TRACK 3 SESSIONS
Thursday, May 24, 2007

The New Rules of Marketing and PR:
Reaching buyers directly with blogs, news releases, online media, and viral marketing
David Meerman Scott, Thought-Leadership Strategist, Pragmatic Marketing

Now that the Internet has made it easier than ever for marketers to directly communicate with consumers and target audiences, it’s imperative that marketers dramatically alter their PR and marketing strategy to maximize the effectiveness of the direct consumer-communication channel. On the Web the old rules don’t apply. In this engaging presentation, Scott shows how to leverage the potential that Web-based communication offers software companies. A step-by-step action plan for harnessing the power of the new rules of marketing and PR will be provided, showing how to identify audiences, create compelling messages, get those messages to the most consumers possible, and lead those consumers directly into the buying process. Told with many case studies and real-world examples, this a practical discussion about the new reality of PR and marketing.

David Meerman Scott is Thought-Leadership Strategist for Pragmatic Marketing. His book Cashing In With Content: How Innovative Marketers Use Digital Information to Turn Browsers Into Buyers is a riff on using Web content to drive revenue and other action from Web site visitors. He is currently at work on a new book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, viral marketing and online media to reach buyers directly, to be published by Wiley in late 2007. In his consulting work, Scott specializes in using online content to market products to demanding customers worldwide. He is an instructor for the Pragmatic Marketing Effective Product Marketing™ seminar, which helps technology companies become market-driven and is a contributing editor at EContent Magazine. Prior to starting his own business, Scott was vice president of marketing at NewsEdge and earlier in his career he was Asia Marketing Director at Knight-Ridder. He has lived and worked in New York, Tokyo, Boston, and Hong Kong and has presented at industry conferences and events in over twenty countries on four continents. Read his blog at www.WebInkNow.com

Win/Loss Analysis:
With this hammer, the whole world is a nail
Alan Armstrong, VP Product Management, Fortiva, Inc.

If there is a single tool that every PM must master, it is Win/Loss Analysis. No tool in your belt will tell you more about the market and give you more credibility with executives, developers, marketers, and best of all, customers. Yet so few perform this analysis correctly, if at all. Some people interview the sales reps and think that they got The story. Others read sales logs. Others simply ask the lost account "why did you not choose us?" These techniques are doomed, and this flawed data is the most dangerous kind because it gives the PM unwarranted confidence.

In this session, Alan Armstrong will provide a technique for Win/Loss Analysis that will help you uncover the hidden truths of your market by identifying objectives, designing and conducting the interviews, and reporting your results to senior management. These techniques will give a quick boost to in your professional credibility, and you'll be able to start practicing them immediately after the session.

Alan Armstrong, VP of Product Management at Fortiva, Inc., has over 12 years experience in product management for enterprise software. In that time, he has managed teams and executed through all aspects of inbound and outbound product management/marketing, has built new products from scratch, and managed existing product lines through explosive revenue growth. Alan has recently returned to his native Toronto from Silicon Valley, where he helped Wily Technology (now part of CA) grow from $10 million to $80 million in annual revenues in three years. He is an engaging speaker, and was selected as one of a handful of industry leaders to present at the inaugural Software Marketing erspectives conference in Boston in 2005. Alan is also the co-founder and former president of the Toronto Product Management Association.

Panel: Strategies for Getting Your Software Message Heard
Through the Market Noise
Moderator: David Sommer, CompTIA
Panelists: Anthony Deighton, Vice President of Marketing, QlikTech
Paul Gannon, Senior Director, Corporate Marketing, TMA Resources
Michael J. Salerno, CRM Product Strategy, Oracle Corp.
Paul Zengilowski, Director, Product Marketing, DataCert, Inc.

There are many fish in the sea, big and little, and if you are not one of the biggest, how do you get your message heard? Find out from some experienced practitioners how some up and coming software and services suppliers are meeting the challenge of being heard through the market noise. Each panelist will make a brief presentation and from then on the session will be interactive with the audience. Bring questions!

