• April Dunford (about April) of Rocket Watcher talks about leading a session at ProductCamp on social media and product management.
• Lee Garrison of Riverdale Partners, and ProductCamp organizer, discusses the Toronto Product Management Association.
• Jayson Ambrose of FileMobile is new to product management, and ProductCamp.
• Peter Hanschke (website) of Ateala Management introduces business-driven product management.
• Stewart Rogers (about Stewart) of Ryma Technologies is a veteran of ProductCamps, and talks about his experiences at various events.

And here is a series of highlights from the event.

Thank you Donna!

• See what you missed, and contribute your notes about the event, on the Event Wiki.
• Browse and contribute photos of the event.
• Complete our survey, and let us know how we did!

Stay in Touch…

Speaking of which, subscribe for updates on the blog to keep posted about the next event, and follow us on twitter!

And Thank our Sponsors!

Please thank our sponsors, without whom we couldn’t have had the event:

Pragmatic Marketing, Ryma Technology Solutions, Ted Rogers School of Information Technology Management at Ryerson ITMSA, AutoShare, Riverdale Partners, Toronto Product Management Association, Ateala Management, Eigenworks, Enthiosys, EntreBahn, Greenscroll.org, Helix Commerce, MI6 Agency, OnProductManagement.net, Pivotal Product Management, Quantum Whisper, Sequent Learning, SevenL Networks, and ZIGZAG Marketing.

Sincerely,
The ProductCamp Toronto Organizing Team:
Lee Garrison, Chris Gurney, Chris Herbert, Saeed Khan, Siobhan Mclaughlin, Lea Sawal

By the way, we heard you loud and clear that having an event the day after the all-night Nuit Blanche is probably not a good idea. Consider it on the roadmap for the next release!

Fill out the survey below, or click here: http://j.mp/pctsurvey

We’ve setup a “pool” on flickr where anybody can contribute their photos, which you can get to by clicking here. (Below you can see a slideshow of photos in this pool.)

If you prefer, if you could tag your photos with pct2 and/or productcamptoronto, we’ll be able to find them.

To this end, we attempted to enlist several note-takers to write stuff down (you know who you are… thank you!).

If you were taking notes — or want to see what you missed in other sessions — you can browse and contribute to the PCT2009 Event Wiki. Leave a comment below if you’re not sure how the whole wiki thing works; we’ll also accept notes via email.

(If you’re curious, you can also see what we talked about last year).

If you are going to attend ProductCamp Toronto, let others know but adding the following HTML into your site.

<a href="http://www.productcamp.org/toronto"><img src="http://www.productcamp.org/toronto/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/pcampbadge-attend3-border-small.jpg" alt="I'm attending ProductCamp Toronto, Oct 4, 2009" width="127" height="212" /></a>

If you are a sponsor, then add the following HTML to promote your support for ProductCamp Toronto.

<a href="http://www.productcamp.org/toronto"><img src="http://www.productcamp.org/toronto/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/pcampbadge-sponsor-border-small.jpg" alt="We're Sponsoring ProductCamp Toronto, Oct 4, 2009" width="127" height="212" /></a>

Either way, we thank you for your support.

Here’s what we’ve been up to. We have more people involved this year in helping! This is awesome! Folks are helping us with getting the venue ready, finding sponsors (know of any?), getting the word out through blog posts, tweeting etc. Thx.

I’ve asked the organizing team to leave a comment below that:

• Introduces themselves.
• Tells you what area they are leading in.
• Where they need help!

Some other really important things for you to know:

• You can register for ProductCamp Toronto here.
• You can submit a session topic, vote and comment on others here

Here’s something to get you going! A recent Globe and Mail article by Konrad Yakabuski is enough to stir some debate and conversation. Is there an innovation gap in Canada? Aren’t the products and services we bring to market innovative? Are our methods of developing products and satisfying the needs of our customers innovative? Let the debate begin. (By the way, we invited Konrad to come to ProductCamp Toronto, he loves the idea of PCT but can’t make it).

During the evening, we threw up a big ol’ pad of paper and encouraged everybody to write down some ideas for possible discussion topics at the main event.

I think we successfully proved that apparently, it is possible to think intelligently about product management while under the influence of alcohol.

Here’s the list:

• How to build a team that is passionate about the product they are developing
• How to get your company to drink the product management kool-aid (versus throwing money at marketing)
• Identifying potential pots of gold
• Sell by leveraging cool web 2.0 technologies
• Pricing models and war stories
• How to build a pricing model from scratch: Gathering sales input; Managing rollout
• Sales Techniques: How to sell the vision, roadmap, disruptive change, etc. within your organization
• Converting Naysayers into fans of your product
• Rebranding your product as a new idea
• Effective product roadmap development and innovation within large organizations: Challenges, success stories, opinions
• Product management in non-tech verticals: Financial services, CPG, cleantech, manufacturing
• Making your competition look bad (and making you look better)
• Ye olde school business code
• Demo a product you LOVE — and talk about why you love it
• Reversing bad publicity on your product
• Structure a Framework on How to Commercialize a Product

There was also some talk of arranging a keynote speaker, as was done at ProductCamp NYC, to spark discussions at the event. A couple names appeared on the board (but I think this is where my handwriting-parsing ability falls apart — corrections welcome — Edit: Fixed, thanks Lee):

• Sean Wise (Dragon’s Den)
• Rich Segal
• Catherine Wakelin

Tell us about your experience, and your ideas for ProductCamp!
Would you attend another Pub Night before ProductCamp in October?

We really want to have a great event in the Fall, and thought that bringing some of you together would help kick things off. All you have to do is enjoy a beverage or two at our Pub Night next Wednesday, July 22nd, 6:00 PM, at Fionn MacCools, at 70 The Esplanade

Bring with you your ideas for sessions — either ones for those that you would like to lead, or would like to attend — and suggestions on improvements from last year’s ProductCamp. This will also be a great chance to network a little in the Summer, and have some fun!

ProductCamp Toronto Pub Night

WHERE
Fionn MacCool’s, 70 The Esplanade
( Google Maps: http://bit.ly/2c8aIx )

WHEN
Wednesday, July 22nd, 6:00 PM