Product Managers (and Marketers) Make Happy Product Campers

Jennifer Dennard, E-Media Marketing Specialist; and Jessica Clifton, Product Development Manager
August 25, 2010

The third edition of ProductCamp Atlanta, held last Saturday at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, attracted a record number of attendees. Two hundred and fifty folks interested in connecting with their product management and marketing peers attended a variety of sessions held throughout the day including New Product Launch on a Shoestring, Using Social Media to Gain Customer Insights, and Strategic Product Marketing - the Missing Link in a Top-Down Product Management Culture. Billian's HealthDATA and partner Porter Research had the pleasure of being a Silver Sponsor. We were in good company with such fellow sponsors as Sage and Silverpop.

Jason Brett welcomed everyone to the event.

From the Organizer's Perspective
Jason Brett, founder of ProductCamp Atlanta and a senior product manager at Silverpop, believes "there are really four reasons for ProductCamp's continued success:

* Affordability [It's free.] - Traditional conferences are expensive, and therefore risky. By making 'participation' the cost, more people are willing to take a chance and spend a Saturday trying something different.

* Relevance - Since we select sessions democratically on the day of the event, there is practically no chance the sessions won't be targeted to attendees. As a participant, I can be guaranteed that I have a voice in the programming, and that it will be relevant to me.

* People - Birds of a feather flock together, and I think a different kind of product professional attends ProductCamp. These are people who are dedicated to their career. We aren't just doing the 9 to 5 grind for the sake of a paycheck. We love what we do and we want to be better at it. This is networking at its best and I think it's a huge success factor.

* Adventure - ProductCamp is fun. It's different, and it's a little strange. You show up in the morning not knowing exactly what you are going to get, who you are going to meet and what you are going to learn. The discovery process throughout the day keeps the event exciting and brings participants back for more."

Lisa Crymes, Director of Product Management at Emdeon and a fellow organizer of the event echoes Brett's belief that networking and education are big reasons for the show's success. "We've all sat through conferences and at the end of the day felt like the theory was great, but how do we put it into practice? ProductCamp's 'unconference' format really facilitates sharing of information among peers who are using these skills every day."

Attendees' votes determined which sessions would be held throughout the day.

From the Product Manager's Perspective
Jessica Clifton, Product Manager at Billian's HealthDATA, came away with several key takeaways, the biggest being "the difference between being market-driven and being product-driven. While initially counterintuitive to me ('I'm a product manager, not a market manager, right? Wrong!'), Zigzag Marketing's presentation on creating a market-driven organization from the top down proved to be a perfect reminder that products are market solutions at the end of the day.

"It's easy to lose sight of the overall goal when you get caught up in the day-to-day product-specific initiatives," she explains. "I walked away from that session feeling like I had a solution for realigning competing agendas across departments by unifying groups around target market and buyer personas, rather than the broad spectrum of products that we offer."

From the Product Marketer's Perspective
"I was pleased to see that so many of the proposed sessions had to do with social media's role in product management and marketing. It really helped me gain a better understanding of the synergy that should exist between a product manager and product marketer," says Jennifer Dennard, E-Media Marketing Specialist for Billian's HealthDATA and Porter Research. "I really enjoyed the session on using social media to gain customer insights. We all struggle with defining the ROI of social media. It was helpful to hear members of the session panel tackle this problem.

"I think Jessica and I both agree that a common theme of both tracks was the importance of listening to the voice of the customer. As Barry Doctor mentioned in his session on new product launches, you need to know your customer to determine if free social media resources will ultimately benefit sales."

Visit the Billian's HealthDATA Facebook page to see more pictures from ProductCamp Atlanta 2010.

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