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2011 Demographics 0

Rocky Mountain ProductCamp is right around the corner with 170 people registered so far. Who are these people, what roles do they play, and what might interest them; we asked those questions while looking through the registration list. Titles were all over the map, however, we were able to create some groupings. The image below shows these groups for the registrants to date.

2011 ProductCamp Demographics

Where does your role fall in here? If you’re not registered, there is still time. Do it today!

Posted on: 10-18-2011
Posted in: Marketing

RMPCamp Interview Series: 3 Monkey’s & Social Media 0

Rocky Mountain ProductCamp is coming up quickly on October 29th.  Before things got too chaotic, Larry McKeogh managed to visit Booyah Online Advertising agency. This segment of “On the Road With Rocky Mountain ProductCamp” is an interview with Jamie Duklas (@jduklas), the Director of Social Media at Booyah!

Jamie had some interesting insight regarding social media.  He advised that potential clients should step back and think about their ultimate goal.  Depending on your budget and intentions you may find that paid search will yield a greater result.  (For more on that, check out this post with Trada’s VP of Marketing, Bill Quinn.)

After establishing that social media is really the way to go, Jamie advises starting with Facebook.  Even if you are a B2B product or company, with over 700 million users on Facebook, this is where you will find your customers.

You will want to get your ‘liker‘ numbers into the 3K – 10K+ range.  Less than that your are not talking to anyone.  As you increase beyond 3K you’ll stand a greater chance of interacting with your community.

The important point to remember with social media is that the conversations are happening.  They may or may not be occurring on your Facebook/Twitter environment.  By taking a proactive approach you can interact with your customer base.  In the instance of customer negativity you can address the complaint early and possibly convert them into an advocate.

Don’t take the 3-monkey approach.

Jamie has proposed a session at Rocky Mountain ProductCamp on Social Media.  If you found this interesting register today and join us on October 29th. Maybe this topic will be discussed more.

Posted on: 10-14-2011
Posted in: RMPCamp Interview

Larry McKeogh and Mike Jones Talk with w3w3 0

Check out Larry McKeogh and Mike Jones’ interview with w3w3 Media Network regarding the upcoming Rocky Mountain ProductCamp on October 29th.  See the summary and listen to the interview at www.w3w3.com and you can download the podcast at http://bit.ly/oqmDft

Posted on: 10-11-2011
Posted in: RMPCamp Interview

RMPCamp Interview Series: Funnels & Marketing Metrics 0

Is your marketing department seen as a revenue generator or a cost center?  Larry McKeogh sat down with Bill Quinn, Vice President of Marketing at Trada to learn a little more about his session proposal for Rocky Mountain ProductCamp on October 29th.

Some key take aways include:

  • [2:30] “In order to market effectively, you have to measure everything.  The awesome thing about marketing these days is that you can measure everything.”
  • [3:10] Discussion of the funnel dynamics and how to make the funnel pay off
  • [10:30] Trada’s looking for a Digital Marketing Manager. Interested? Catch Bill or someone else from Trada at Rocky Mountain ProductCamp.
  • [11:00] Bill’s RMPCamp topic proposal and that “ProductCamp is all about learning from one another”

Care to share your funnel experiences or best ways to measure your marketing ROI, add a comment or join us on October 29th and share with the group.

Posted on: 10-2-2011
Posted in: RMPCamp Interview

RMPCamp Interview Series: Napalm & Innovation 0

Larry McKeogh attended the inaugural ProductCamp Utah on September 10th.  Ryan Money (@rmoney) gave a keynote called “Because Kills.” Frankly, I found myself skeptical of his content for the first 10 minutes of the talk.  It was very entertaining, but wasn’t sure how it related to Product Management.  Then he hit the nerve.  In the video below Ryan addresses the situation that product managers sometimes have to deal with [07:30].  Development comes back with something “horrible.”  Digging into this:

Q: Why do we do it this __________ way?
A: Because.  Because that is how we’ve always done it.

If you stop at because and you don’t keep on drilling into that then you won’t realize the innovation.

Due to time limitations on YouTube, I had to split this into two sections.  Total time = 22 minutes.  Total presentation time was close to an hour.  Second part is below.  I encourage you watch it as well.

The big take-away from the second video was a quote from Jeff Bezo’s on having a product fail.

On the day you decide to give up on it [project], what happens?  Your operating margins go up because you stop investing in something that wasn’t working.  Is that really such a bad day?” [04:30]

In the end, Ryan did a great job of tying it all together.  In summary for the talk [10:15]:

  • Think outside the box
  • Take passion and reward people trying and giving it their best

Are you making a point to remember this in your daily activities?  When was the last time you questioned the status quo?

