learning opportunity, this session will explore key marketing areas such as Positioning, Segmentation, Marketing Strategy, Go-to-Market initiatives and Data Analyses Join this dynamic, sometimes controversial but always insightful discussion to learn, share your insights and hopefully get better at marketing.
Presenter: C.K. Kumar C. K. Kumar is a Marketing and Strategy professional who has spent the past 20 years in several technology and marketing roles in startups and large companies. He is passionate about marketing, entrepreneurs and in his spare time, he helps multiple start-ups in their marketing and business strategy.
39 – User Story Bootcamp
Are your user stories terrible? Did you just land a Product Owner role but actually have no idea how to create high quality “agile requirements”? Are you struggling to nail down the “perfect” minimum viable product? In this fun and interactive workshop, we’ll split into teams and construct a backlog of user stories for a product concept. After reviewing a few examples together, each team will be given a feature, set of visual models, and then work together to craft a set of user stories with acceptance criteria. Moderators will prioritize the product backlog as stories are submitted based on defined business objectives. By the end of this session, we’ll have a sample stack ranked backlog with an identified MVP set of scope. And you can go to sleep at night knowing no developers will be harmed in the future orchestration of your user stories.
Presenter: Megan Jackson Stowe Megan is a Senior Product Manager at Seilevel who trains, coaches, and works as a product owner for a variety of software product types. An advocate of Seilevel’s Requirements Modeling Language (RML), she focuses on using more pictures and less words to get teams to deliver business value faster, creating products their customers love, and having fun while doing it.
40 – How to Craft A Cold Email
Cold email outreach can be a powerful tool for B2B lead generation. Learn the ten tactics to help you increase the volume of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) in your sales pipeline. Contents of the session will focus on the best approach to take when performing outbound sales activity, the best tips for composing convincing messaging over email, and how to improve the results over time.
Presenter: Arash Zafarnia Arash is the founder of Catchfire. Catchfire develops new business prospects for early growth and emerging tech companies.
41 – Optimal Product Decisions – Letting the Genie out of the Bottle
Product Marketing / Managers are pressed to make quality decisions to satisfy an increasing number of people, at a pace that is hard to keep up, in contexts where the stakes only grow. In this interactive presentation, we will apply 5 best practices to improve decision-making in the context of #ProdMgmt to help you hone your ability to build better products, gain new levels of user insights, create value faster, become a better leader, and ultimately accelerate your career. In this session you’ll learn: – The lessons can PMs learn from successful merge and acquisitions (M&A) – The key human cognitive biases used to elevate product design / experience – How to improve dialogue with cross-functional teams – Vital few questions to ask yourself / your teams to avoid getting in your own way This presentation was recently delivered to a PM audience at General Assembly with excellent feedback.
Presenter: Andre Piazza Andre Piazza is a Product / Strategy Leader in tech whose experiences in a variety of segments at Dell, Quest and EMC led him to reflect how decisions could improve in our PM craft. He believes in building intelligent products, gaining traction with authentic marketing, and delivering memorable customer experiences. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter @AndreAtDell.
42 – 5 Lessons I Learned from the Star Wars Saga
In this interactive session, we will explore five beneath-the-surface Product Management lessons that come from the Star Wars saga, their characters, plot, creators and fan base. Bring your blasters, get ready for trivia, all of you Star Wars fan!
Presenter: Andre Piazza Andre Piazza is a Product / Strategy Leader with various experiences in the tech industry. Like you, he watched all the Star Wars movies many times… most recently looking beyond the surface for deeper Product Management lessons. He believes in building intelligent products, gaining traction with authentic marketing, and delivering memorable customer experiences. Connect with him: LinkedIn or Twitter @AndreAtDell.
43 – Validate your ideas before building them.
Validate your ideas so you can stop the guessing and start building with confidence. We will discuss how to quickly (and cheaply) validate your ideas before you write a single piece of code. This will be a town hall style session. Audience’s participation and ideas are greatly appreciated. Looking forward to a great discussion.
