My favourite bits from Product Camp 2015
Saturday August 22 was the 6th annual Product Camp, and my first. Well not exactly. I went last year but couldn’t stay the whole day due to an awful cold. This year, fit as a fiddle I joined a huge group of product management professionals at Sportsbet for a great day of unconferencing and networking.
With the content driven by attendees there was a great selection of sessions and topics to choose from, and a huge crowd of clever people to meet and network with. Here are just a few of the topics which stuck out in my mind from Product Camp.
Product Manager vs Product Owner
I’ve tried to figure this one out myself and even attempted to answer it a few times. Nick Coster from Brainmates cleared things up nicely. A Product Manager is the strategy, direction, the roadmap. A Product Owner focusses on the deliver of that strategy through management of the backlog and prioritisation. There are different flavours of Product Owner and sometimes the two roles cross over but they both perform different and essential roles for product development.
Military analogy (prod owner vs manager): commissioned officer focuses on strategy, non-commissioned focusses on logistics #pcampmelb
— cannboys (@cannboys) August 22, 2015
Why defined product roles? You need specialist roles to do specialist jobs. #prodmgmt @nickcoster #pcampmelb
— product anonymous (@product_anon) August 22, 2015
Narrative UX
Georgina Laidlaw introduced a topic which was new to me, and really fascinating. Narrative UX is about the experience users have with the words and story surrounding a product. An emerging UX field where content crafters pay detailed attention to the words associated with interactions, Georgina laid out examples of good (and not so good) Narrative UX, and even did some audience interaction with two people role playing a conversation between product and user.
Every interaction is a conversation with your user – @steph_hay via Georgina Laidlaw #pcampmelb
— Jock Busuttil (@jockbu) August 22, 2015
Loving @georginalaidlaw's #NarrativeUX session here at #pcampmelb pic.twitter.com/GQqVIaU96v
— Rebecca Jackson 🤓 レベッカ (@RebeccaJLJ) August 22, 2015
The Finance stuff
Amanda Ralph made the financial side of Product Management seem much less scary with great advice and an excellent Doctor Who theme in her presentation. My takeaways are that financials are important to help define what success is for your product, and that making friends with finance people is essential.
"If you just build and ship, how do you know if you've done your job, if you've created value?" @ralphytown #pcampmelb
— Stephanie (@_stephjacq) August 22, 2015
Know what it is that defines your success – @ralphytown #pcampmelb #Prodmgmt #dalekFTW pic.twitter.com/bblcyjwbkV
— Rebecca Jackson 🤓 レベッカ (@RebeccaJLJ) August 22, 2015
Thanks to Liz and Jen for inviting me to be tweet master for the day. I captured all the twitter action in a Storify for posterity: Tweets from Product Camp 2015. Keep on top of the latest events from the Product Camp crew by joining Product Anonymous on Meetup.
Want more product management awesome? Come join me and my fellow Product Ambassadors at Leading the Product on October 15 2015. I’ll be there capturing the action in sketches. Use the code Ambassador_Special for a 10% discount off the ticket price.
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