Posted on: 09-16-2011
Posted in: RMPCamp Interview

RMPCamp Interview Series: The Power of the Customer 0

Last week Larry McKeough sat down with Mike Thompson, co-owner of Boulder Creek Winery to talk with him about product development and how engaging his customers has resulted in benefits all around.

Boulder Creek Winery (BCW) started selling a new wine this year called “Consensus.” As the name implies, the grape varietal blend was achieved with feedback from some of BCW’s best customers, the Boulder Creek Wine Club. The BCW invites over 550 members of its wine club to visit the winery on a series of Saturday’s in January. They get an amazing 15% response rate to this invitation – who wouldn’t come for free wine tasting?
The purpose is to sample the wine from the barrel, gather the customer feedback, and select the best of the nearly completed new crush from the past year. This year’s sampling included the following varietals: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Syrah, and Merlot. Based on the results of these tastings a number of blendings are created. The wine club members are once again asked for their input on which blending, or mixing a different percentage of the grapes is the best.
Sounds pretty straight forward, but let’s look at the genius in this process:
  1. Marketing – January is the slowest month for wine sales at BCW. This brings their best customers into the winery, keeps BCW top of mind during that dead period between the holidays and Valentines Day.
  2. Stickiness – Creates a feeling of investment, contribution, and loyalty by their customers. If you have a hand in creating a wine wouldn’t you want to serve it and the story of how you helped create it to potential guests?
  3. Sales – As Mike indicates in the video, nearly 20% this wine is sold before it even goes in the bottle.
  4. Exceptional Quality – Listening to their customers, BCW is sure to select the best according to their customers tastes, literally.
  5. Finally, reading between the lines, BCW is not asking its customers to create the final blend. They are asked to rate the best ingredients. BCW then creates a couple different blends from them and again asks them to rate them. The customer is in the position to indicate to BCW what it likes. BCW is in the business of providing a product that offers exceptional value and flavor according to their customer’s tastes.
BCW used this process two years ago and won the prestigious Jefferson Cup award for their efforts. Early results from this year’s Consensus wine indicate that it will be every bit as good as that one was.
So, are you involving your customers in your product creation process? Are you listening to their needs, wants and desires and providing the product or service that offers them a solution to that? What is your “Jefferson Cup” and how are you setting your product up to earn it?
Posted on: 09-8-2011
Posted in: RMPCamp Interview

RMPCamp Interview Series: Brad Feld’s Thoughts on Product Management 0

Rocky Mountain ProductCamp is October 29th.  With the few weeks remaining I thought I would get some different perspectives on product management, product marketing, and product development.  Today I had the opportunity to ask Brad Feld a few questions about product management.  For those that are not familiar with Brad, he is the managing director at the Foundry Group which is a Boulder based venture capital firm.  He has also written two books – Do More Faster and Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist.

Posted on: 08-18-2011
Posted in: RMPCamp Interview

Top 10 reasons why you should attend Rocky Mountain Product Camp 0

10) It’s the only place you can learn about product management and product marketing and mingle with your peers for free!

9) If your company is planning for growth, this is THE place to find those new employees.

8 ) Your budgets will not be touched. The event is free and is located in downtown Denver at the Auraria Campus.

7) The CU Buffs and CSU Rams are out of town, so you won’t miss a live football game.

6) This is a chance to share your experience by presenting to your peers. The shared learning is how we all grow from each other.

5) You can rub elbows with folks from all types of brands and industries based in Colorado.

4) You know that feeling of “no one in my company understands what we do in product management and/or product marketing ?” When you’re in a room of 300+ peers, you won’t feel so alone. We all have been there and understand you.

3) The organizing team has put in a LOT of time and effort to make this a great day for us and our peers. But you don’t want to leave us there alone, feeling like we don’t have any friends or peers in the product management and product marketing world that care… do you?

2) This will be the second product management and product marketing event of its kind dedicated to, organized by, and supported by the Rocky Mountain community.

1) A free day of product management and product marketing learning, in your backyard. Did I mention free?

This event is unique. If you find a glimmer of truth in any of these statements, join me and register today at http://www.rmpcamp.org/registration/

Posted on: 08-16-2011
Posted in: News\General

RMPCamp Event Spotlight – YBInnovator 1

Over the summer, the Rocky Mountain ProductCamp (@RMPCamp) will be shining the spotlight on various monthly events which align with our own vision and purpose.  This will be the first of many Q/A’s done with the founders of the events.

Today we’re talking with David Sandusky, founder of the YBInnovator series.  This series is held at the Center for Visual Art, in Denver which proved to be a great venue!  I would encourage anybody interested in making a difference in the community and solving some problems to check out this group.


