Product Manager is one of those jobs that you often learn about when you realize what you’re doing actually has a name. There is multiples paths to become a product manager, all with their advantages and inconvenients, which makes for a profession with a somewhat uneven level of practitioners. But if there’s one thing common to all great product managers is that they’re passionate about building product. Well enough to accept a Sunday morning invitation to an all day event when Montreal weather start dropping exponentially.Barry Paquet and I were probably looking at the same blog posts 8 months ago when we separately had the idea of organizing a Product Camp in Montreal. Or maybe it was the the years of self-taught knowledge and experiences telling us that there has to be a better path to get there. With the help of a few web-based drills, sponsors and devoted team, the first ProductCamp was held on Nov 21st at Concordia University, courtesy of the SIFE chapter of the university.
Around 100 persons showed up to a day full of “workshops” and presentations around the subjects of Product Management and Product Marketing. Alistair Croll opened the day with an excellent keynote from someone who has been through it all and can teach most of us a few lessons. Talks went about launch best practices, the differences between product management in big corporations versus startups, customer development and a few others.
It was a learning experience for participants as well as organizers and we now know more about the audience. It was great to see a few faces not linked to the Montreal startup scene as well and we have hope that this event will help gather Product Managers for differents industries, not just web and mobile. The products and technology might be different, but the challenges remain.
We’ve taken good note of the participants feedback and we’ll hopefully be back soon with a second edition of this event.