Too Hot for TV! BANNED from ProductCamp!

We recently completed Austin’s fourth ProductCamp about 10 days ago.  I’m always humbled by the PCA planning team and the volunteers that step up to make ProductCamp Austin awesome.  Because of ProductCamp Austin, many other leaders in other cities have been inspired to make a camp happen in their own city, and we’ve helped at least a dozen other camps get off the ground.  Many people have approached me over the last few events to tell me that they consider Austin to be the best ProductCamp they’ve ever participated in.

PCA Spring had about 200 people participate and about 40 sessions offered for 30 available slots.  The voting in the morning went really well, and for the first time, we rolled out a mobile version of the schedule that people could pull up on their iPhones so we could reduce the mob around the schedule wall after the intro session.  The feedback on that app was very positive and it really helped.  Thanks again to Common Sense for developing it!  As usual, we had sessions on every product management and product marketing topic imaginable, from product strategy to social networking to product marketing.  My friend and colleague Josh Duncan won Best Presenter for his topic “Start with the Story.”  I even offered a session about my new venture, Leaf: more on that in a second.

By all accounts, PCA was another big success.  We’re doing the post-camp survey now, but over the past 3 camps we’ve run, over 99% of the respondents say that they would come back to ProductCamp again and that they would recommend ProductCamp to a peer.  Many people also remarked to me and to the planning team that the quality of the sessions was very high at this ProductCamp, relative to past camps.  Big kudos to Tom Evans for heading up the sessions team and recruiting great session leaders.

There has been a lot of drama recently surrounding ProductCamp.  I generated some controversy with my session “Leaf is Launching.“  Leaf is a social productivity tool that I am creating on my own, outside of my day job.  In the weeks before ProductCamp, I hired a developer to create a prototype and get it to a beta state so that I could launch it at ProductCamp.  My hope was to spend the first half of the session explaining the app, what problem it solved, and why I was doing it, and offer it (free) for use by a potential target audience.  Then to spend the second half discussing potential marketing avenues and strategies on a tight budget, to “crowdsource” the marketing.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it came across, and the fault is completely mine.  About 10 minutes in, one lady raised her hand and said that she felt like she was being “pitched” to, a strict no-no at ProductCamp.  I stumbled through the rest and ended up with a session that didn’t meet my expectations for excellence and I’m sure didn’t meet the desires of the people who came and participated.  For that I’m sorry.  I talked with a lot of people after the fact, trying to gauge how people perceived the session: was it a collaborative discussion, or was it a pitch?  The general themes of the people that I talked to were:

• It was only half-a-pitch but if you had positioned it differently it would have been a non-issue
• Yes it was a pitch but I like you personally so I didn’t take offense
• Yes it was a pitch but I like the idea of that type of session and would like to see more in the future

As my old boss used to tell me, in Marketing, perception is reality.  So, it was a pitch, and that means that I broke the rules of presenting at ProductCamp.  Being a session leader at PCA is a privilege.  At the last PCA, we had around thirty session slots and almost sixty sessions offered!  That means that half of the people who prepared content went home without the opportunity to present.  It’s not good enough that I’ve built up enough goodwill that people might be willing to give me a pass.  Because I’m the founder of PCA, it’s even more important that I avoid even the appearance of impropriety.  If I can get away with pitching my own venture, how can I lead a team with a straight face to tell other presenters that they’re not allowed to do the same?

For all these reasons, I am banning myself for 1 year from offering a session at any ProductCamp Austin event (PCA, ProductPotluck, ProductParty).  I think that’s fair and is what I’d suggest for someone else that offered a pitch and was contrite and promised not to do it again.  If you don’t think that’s severe enough, feel free to leave your comment below.  This is painful; if you know me you’ll know that I’ve presented at each of the last four PCAs and that I love doing it.  I’ll continue to do the welcoming, but won’t be doing new sessions until Spring 2011.

In happier news, tonight we had our post-PCA wrapup, which is also our planning kickoff for PCA Fall 2010.  PCA Fall will be held on Aug 7th, 2010 at the AT&T Center.  We’re throwing down the gauntlet to Silicon Valley, and are going to claim the title of largest ProductCamp in the world!  It will be a tall order for little Austin to attract 550+ participants, but I believe we can do it!  Dallas, Houston, San Antonio – we need your help!

The PCA planning team is an amazing group.  We have had a consistent core team of about 10 people for the last year that have built up a great amount of institutional knowledge about what it takes to put on a ProductCamp event.  As a result of the excitement that PCA Spring just created, we about doubled the size of the planning team with interested new members.  If you’d like to join up, we’re happy to have you, just hop on the GoogleGroup and introduce yourself.  We will have in-person planning get-togethers roughly monthly.  I am really looking forward to seeing you contribute and influence the shape of ProductCamp Austin to come.

Tagged as: Austin, leaf, PCA, pitch, planning, Product Management, Product Marketing, ProductCamp, session, social networking, social productivity