(Travis, RMPCamp) What is YB Innovator all about?

(David Sandusky) The YB Innovator Series gathers innovators and creators to prove we can solve problems and create opportunities.  We are about a community of innovators and creators who tell stories from past experience to inspire thought.  As a group we create new stories of innovation as we put real creative problem solving to action. Although we will certainly attract entrepreneurs, we will work hard to maintain a diverse population of innovators to include leaders in well established business, education, technology, arts and politics.

(Travis, RMPCamp) How did you come up with the idea?

(David Sandusky) The thought occurred to me at the end of 2010 when I felt it was time to change the four year running Internet Radio show called Your Brand Radio. We had awesome guests and great content broadcast live from a coffee shop.  This was a unique event but I wanted to do something larger in scope and important in action.  I also needed to change from a weekly event to monthly event.  If we are going to connect monthly, then let’s make it a big deal.  So what will be a big deal? This question got me thinking about how many people including my own clients ask how they can get involved in my Creative Problem Solving class at the Center for Innovation at Metro State College of Denver. Specifically, there is a lot of interest in a project called the $20 Challenge. People love we prove each semester how to market products and services that people want with no resources to start.  Why not create a series that attracts the doers to solve real problems and connect with like minded professionals?  Why not create real opportunities for these same students and long time professionals alike?   Bring these stories together and you have YB Innovator. ‘Y’ is Your and ‘B’ is Brand to represent my company, Your Brand Plan.

(Travis, RMPCamp) What can we expect to see happen with the events over the next 6 months?

(David Sandusky) We launched YB Innovator on May 10, 2011. The first six months will be about sustaining a culture of storytelling rather than “pitching” at a typical networking event. We will set a culture of connecting based on open and genuine stories of success and failure while building report around solving actual problems. Over the next six months we will launch a problem solving campaign around a well defined problem or two as brought to us from the Denver community.  In addition, we will hear from innovators and creators as they tell short stories.

(Travis, RMPCamp) Tell us a little bit about the venue you’ve chosen.  Where is it?  Why have you chosen it?

(David Sandusky) We chose the Center for Visual Art on Santa Fe in Denver because the affiliation with Metro State College of Denver where I teach Creative Problem Solving. This was our top choice for this reason as well as the desire to hold YB Innovator in a unique venue that inspired creativity. Center for Visual Art is perfect and actually even better in the near future as they implement an awesome sound system!  There are a few months out of each year where the gallery is closed.  We see this as an opportunity to gather data and fact finding and kick off new well defined problems to solve in Denver.

(Travis, RMPCamp) What is the atmosphere like?  Casual, formal, loud, etc? What are the people like?

(David Sandusky) YB Innovator takes place in an actual art gallery which will have a different floor plan almost each time we get together.  Even the most regular of attendees will take pause to enjoy the art. This is by design to create open mind dialog.  We do not set a dress code and find the combination of art gallery and innovation will land somewhere around business casual as well as more of a casual environment.  People will come from a diverse background and work experience and feel like they fit in a more causal discussion environment where there is intriguing pressure to produce rather than a networking environment where people are pitching prepared elevator speeches.

(Travis, RMPCamp) Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about your event?

(David Sandusky) We are already seeing interesting ideas being shared and request to get involved in ways larger than “only” attending events. This is good. We will certainly take advantage of the Internet and my own website to crowd source and fact find prospective problems to solve in Denver.  www.YBInnovator.com will be home base for members, but I expect people will be creating groups on other social media sites as well meeting offline between YB Innovator events. The autonomy is deliberate as that is my own management style and the only way to treat innovators you trust to do great things.

I also want to invite those who feel a connection with this idea to join us and invite others to register on www.ybinnovator.eventbrite.com

Posted on: 05-24-2011
Posted in: Featured Organizations

How great leaders inspire action 1

Check out this excellent TEDx video.  How does it apply to your own product and brand.  http://bit.ly/bLniO4

If you don’t have the time jump to:

  • [12:29] And these guys, the innovators and the early adopters, they’re comfortable making those gut decisions. They’re more comfortable making those intuitive decisions that are driven by what they believe about the world and not just what product is available.
  • [12:59] And by the way, they didn’t do it because the technology was so great. They did if for themselves. It’s because they wanted to be FIRST
  • [15:09] People don’t buy WHAT you do they buy WHY your do it. And what you do simply serves at the proof of what you believe.
  • [17:38] We follow those who lead, not because we have to, but because we want to. We follow those who lead, not for them but for ourselves.

Have you registered for Rocky Mountain ProductCamp – be the leader you are meant to be and inspire action.

Posted on: 10-14-2010
Posted in: Marketing, News\General
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