July 22nd, 2008ProductCampToronto
Chris Gurney, who presented at DemoCampToronto18, and Chris Herbert are working to bring ProductCamp to Toronto. ProductCamp is a participant driven conference focused on product marketing and management. The goal is to bring people interested in the product management, product marketing and product development together to discuss the challenges they experience and solutions to common challenges.
I’ve always been more interested in product design and development. But I’m am starting to see a very clearly defined role for product marketing managers that is present in Canada. Where much of the product development effort happens outside of Canada, however, there are unique challenges to building a marketing plan and tracking performance over the year. I suspect there are a number of non-technology organizations that experience a similar process.
A date has not been chosen for the event. As someone who has run a large number of participant-driven events, sometimes you just need to find a venue, choose a date, and run with it. I hope that Chris and Chris are able to get some traction and move the idea forward and attract a great group of product managers.
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July 22nd, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Thanks for the mention, David!
We’ve had a *lot* of interest for this event since we first started talking about it a couple weeks back. We’ve filled the first Pub Night’s 30 seats pretty quickly, and anticipate having further, larger gatherings, likely at The Rhino, going forward. Both Lee Garrison and Saeed Khan of the Toronto Product Management Association have joined Chris and I in organizing the Camp, and have already garnered a large interest from members of that group, as well.
We actually have chosen a date — Saturday, October 25th — though it’s of course contingent on the venue, which we are now working our contacts to nail down. We were hesitant to announce it before having a place set aside. Of course, if anybody who’s reading this has any suggestions as well, we’d love to hear them!
Chris.
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Hey Chris,
I love that folks are starting to branch out. I wonder if the TPMA gang will be able to get their heads around the participant-driven concept, it’s just such a fundamental change to understand that the audience determines the schedule and the content (it doesn’t mean that you can’t seed the conversation with some ringers). But it’s core to keeping the conversation happening outside of the specific event.
For facilities, I started compiling a list of venues way back in the day when we were doing more BarCamps at http://barcamp.org/TorontoConferenceFacilities
Let me know what I can do to help.
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Dave, thx for the nod. It’s folks like you that are paving the path for others to try unconferences! We intend to keep the spirit, values and ideals in place for this event. We are committed to making it a success for participants. I’m concerned that product design and development isn’t taking place in Canada. Product design and development is an integral part of product management (a word that seems to have a lot of different meaning). I crave to see everyone involved in the product development and management process.
Again, thanks for the nod. We’ve bookmarked your post and others here: http://del.icio.us/productcamptoronto
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Hey Chris,
I agree. It feels like a lot of companies mean: Product Marketing Management when they say product management. They forget the design, development and program management pieces that are truly the parts of a full product management experience.
I can’t wait to see what happens at productcamptoronto.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:49 am
Hi Chris, Chris, David:
Let me know if you guys need any help on the academic side with this. I’ll be graduating next month and will be taking some time off to do fun stuff
Majid.
http://www.designcampwaterloo.com