Presenter: Charu Krishnan Charu Krishnan is a Product Manager @ Capital One. She has 13+ years of Product Management and Development experience in B2B and B2C markets. She is all ears for anything related to products that successfully solve customer problems.
44 – Recipes for the PERFECT product launch!
How do you decide the right time to launch a product? When can you start pitching the product to prospects? How can you measure the success of a product launch? Whether you are a product marketer or a product manager, these are some of the essential questions that come up before a product launch. Teams that don’t align their development and marketing resources and timelines miss the opportunity to maximize market impact. In this presentation, I’ll share my approach to managing essentials of a go-to-market process, and how to align the process with your product team. Working with your cross-functional team and timing checkpoints strategically can have significant impact on launch outcomes, allowing quicker launches and setting realistic expectations for customer support. I’ll also share a tried and tested framework that I developed over my engagement with multiple high-growth SaaS companies. I hope to make this session engaging!
Presenter: Harsha Kalapala Harsha Kalapala is a seasoned SaaS product marketing and Go-To-Market expert, with experience driving product launches for some of Austin’s fastest growing companies like WP Engine, Civitas Learning and Outbound Engine. Harsha is currently the director of product marketing at Get Smart Content, and also consults with startups on product marketing strategy.
45 – Better Content drives more traffic & conversions
Content marketers want more traffic. Conversion optimizers want more conversions. Seize both with better content. We will present a case study about how changing a client’s content quality radically changed their results. Launched in October, a new piece of content had 28% more downloads in 1 month than any other piece all year combined. Site traffic was 33% higher than any other month all year. Then secondary effects improved 2 landing pages. Conversion rates on those pages increased 160% & 280% respectively. Half of the total year’s downloads on those two pages happened in October even though we made no changes to those pages. Excellent content drives more traffic, more conversions and more engagement.
Presenter: Craig Andrews Craig Andrews is the Principal Ally and founder of digital marketing agency allies4me. Allies4me works with Central Texas companies who believe their website could drive more leads or sales but don’t feel like they’ve reached their full potential. Increasing the number of qualified leads and sales is the single focus. Allies4me exclusively targets opportunities where they can make triple-digit gains.
46 – Managing your Career for a Great Life
Chasing that dream product job? That next title upgrade? Given the best 15+years of your life and accomplished little career wise, or suddenly been rendered unemployable at a “certain age”? This session presents researched case studies of average people crafting a career for an amazing life.
Presenter: Donna Imam Donna Imam runs Inteleaf, a custom software development, b2b product management and hi-tech marketing firm in Austin, TX.
47 – Right Customer + Right Pricing Strategy + Right Incentives = Success
C.P.I. rules! Incentives sweeten a deal but they have to match your Platinum Profile™ preferred customer and pricing strategy. The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma: The right combination makes you profitable. The wrong combination kills the deal, the product and possibly your company. Improve your chances with this process whether you are pre-revenue or been in business 20 years.
Presenter: Jan Triplett, Ph.D. Business Success Center opens doors to success for business owners locally, nationally and internationally. Founder and CEO Jan Triplett has launched, invested in, bought, and helped sell businesses. She writes for allbusiness.com, Business Bank of Texas, and is the co-author of Thinking Big, Staying Small. She is a nationally recognized speaker and hosts monthly BOSS-Talks webinars and Inspiring Entrepreneur interviews.
48 – Business Plan Secrets
You want a deal? Maybe you need a business plan to make it happen. There are some secrets to success — the first is there’s more than one kind of business plan. For the rest, you’ll have to choose this session and attend it.
Presenter: Jan Triplett, Ph.D. Business Success Center opens doors to success for business owners locally, nationally and internationally. Founder and CEO Jan Triplett has launched, invested in, bought and helped sell businesses, and reviewed or written hundreds of business plans for clients and investors. She writes for allbusiness.com, Business Bank of Texas, and is the co-author of Thinking Big, Staying Small.