From the Lead on Purpose blog...
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I am pleased to announce the launch of my new podcast: Product Management Pulse! The Product Management Pulse podcast connects you with today's thought leaders in Product Management, Product Marketing and other areas important to high-tech product development. The podcast, hosted by me, contains interviews with guests in a conversational-style setting, which brings out the latest trends in technology product management, helps you improve your effectiveness as a leader and promotes ideas that will increase your value as a product manager.

Please check out the first episode (click the player button at the bottom) and let me know what you think. Leave a comment with ideas to improve the podcast. I am constantly searching for new guests; please let me know who you would like to listen to on a future episode (yourself included).

Note: I am setting up an iTunes feed to make it easy to get each episode when published. Once established, you can link to the feed directly from the PMP blogsite.

When
ProductCamp Austin Winter 2009 will be held Saturday January 24th, 2009, 8:00 AM - 5:30 PM

Where
In the ACTLab @: The University of Texas at Austin, College of Communications, CMB Building, Studios 4B-4E
Corner of Dean Keaton (26th) and Guadalupe St. in the "Big Grey Building"

This note was sent out on Thursday.
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If you haven't experienced ProductCamp yet, you're missing out. Austin's second ProductCamp is coming on Saturday Jan 24, at the UT College of Communications. This is a FREE un-conference, that isdriven by and for its participants. It is an awesome networking event, and a great place to learn from and teach to your peers.

Sessions already scheduled to be offered this year at ProductCamp include:

• Intellectual Property questions & issues discussion, Don Jarrell, Digital Thinking Inc.
  
• Using Social Networking to connect with your Market - Paul Young
  
• Buyer Perspective Modeling - Methods for understanding why your customers buy - Ben Phenix
  
• Habits for Highly Successful Product Marketing Mangers (a lessons learned discussion) - J. Duncan
  
• Agile Product Management - Walter Bodwell, Planigle
  
• Toyota's Chief Engineer as a Model for Agile Product Development Leadership: Fixing Agile Organizational Anti Patterns - Scott Bellware
  
• Closing the Gap Between What You Asked For and What You Got: Protect Understanding from Erosion with Contextual Design - Scott Bellware
  
• Wicked and Wacky Research Improv Game : Play this team Improv Game (with three other strangers) and escape PCamp with Six New Market Research Queries that Sharpen your market research game in 2009 : NO POWERPOINT ...crayons provided...bring your sense of humor - Cindy Phillips
  
• Mastering the "Soft Skills": From Product Management to Product Leadership - Colleen Heubaum
  

My LinkedIn network exploded after the first ProductCamp with great people, several of who were vital during my recent job search. If you are in the market, or want to improve your skills, and meet interesting, smart peers, ProductCamp is the place for you.

I hope that we will see you there!

Official Site: http://productcampaustin.com
Register at: http://pcaustin.eventbrite.com

The Organizers

Hope to see you there!

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Tapping Competitive Intelligence to Drive Product Success

Date Thursday, January 15, 2009

Time 6:15 PM

Ending Time 9:00 PM

Location Oracle facility

10 Van De Graaff Drive

Burlington, MA

Cost $25 at the door
$20 if you pre-register and pay online by January 14, 2009

Product managers and marketers (PM for both) are key users of competitive intelligence (CI), tracking rivals and their products all through the product development, launch, and market process.

Many PMs already utilize CI in their product plans, while many CI professionals work regularly with PM groups. The goal of this meeting is to expand understanding of each other's needs and processes to increase success for both functions. PMs and CI professionals will also have an opportunity to share what works and what doesn't.

PMs will understand better what CI can do for them at each stage in the product development process:

what intelligence CI professionals can and can not obtain ethically, how to focus their questions for CI. CI professionals will learn more about the PM process and needs so they could more effectively work with PM staff in their jobs and assignments.

The panel will feature experienced product management and competitive intelligence professionals:

Andrew Hally, Vice President, Product Marketing and Strategy, Unica Corporation.
Andrew Hally leads product strategy and marketing for Unica's on-demand product lines. He has worked with dozens of top marketing organizations to understand their challenges and needs in the face of the dramatic trends transforming marketing, working to define and deliver the right software solutions to power marketing success. Hally has spoken at industry forums across Europe and the US including the DMA, eMarketing, SMX, NEDMA and others. Prior to joining Unica six years ago, he held marketing management positions with SensAble Technologies and White Pine Software. He also spent five years as a venture capitalist and management consultant. Hally holds a BA in economics and government from Harvard University

C. Todd Lombardo, Marketing Manager, Agencourt Biosciences, a Beckman Coulter Company.
Todd Lombardo has over a decade of experience in the life science industry. He has been in product management positions for the past 7 years in companies such as PerkinElmer, MJ Research, US Genomics, and most recently Beckman Coulter's Agencourt Bioscience subsidiary where he is now the marketing manager for the reagent product portfolio. He holds a BA in Biology from Merrimack College, has done graduate work in Biomedical Engineering at University of Connecticut and is an expected 2010 MBA graduate of IE Business School.