David Sommer is vice president of e-business and software solutions for the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), the leading trade association representing the business interests of the global IT industry. He is responsible for developing and implementing worldwide initiatives by working with IT leaders to develop and promote business and technology standards for business-to-business transactions in the computing and electronics industries. Dave also is publisher of SoftwareCEO, an online resource for software executives and entrepreneurs. He has over 25 years experience in software, systems integration and consulting and has provided expert consultancy to a number of software start-ups on a wide range of marketing, sales, financial and software development issues.

Prior to joining QlikTech in February 2005, Anthony Deighton served as General Manager of Siebel System’s Employee Relationship Management (ERM) business unit. Anthony help found the ERM business at Siebel and grew it to over 300 customers and $20 million a year in license revenue. The ERM unit earned recognition as Siebel's fastest-growing product line and named Product Line of the Year. Prior to joining Siebel, Anthony worked as a management consultant at A.T. Kearney in Chicago. Anthony holds a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University and an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School.

Paul Gannon serves as the Senior Director of Corporate Marketing for TMA Resources, a single source provider of member relationship management software solutions for trade associations, professional societies, labor unions, and other member-centric organizations.  Mr. Gannon is responsible for corporate marketing activities at TMA Resources, including customer communications, industry relations, strategic partnerships and marketing communications. Mr. Gannon brings with him more than 20 years of experience in managing marketing programs for both commercial and non-profit companies. He is based at the corporate headquarters in Vienna, VA.

Mr. Gannon is active with a variety of association industry groups, including the American Society of Association Executives, where he has been appointed to serve as a member of their Marketing Section Council and their Industry Partner Alliance. Mr. Gannon holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from St. Louis University, in St. Louis, Mo.

Michael J. Salerno co-founded and incorporated the non-profit Boston Product Management Association (BPMA) and has spent his professional product management career in the enterprise software segment. Michael recruited and led a team of technical product managers for the $100 million Internet Application Division of Sybase, Inc., and was formerly the product manager for the international market-leading development tool PowerBuilder. He received his MBA from Boston University and has led product management and product marketing initiatives in the Human Capital Management, Supply Management, and Customer Relationship Management business domains. Michael is currently planning market-leading enterprise software solutions for Oracle Corporation, based in Burlington, Mass.

Paul Zengilowski, director of product marketing for Houston-based DataCert, Inc., has been actively engaged in marketing and delivering technology solutions to Fortune® 500 corporations on a global scale. Paul’s responsibilities include developing DataCert’s product and market strategies and developing programs to ensure that the company’s business goals are met in the marketplace.

TRACK 3 SESSIONS
Friday, May 25, 2007

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Product Managers
Alyssa Dver, Certified Product Manager, Author

Outstanding Product Managers have oxymoronic personalities " they must be confident but open-minded, highly organized but flexible, evangelistic experts but tremendous listeners. The skill set required to be a successful Product Manager can be overwhelming. Yet some Product Managers stand out as examples of having “it”. What is “it” and how can any Product Manager get “it”? In this session, Alyssa will discuss the common habits and reputations of great Product Managers. Focusing on straightforward actions and general practices, participants will leave with practical ways to significantly improve their job effectiveness and satisfaction.

Alyssa Dver, CPM, CPMM, is the author of "Software Product Management Essentials," with over 10,000 copies sold worldwide. As chief marketing officer for public and private software companies, and a regular contributor to magazines including BusinessWeek and Forbes, Dver is a recognized expert in the business of software.

Reinventing the Product Spec
Martin Cagan, Managing Partner, Silicon Valley Product Group

The product spec (aka PRD, MRD, Functional Spec) is long overdue for a renovation. Some would argue that Agile methods accomplish this by doing away with the spec altogether.  While this extreme won’t fly in most product organizations, in many respects they were on the right track. While I have seen a few truly good product specs, much more often than not the specs take too long to write, they are seldom read, they don’t provide the necessary detail, or address the difficult questions, or contain the critical information they need to. Most importantly, it is all too easy for the mere existence of the spec to serve as a false indicator to management and the product team that everything is proceeding just fine.

If we agree that the central responsibility of the product manager is to make sure that you deliver to the engineering team a product spec that describes a product that will be successful, then we have to acknowledge the weaknesses in the typical spec process and take a hard look at how products are actually defined.

