Here are some of session topics delivered at the April 30, 2011 ProductCamp DC event.

- Pradheep Sampath

 The Product Manager Pathfinder: Accelerating Your Product Management and Marketing Career

By Hector Del Castillo

How can you position yourself to get hired or promoted over your competitors? What are your Unique Selling Propositions as a product manager or marketing manager? What can you do to accelerate your career in product management or product marketing? We will discuss key tips to differentiate yourself and accelerate you career. Learn how to convince a prospective employer why they should hire you or influence your current employer to promote you. We will identify how you can enhance your worth by increasing transferable skills. We will also discuss ways to identify your unique selling propositions so you can market yourself. Join me for a discussion regarding the importance of career planning and positioning.

Silence the Voice of the Customer (VOC) and Create Growth Plans That Work

By Rick Norman

If you don’t have time to do it right the first time, when will you ever find the time to do it over? Traditional VOC methods are often used today to guide marketing and product development efforts but with shockingly low success rates. This session will address the root causes of those failure rates. Come learn how thinking about markets, strategy and innovation from a “jobs-to-be-done” perspective consistently results in the creation of winning growth strategies and breakthrough products and services. Industry examples will be presented to show how “getting the requirements right” can deliver consistently high success rates.

"Lean" Product Management

                    By Shardul Mehta

Can Product Management run "lean"? What does "lean" mean? Lean Startup practices are revolutionizing the way startups are being done. Startups are about innovation and new product development. So is Product Management! Lean Startup is about speed to market, testing a vision by measuring how customers behave, and engaging customers throughout the product development cycle. Most of all, it is about a methodology of learning through a systematic Build > Measure > Learn process. Can Lean Startup practices be applied to Product Management to increase the chances of market success for our products?

oduct

By Jon Gatrell

With all the noise around social media and the opportunities it affords organizations it can be daunting to figure out where to start. This session will focus on how to practically leverage social media in developing products and growing market share. Participants will walk away with 3 key takeaways which you can put in practice tomorrow to improve your understanding of buyers, your customers and the problems waiting to be solved.

Transforming Innovation to Profit

By Hector Del Castillo

What can you do as a product manager or product marketing manager to encourage innovation? How do you harness the power of innovation to minimize risk and increase profit for your company? Why should you lead innovation within your company? We will share ideas and insights to help you create and implement a business and marketing strategy to drive innovation within your company. The speaker will identify key principles to help you increase creativity and collaboration and lead product development activities to turn product innovation to profit. He will identify the value of innovation, best business practices and proven methodologies. We will also ask questions, and open the floor for expansion and general discussion. Join me for a discussion regarding how to create an innovative environment within your company. I will identify concrete steps you can take to foster innovation.

 Social Insights: Use Social Media to Improve Your Product's Position in the Market

ProductCamp DC now has a group on Meetup.com. This will make it easier to organize ProductCamp DC events, allow folks to sign up, post suggestions, and engage in lively community discussions.

We set this up after feedback from participants who found it somewhat cumbersome to do some of the more critical functions on the site, like registrations and posting sessions, as these directed them to other sites requiring additional logins. It was something we mashed up together quickly last time, but clearly wasn't a sustainable solution. (Nor a great web user experience!) Meetup.com should make it easier to organize ProductCamp DC events and allow the greater interactivity within the ProductCamp community.

Here's the link. Sign up for our April 30th event, and post your session topic on the message board!

http://www.meetup.com/ProductCampDC

The success of any ProductCamp is predicated on the involvement of our participants. This means you! Help us promote our April 30th event. Download and print out the attached flyer. Display it prominently at your place of work - in break rooms, common areas and even your cube or office! Make copies and pass them around. Email it to friends, co-workers and even to your boss! Encourage everyone to sign up and be there on April 30th to help make it an amazing event.

Download the ProductCamp DC April 30 flyer

It will be held at the Washington Dulles Airport Marriott. Now is the time to get involved!

• Sign up to participate in the conversation
• Suggest a session topic
• Sponsor our April event

Our first event in August 2010 was a great success and was even written up in the Washington Business Journal. Come help make our April 2011 event an even bigger one!

The first ProductCamp DC was a great success! Check out the press we've been getting:

• Washington Business Journal
• Steve Johnson of Pragmatic Marketing
• Npersona's blog

Product Strategy Network, a Gold Sponsor for ProductCamp DC, is providing a complimentary webinar on Strategic Product Roadmaps: 10 Essential Lessons.  Pre-registration is required on or before July 28.