Michael J. Salerno, Product Strategy, Oracle Corporation.
Michael co-founded and incorporated as non-profit the Boston Product Management Association (BPMA). He has spent his professional product management career in enterprise software and has led both product management and product marketing initiatives in the IT Infrastructure, Human Capital Management (HCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) domains. Michael received his MBA from Boston University and is currently planning market-leading CRM applications for Oracle Corporation.

Brad Lovoi, Competitive Intelligence Analyst, Fallon Community Health Plan.
Currently a competitive intelligence analyst at Fallon Community Health Plan, Brad Lovoi has been working as a competitive intelligence professional for the past five years across several industries from healthcare to property and casualty insurance and is also adjunct professor at Bentley University. He earned his BS in Public Administration at Nichols College and his MA in Political Science at Northeastern University.

Michael Levy, Product Marketing Manager, OneSource Information Services.
Michael Levy is a Product Marketing Manager at OneSource Information Services (a subsidiary of InfoGroup) where he has been in charge of competitive intelligence and market research since 2001. Previously, Michael was a Product Manager in the telecom and insurance industries. Michael has an M.B.A. from Georgetown University and a Masters of Public Policy from Trinity College (Hartford).

The moderator for this panel will be Douglas R. Wolf of Wolf Greenfield, an intellectual property law firm.

Doug practices primarily in trademark prosecution and litigation, patent portfolio management, infringement and patentability analysis, licensing, and internet issues. He also provides due diligence and acquisition analysis to venture groups on target companies and technologies. He has been actively involved in the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge for many years, helping entrepreneurs and start-up companies. Doug has been recognized for his work by Trademark Insider magazine and has been named to the Boston Business Journal's 40 Under 40 list and as a Massachusetts "Super Lawyer". Doug holds a B.A. in physics from Columbia University and received his law degree from Cardozo School of Law.

Date: Wednesday January 7th
Time: 6:30PM - 9:00PM
Speaker: Ross Mayfield, President & Co-Founder, SocialText
Topic: Social Software: Improved Group Collaboration for Effective Product Management

Location:
Network Meeting Center at the TechMart [Map]
5201 Great America Parkway, Santa Clara, California 95054
www.networkmeetingcenter.com/location

Agenda
6:30 pm - Registration, Networking and Refreshments
7:30 pm - Presentation
9:00 pm - Wrap-up/networking
Registration
SVPMA Members: Free
Non-SVPMA Members: $25 pre-registered, $35 at the door.
**Cash/check only if paying at the door

Note: event fees are non-refundable.
Registration is free with the $95 annual membership covering 12 events.
Enroll or Renew your annual membership now!
Check out the benefits of membership.

Session Overview:

Being an information hub is the largest role of a Product Manager. Today, most of this collaboration happens through email. Documents get emailed back and forth with numerous edits and versions being saved. Comments get posted in reply to all emails which become hard to follow with each new reply. Business best practice is broken down because your team is drowning in hundreds of emails a day from multiple projects. Enterprise 2.0 lets us shift things from documents and emails because not only in many cases it's easier, but better.

Ross Mayfield will show how utilizing Social Software-based client collaboration is different, and can help to streamline all phases of product management. The most important context includes people to make it social. As we have seen this largely already happened with the web, the enterprise is next.

Through the creation of private wiki workspaces, shared directly with their clients, and micro-blogging messaging tools, teams have a single, easy-to-manage place where they can put all the materials related to a project or client (letters of proposal, PowerPoint documents, product designs, to-do lists, meeting notes, etc). Because the access is shared within the collaboration space, the team can easily access the latest version of materials, and offer comments, questions, and feedback right in the workspace

About the speaker:

Ross Mayfield is Chairman, President & Co-founder of Socialtext, the first wiki company and leading provider of Enterprise 2.0 solutions. A noted blogger and industry expert, he is a serial and social entrepreneur. Mayfield has grown Socialtext to over 4,000 customers with Software-as-a-Service, Appliance and Open Source solutions. Mayfield partnered with Dan Bricklin, the creator of the first spreadsheet visiCalc, to co-develop and distribute SocialCalc. Socialtext is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, SAP Ventures and Omidyar Network.

Previously, Mayfield served as VP of Marketing for a Fujitsu spinout and CEO of an enterprise risk management software company. Mayfield co-founded and served as president of RateXchange (AMEX:RTX), the leading B2B commodity exchange for telecom. Mayfield served as the marketing director of the largest privately held telecommunications group in Eastern Europe and was the internal lead manager of their Initial Public Offering. He also founded an ISP, a web-design company, and has served on a number of Advisory Boards of high tech startups.

Mayfield is a former advisor to the Office of the President of Estonia and began his career in the non-profit sector. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California at Los Angeles and completed the Management Development for Entrepreneurs (MDE) program of the Anderson School of Business. He resides in his hometown of Palo Alto with his wife and two children. He blogs at http://ross.typepad.com

Not sure why I never announced this before... I hear there are 170 registrants already.

