Organize Your Own
Thinking of starting up a ProductCamp in your city?

Create Buzz 
Blog, tweet and let us know to get the word out and see who's interested (#prodmgmt is the most popular hashtag for product managers). Setup a ProductCamp Pre-Registration page (most common is Eventbrite).There's no need to have a date or venue.

Hold an informal get-together at a local watering hole for those who have shown interest.

Seek out Sponsors
Sponsorship will be required to cover the cost of catering, giveaways/prizes and the venue. Find a local company, tech center or college to host it. In addition to seeking financial sponsorship, look for companies that can provide “in kind” donations (website hosting, streaming video, printing banners/t-shirts, etc.).

These types of organizations have sponsored other events and would be a good place to start.

  • Marketing and product management consulting firms
  • Companies that have a large product management team
  • Product management associations
  • Recruiters
What do sponsors want? Typically:

  • Promotion on the web site and in announcements about the event
  • An opportunity to provide handouts
  • A chance to offer give-aways/prizes in a drawing (books, discount of services, etc.)
  • An acknowledgment at the opening session
  • A warm, fuzzy feeling about contributing to the local product management community!
CAUTION: Some companies will ask for the registration list but we strongly recommend you NOT provide it! Sponsors should be encouraged to attend and propose sessions as a way to meet attendees.

Find a Location
Ideally your venue should have a large area for networking (auditorium, cafeteria, lobby, etc.) and smaller rooms nearby for each of the sessions. Try to keep all sessions on the same level. If you have to use multiple floors, make sure there are plenty of signs to help people get around.

Free Wi-Fi helps everyone tweet, blog and post photos throughout the day.

Build a Website
This is important, as it becomes your home base for promoting and informing people about the event. Some events use .com, others .org. Create a domain that is meaningful, like productcamp[city name].com. Many cities have abbreviations or nicknames so that may be an option to keep the URL short. Create a Twitter hashtag (#pcamp[city] is most common).

Feel free to modify the ProductCamp logo to “personalize it” for your event. See how others have made it unique.


Resources Don’t forget to let us know when you get started. We’ll gladly promote your event or request for interest.

Good luck!


ProductCamp.org is managed by Pragmatic Marketing as a non-promotional site supporting the worldwide product management and marketing community.




Logos

PERSONALIZE YOUR PRODUCTCAMP
Feel free to personalize the ProductCamp image for your event.

• Adobe Illustrator
• Encapsulated PostScript
• PDF

What others have done

Thanks to Paul Young, founder of ProductCamp Austin for the use of his logo design.