Buyers' Insight: The NG Win/Loss Analysis

In this town hall type discussion / interaction we will cover the following questions:
- Why the name Buyers' Insight is more appropriate?
- Why Win/Loss analysis should not be done by sales and how Product Management can benefit?
- Why studying the Win is more important than the Loss?
- Why are you not doing win / loss today? How to convince your boss you should?

Presenter Bio: With 20 years of pioneering innovation for technology firms, Stephen now enables C-Suites, Boards, and Investors to achieve clarity on their sales roadmap. Stephen helps clients identify their target customers and the problems they urgently need to solve. Further, he helps clients sharpen their product strategy and determine if their product team possesses the skills and discipline to succeed. Stephen believes in sales focused companies that have the product and vision to attract and retain customers. With executive leadership experience in cybersecurity, enterprise software development, and a wide range of startups, he brings organizational acumen to align with your team and drive your business forward.

Prior to joining Egress Solutions, Stephen served as the SVP of Products for SecureAuth + Core Security. Previous roles included CTO and VP of Products & Strategy for Damballa and product leadership roles at McAfee, Secure Computing, MegaPath, EarthLink and several startups. Stephen empowers teams through insight and guidance while applying ‘Lean Startup’ principles alongside Agile development processes.

Lean Design Thinking

Are you "Agile"? Have you tried XP? Do you practice User Centered Design or Design Thinking? Ever wonder how all of these buzzwords play together? In this talk we'll explore how modern teams and organizations work to make products people love.

Presenter Bio: Alex works at Pivotal Labs where he teaches balanced teams agile and lean practices.

Does Your Product Speak Prospect?

Many companies today struggle with telling people what it is their product can do or the problem it solves. No more is it about features and benefits because people only want two questions answered! What's in it for me? How are you going make me the Super-Hero of My Story! Discover ways to draw attention to your product that will guide them in solving their problems and energize their own Super-Powers!

 

Presenter Bio:For over 35+ years Mark Treager has been labeled as a maverick right from the start of his professional sales and marketing career because he refuses to accept the marketing status quo! He has a long career of stirring the pot, questioning why, tipping over sacred cows as well as a passion for finding unique uses of today's modern technology to get his clients voice into the minds of potential customers. With over 25+ years in corporate marketing at Cornerstone Media Group his simple, logical, diverse and down to earth approach to marketing will challenge your thinking way beyond any box.

Does Your Product Have A Voice?

Does your product have an actual voice associated with it? Ask your Alexa device to describe your product for you. Mmmmm…It's answer? Now, try asking Alexa about your company? Mmmm…Still nothing! Discover why It's time to discuss why voice and sound is now a sales channel for your product!

Presenter Bio: For over 35+ years Mark Treager has been labeled as a maverick right from the start of his professional sales and marketing career because he refuses to accept the marketing status quo! He has a long career of stirring the pot, questioning why, tipping over sacred cows as well as a passion for finding unique uses of today's modern technology to get his clients voice into the minds of potential customers. With over 25+ years in corporate marketing at Cornerstone Media Group, his simple, logical, diverse and down to earth approach to marketing will challenge your thinking way beyond any box.

Integrating Data Science into Products

The workshop will focus on key discussions such as:
* working with data scientists
* making it explainable
* getting started

The output of this session will be a checklist we can share with the community post-ProductCamp

Presenter Bio:

Michel Guillet has worked as a product manager for 8+ years, working exclusively on data and analytics products. He's also currently a data visualization instructor at Georgia State's data science graduate program.

Product Manage Your Life: How to build a happy & successful life using a common product management framework

This workshop will teach you how to build a successful life, using a common product mgmt interview framework, the CIRCLES framework.

Presenter Bio: Cassie is a senior product manager as well as a personal coach. She has found that when coaching someone on building out a happy and successful life, she uses many of the same principles that you use when building out a great product.

The Top 10 Product Management Best Practices

Product Management is one of the most challenging functions within any tech company. But unlike engineering, marketing and finance, you can’t get an advanced degree in it. You’ve got to learn it through experience and the school of hard knocks. Come and find out what the Product Management "Main Thing" is, how to think about product vs. customer experience, the difference between product managers and product owners, how to lead from the middle, and more...

Presenter Bio:Bill Thomson is a product and marketing executive with more than two decades of experience building and growing new software, SaaS and cloud-based product and services at many leading tech companies including AT&T, Citrix, NTT, Cbeyond and Vonage. He is currently Head of Product Management at DC BLOX and serves on the Technology Association of Georgia Product Management Society Board.

Mr. Thomson holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Science from Rutgers University and a Master of Science in Technology Management from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Do More and Sleep Better: Practical Tips for Doing More with Your Day

As a product manager (well actually as a working human) your attention and energy are probably pulled in many different directions. It is so easy to get bogged down with work and personal demands such that you are not only less productive but you lose sleep. In this workshop I will share my practical tips for not only keeping track of tasks across multiple projects and life but also how to get them done so you can rest easy.