Event: Silicon Valley P-CAMP 2009
Date: Saturday March 14, 2009 from 9:00am - 3:00pm
Location: Yahoo!
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, California CA
Website: http://www.enthiosys.com/news-events/pcamp09/

Join more than 300 friends, colleagues and perfect strangers at the second annual Silicon Valley P-Camp Unconference for product managers.

What is P-Camp?
The world's largest free get-together of product managers. Based on the successful BarCamp and Open Space formats, it is an intense ad hoc gathering of product folks to share, present, network, learn, laugh and discuss. Much of the agenda will be created by you on the morning of the event, so bring ideas for discussions that you want to participate in.

Event: ProductCampBoston 2009
Date: February 28, 2009
Location: Microsoft Startup Labs, Cambridge, MA
Website: http://barcamp.org/ProductCampBoston

In the spirit of BarCamp, ProductCamp is a collaborative, user organized unconference, focused on Product Marketing and Management topics. At ProductCamp there are no "attendees," since everyone participates in some manner: presenting, leading a roundtable discussion, sharing their experiences, helping with logistics, securing sponsorship, setting up wifi, or volunteering. This is a self organizing collaborative event that has to be fun, rewarding and a cool experience! ProductCamp is a great opportunity for you to learn from, teach to, and network with professionals involved in the Product Management, Marketing, and Development process from the Boston and surrounding area!

St. Louis Product Management Group
Holiday Happy Hour: December 9, 2008

The St. Louis Product Management Group meets the second Tuesday of the month at 6pm. We normally meet at the offices of SAVVIS, though for our December 2008 meeting, we will be having a Holiday Happy Hour at Growler's.

Network, mingle, share stories with and get advice from other product managers.

Please RSVP for the Happy Hour by email -- stlpm@stlpm.org -- if you are planning on attending. We need to know how much space to reserve!

Details:

Tuesday, December 9, 2008: 6pm

Growler's Pub; 763 Old Ballas Rd, Creve Coeur, MO; Growler's is off of Olive just a bit East from 270 -- on the south side of Olive, behind/below the Blockbuster, across the street from Provision's

Please RSVP for the Happy Hour by email -- stlpm@stlpm.org -- so we can know how many peopl to expect!

What to bring: Business cards (for networking). Cash (for paying). That's all!

Event: ProductCamp Austin - Winter 2009
Date: Saturday, January 24, 2009 from 8:00 AM - 5:30 PM (CT)
Location: University of Texas - College of Communications CMB Building (Studios 4B-4E)
201 W Dean Keeton St
Austin, TX 78712
Website: http://www.barcamp.org/ProductCampAustinWinter09

ProductCamp is a collaborative, user organized unconference, focused on Product Marketing and Management topics. At ProductCamp everyone participates: by presenting, leading a roundtable discussion, helping with logistics, securing sponsorship, or volunteering. ProductCamp is a great opportunity for you to learn from, teach to, and network with professionals involved in the Product Management, Marketing, and Development process from the Austin area! The first ProductCamp Austin had over 130 people sign up, and over 90 participate!

Anyone going?

Event: SaaS Dictates Different Product Management Priorities
Date: 25-Nov-2008 6:15 PM

Description: A recent report from Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq:FORR)dated November 3, 2008 states: "Being a product manager for a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product is not exactly the same job for an on-premise product. To a great degree, a product manager's responsibilities and deliverables depend on the degree of ambition the company has in leveraging the opportunities that SaaS presents. Shaping the product management role to fit the SaaS product may not be easy, but SaaS vendors need product managers to deliver the customer insights and innovative ideas that may spell the difference between the product's success and failure."

Location: Metro Hall
55 John Street Room 314
Format: Panel discussion to review and debate the issues highlighted in the Forester report.
Speaker Info: TBC

My intention at this point in time is to be there. Hope to see you there.

Event: Professional Development - Networking Works!
Date: 28-Oct-2008 6:15 PM

Description: Networking is a must-have capability and an essential professional competency for employees and entrepreneurs at all levels. Yet, few people receive any training on how to network successfully and obtain solid results from their efforts. In this informative, interactive and entertaining seminar, participants will learn:

• What networking really is (and what it is not)
  
• The most common mistakes people make when networking (and we all make them)
  
• Why a strong introduction is as essential as a business card (or more important!)
  
• How to play all three networking roles
  
• The power of asking (and why most of us hate to do it)
  
• How to break through shyness (and feel comfortable networking with strangers)
  
• Secrets of networking success

By the end of the session, participants will:

• Improve their networking skills with proven and practical techniques that can be implemented immediately.
  
• Develop a strong and engaging personal introduction.
  
• Have multiple offers of support from other participants that address a real-life need identified by the participant.
  
• Have proof in their hands that networking works!

Location: Metro Hall
55 John Street

Format: Presentation. Please bring 20 business cards to the session. You will need them for one of the exercises.

Speaker Info: Catherine Wakelin is a consultant, professional facilitator and speaker well known for her ability to help organizations think through complex business issues and for her effective facilitation of many hundreds of challenging meetings. Catherine is the author of Talk about Anything with Your Kids, a book about how to use the skills of a professional facilitator in the home to dramatically improve parent-child communication.