Many product managers accidentally find themselves in this profession. "You'd make a great product manager," someone tells you. And as you step into your new role, you discover there is a lot more to it than you realized.

Even your boss might not be able to guide you in this role. “You’ll figure it out!”

Before you head down the path of everyone else defining the role for you, learn the key principles of becoming a great product manager.

Proposed by Barbara Nelson, instructor at Pragmatic Marketing

I have worked with students and colleagues and seen the terror on their face when asked to create produce the financials portion of a business cases: Revenue forecasting and projected expenses. I thought we could walk through a simple template that I've used for forecasting and budgeting expenses and ultimately forecasting profit as a group. I've got a very simple "Business Case" spreadsheet I can bring with some "sanitized" data to get us started. You have to bring your experience, ideas, and questions to keep it interesting.

Is your team looking to hire product management professionals?
Are you a product manager looking for new opportunities?

If you answer yes to either of the above then come to this session with your resume or your job description and get networking.

When you arrive at this round table session you will be asked if you are hiring or looking for work and then be connected with other people to try and find a fit.

When I attended this session at AONW we found 2 candidates to interview the next week!

Count the number of iPads at Product Camp: Lots
Count the number of successful commercial applications that exist: ??

Many established software companies want to extend their product and content onto the iPad. What are the challenges with applications development, beta testing, Apple channel exclusivity, marketing, and promotions on this platform that has only been on the market 18 months?

I'd love to have a discussion to find out what people's opinions are and what they have actually experienced in job interviews and on the job.

In the quest for improved product innovation, organizations are turning to techniques like ethnography for customer research. I’ll introduce Contextual Inquiry, the best-practice user research technique, as a means to gather data and develop deep insight into what people are trying to achieve in their work or life. By approaching product definition and design having this deeper appreciation for what people need, your offerings are more likely to offer a way of working that users want to adopt.

There are lots of niche markets in software, especially in iOS and
Android apps. Apps that sell for under $10 and will never reach volumes over 20,000 SKUs per year.

Can these be made to work as profitable products, where the cost to develop, market, and support would be recovered in a three year time period ?

Is a traditional sales revenue model possible, or does there need to be some other revenue model ?

This is a discussion, not a presentation.

Learn about the differences and challenges of doing product management in a small company. What do you do when the founder drives the product? How do you not get sucked into the million things you could do and focus on product development?

No...seriously... what is it?

Many people credit mentoring as a large part of their career success. But how do you find a mentor? And once you find one, how do you jumpstart the relationship and keep it going? Mentors come in all forms, and we'll brainstorm where you might find them, how you build the relationship, how you can keep your mentor invested in you.

It can be demoralizing for a new product manager (and frustrating for an old product manager) when that all important trust-from-others doesn't come quickly. But it's natural that trust must be earned via credibility and outcomes, not simply demanded. This session would discuss and debate coping skills (to help you want to climb the mountain) and mastery (deliberately choosing better footing and faster routes in your climb).

Discuss approaches to find the right wavelength to working with internal distributed teams as well as external teams including having constructive dialogs across time zones and native languages.

Based on the blog post here.

http://www.alwaysbeshipping.com/2011/09/product-management-leadership.html

I attended the Design Thinking Boot Camp at Stanford d.school a couple of years ago and can present their frameworks.

crash course in a robust facilitation methodology