Presenter Bio:

Imani Mance is a learning strategist and instructional designer with a background in graphic design and software development. Her work and passion is in helping leaders build the skills, competencies, and confidence they need to not only be EFFECTIVE but also GENUINELY KIND. To that end she creates “friction-less” learning and development experiences that integrate seamlessly into the dynamic working environment of leaders. Oh, and she's also a proud wife, mother, Home Depot associate (her day job), Spelman College (B.S. Computer Science) alum, and Georgia State University (M.S. Instructional Technology) alum.

The future of voice interface

The entire presentation is going to be a conversation between the presenter and the system called ArtiE (Artificial Intelligence for the Enterprise). 1) We will show how a voice assistant can silently listen to the presenter and bring the appropriate content on the screen automatically based on what he is presenting. 2) demonstrate how voice can be used in the field of iOT 3) what will it look like to talk to a website to browse the site. 4) and few other applications that can leverage the power of voice.

Presenter Bio:Mr. Stephen is a successful technology entrepreneur. Previously co-founded and exited(2003-2008) a company in the BPO (Business process outsourcing) industry. Stephen is also an IT Industry veteran with a career spanning 20 years, having worked for large corporations like Citi Bank, Sprint, BP oil, at&t and T-mobile. Stephen also has experience working with startups as a seed investor and working for a startup as a CTO (Chief Technology Officer). Stephen is hands-on and commands in-depth software development skills along with a canny leadership ability to inspire team members to create a following. He is an expert in NLP (Natural Language Processing), NLU (Natural Language Understanding) and various other Ai learning methods. In the last 3 years, Stephen has pioneered a voice intelligent system that can bring voice capabilities to the enterprise software industry. As a result of Stephen's work on voice technology, he has applied for multiple patents that are in the provisional stage. Stephen is a quick learner and commands knowledge in various industries like Telecom, Real estate, and Trade financing. He holds an Masters in Computers Science from the University of Madras and a Bachelours of Science in Physics from the University of Madras. Stephen is originally from South India, has a beautiful family with two wonderful kids and a personal motto to progress along the scale of wisdom, happiness, and love

How important/useful are customer journey maps?

Customer journey maps are referenced frequently in marketing, product, service, and experience design. But what is a customer journey map, really? A customer journey map is a visual diagram or spreadsheet that communicates the customer's point of view through an engagement journey with a product or experience. It usually contains customer insights and triggers along phases of the journey, as the customer moves from awareness to purchase, and perhaps beyond, into advocacy, or through a loyalty loop or subscription model, depending on the business model. In this session, I'll present an example of a customer journey map and deconstruct the steps, insights, and structure that go into developing one. Then I'll open the floor to a Town Hall discussion, where we can discuss whether this is a nice to have or a useful and important, or even vital, step in the development of products and experiences. What are the pros and cons of customer journey maps in different processes, like waterfall and agile? Do we need them on every project? What value do they provide? What pitfalls do they prevent? Do they save time, or ensure greater success, in the long run? The purpose is to explore share experiences and hear multiple perspectives on the topic.

Presenter Bio: Amanda Moore is a Digital Business Strategist, bringing 20 years of experience in customer-centered digital strategy, offering strategic support to Marketing, Product/Innovation and Customer Experience leadership. Providing services such as digital transformation planning, product and experience strategy, requirements development, customer insights/VoC, content strategy, and digital product/experience innovation for brands.

Re-assessing Product/Market Fit

Cover - with use cases and discussion - what to do when there is not enough information tonadsess market segments for a product, or what to do when you inherit an existing product.

Presenter Bio: Todd Ague is currently Senior Director - Product Management - Auto Lending Solutions at Equifax. His career spans over 20 years of digital product management and development with AOL, EarthLink, LexisNexis, Verizon and other top-tier B2B and B2C organizations.

Customer Spotlight: Ways to get development on board with customer needs

Sharing ways to help product development better understand the user perspective so that they can build delightful user experiences.

Presenter Bio: Diane Bowman is a Sr. Product Analyst with IBM's Watson Campaign Automation offering management team in Atlanta. She has worked as a project manager, information developer, process engineer and trainer across several industries. For the past 5 years, she has worked with development teams to employ Agile practices, help drive feature development and support team management. She has spoken at several User groups and conferences over the years and is passionate about customer experience and success.

How to Keep Sales from Selling Your Roadmap

Is your sales team controlling your roadmap? Learn how data and training can help! During this session we will discuss the reasons why sales teams constantly beg product managers for new features and identify why they insist on selling the roadmap. Learn how you can solve this frustrating problem by showcasing data to prove ROI, and build a training cadence to strengthen relationship between product and sales. Create product allies in your sales team by giving them the data they need to close deals.

Presenter Bio: Lauren Holliday has 8+ years experience working in sales departments at both management and contributor levels at top SaaS companies in the Raleigh area and has experience being the voice of customer feedback and working closely with product teams.