Fee: Free  |

When: July 29 2 p.m. EDT / 11 a.m. PDT  |

Duration:  60 minutes   |

Webinar Description:

One of the most important responsibilities of product managers is to manage the product roadmap. When created effectively, roadmaps can be a very valuable and powerful tool for the product manager. They can help to provide focus to activities, inform key internal and external stakeholders, keep everyone on the same page, and drive growth. Unfortunately, we see many practitioners who fail to obtain the benefits.

In this complimentary webinar, Jim Berardone, CEO of the Product Strategy Network (www.ProductStrategyNetwork.com) will reveal the 10 biggest problems that he has seen across their practitioner membership network and the proven practices for dealing with them effectively. You’ll takeaway important lessons that can help you to make product roadmaps a useful and effective management tool.

Follow this link to Learn More and to Register for this complimentary webinar:

http://www.productstrategynetwork.com/content/view/583/1

Strategyn is providing a free white paper entitled "What is Product Driven Innovation" available at http://www.strategyn.com/resources/white-papers/what-outcome-driven-innovation-odi/.

In addition, they are provding a $250 discount to all ProductCamp DC participants for their upcoming class "Using Outcome-driven Innovation to Drive Market Strategy" in DC this September.

Title: "Using Outcome-driven Innovation to Drive Market Strategy" (2-days)
Normal Price: $1950
Product Camp Discount: $250
When: American Management Association, Washington, DC
Where: September 28-29, 2010

Who should go: General managers responsible for setting strategic direction for markets and resources; Product and market managers responsible for market strategy and innovation in a specific product area; Engineers and developers responsible for creating new products and services

Course Description:
This curriculum provides a complete overview of ODI principles and practices for those responsible for implementing a company’s growth and market strategy. Managers will learn how Outcome-Driven Innovation identifies opportunities for both sustaining and disruptive innovation, how it provides direction for innovation initiatives within and across their divisions, and how it provides a common platform upon which their teams can boldly press towards growth and profitability goals. This program equips managers with the base knowledge to provide leadership for innovation initiatives which form a company’s strategy. This curriculum strikes a balance between depth and breadth which can potentially serve a wide range of audiences from executives to product developers.

To get your discount code, register to attend ProductCamp DC. The discount code will be provided in the confirmation email. Then visit http://www.strategyn.com/training/public-classes/using-outcome-driven-innovation-drive-market-strategy/ to register for the course.

When we first announced the date for ProductCamp DC, several alert members of the community pointed out to us that date is Yom Kippur!

Acknowledging the oversight on our part, and with due apologies to the Jewish members of our community, we immediately went back to Network Solutions to find a more suitable date. Network Solutions proved to be an extremely flexible and accomodating partner, and we're glad to announce the new date for ProductCamp DC is Satuday, August 28, 2010.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause to anyone regarding their plans or travel arrangements. However, we felt it was the right thing to do with due respect to the religious significance of the Yom Kippur holiday. We also felt it not right to schedule this event on September 4 (Labor Day) and September 11 for obvious reasons.

So we looked at other Saturdays available, balanced them against the time we have left for planning and the availability of our facilities partner, and landed on Saturday, 8/28. Boy, we've never been as excited about this date as we are now!

A big THANK YOU goes out to Network Solutions for not only working with us on this date change, but also graciously offering to provide food and beverages for the event!

We're looking forward to seeing all of you at the DC area's first ProductCamp! Register now >

The first ProductCamp DC will be held on a Saturday in September 2010 at a Washington DC metro area location. (Help us find a venue.) We've published a tentative schedule so folks can know what to expect. The agenda features an "open grid scheduling" process that enables session topics and presenters for the day to be determined in real-time via participant votes in response to 60-second "pitches" from each aspiring presenter. Also, in keeping with "unconference" principles, some session track topics will be decided prior to the day of the event via our session topics voting portal. The published agenda features two concurrent session tracks; though, as we get closer to the event, depending on participant confirmation and attendance, we will determine if additional tracks are warranted.

Check out the schedule and agenda. Then be sure to suggest session ideas and vote on your favorite ones.

Ramon Reyes has taken up our challenge to help with volunteer coordination for ProductCamp DC! As we move forward with venue selection and other logistical activities, Ramon will be working closely with other members of the planning team to organize the volunteer effort. He has alredy begun to think about the best ways to do this, and will be reaching out to all those who have raised their hands as well to help make ProductCamp DC a great event!

We're excited to have Ramon join us. Welcome, Ramon!