This talk will describe the process that is being adopted by the leading product and Internet companies, a process that is more likely to produce a winning product and also happens to be significantly faster in terms of time-to-market.

Martin Cagan is the managing partner of the Silicon Valley Product Group (www.svpg.com) where he helps companies with product strategy and product management skills. During the past 20 years, Martin Cagan has served as an executive responsible for defining and building products for some of the most successful companies in the world. Martin was most recently senior vice-president of product management and design for eBay, where he was responsible for defining products and services for the company's global e-commerce trading site. Prior to that, Martin was VP of Product at AOL and Netscape, and a software technology researcher at HP Labs.

Martin is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz with B.A. degrees in Computer Science and Applied Economics (1981), and of the Stanford University Executive Institute (1994).

Delivering Software as a Service at SunGard
Kenneth Kunin, VP Product Engineering, SunGard

This presentation will look at how SunGard delivers financial services software and solutions through its new Software as a Service (SaaS) portal and provisioning framework, called Infinity.  Infinity is a platform that lets customers and salespeople procure applications and hosted services through a centralized storefront, automating the deployment process within a hosted environment.  The framework catalogs software assets across disparate lines of business and exposes them for orchestration into composite applications.  Kenneth will explore some of the challenges he faced in helping to develop this platform (based on SunGard's Common Services Architecture), and will demonstrate how Infinity can help SunGard's business units drive sales, develop new products and reduce-time to-market.

Kenneth Kunin is vice president, product engineering for SunGard's Common Services Architecture (CSA), an SOA framework that is evolved through an open development model across many independent business units. He is responsible for managing the core software platform, and works with both product managers and system architects across the company to coordinate efforts and help them leverage the CSA. Kenneth joined SunGard in 1999 when his previous employer Exchange Market Systems was acquired, and has helped guide the evolution of the CSA since its inception in 2003. Kenneth has a marketing and finance degree from McGill University in Canada, and has over ten years of experience developing, managing and marketing Web-based technology.

Panel: The Agile Product Manager
Moderator: Jim Johnson, Chairman, The Standish Group
Panelists:
Greg Cohen, Director of Business Development & Principal Consultant, 280 Group
John Mansour, President, ZIGZAG Marketing
Jason Tanner, former product manager, Evident Software

Agile development methodology has been in practice long enough for many companies to have tried it. Is anyone succeeding? If so, how have successful Product Managers taken a lead in the practice? Panelists Greg Cohen, John Mansour and Jason Tanner will present contrasting opinions and brief case studies about what’s really happening with Agile in a variety of organizations, and how to take a leadership role in organizations who are engaging in this practice. An interactive Q&A session will further enrich the discussion.

Jim Johnson is the founder and chairman of The Standish Group. He has been professionally involved in the computer industry for over 30 years and has a long list of published papers, articles and speeches. He has a combination of technical, marketing, and research achievements focused on mission-critical applications and technology. He is best known for his research on transactional middleware, as well as project and system failures. Jim is a pioneer of modern research techniques and continues to advance in the research industry through virtual focus groups and case-based analytical technology.

Greg Cohen is Director of Business Development & Principal Consultant at 280 Group LLC. He has over a decade of experience in product management and marketing, with a background in software and application services, e-commerce, spend analysis, business analytics and contract management. He has managed over a dozen products from concept through deployment and end of life. Greg's areas of expertise include uncovering market needs, analyzing user requirements, and defining product specifications. He is experienced and enjoys working with both waterfall and agile development methodologies. Prior to joining the 280 Group, Greg spent nearly five years at Instill Corporation launching innovative products used by top 10 foodservice companies. He has also worked for Idealab! and Pandesic (a joint venture between Intel and SAP.) Greg is on the board of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association (www.svpma.org) where he doubled membership and income during his term as president of the organization.

John Mansour formed ZIGZAG Marketing in 2001 with a simple goal in mind — to simplify the steps between good ideas and product revenue. In the 15 years prior to ZIGZAG Marketing, John held titles of pre-sales consultant, product marketing manager, product manager, director of product management and marketing, and vice president of marketing.

Jason Tanner is an independent product management, marketing and project management consultant. He spent six years at Evident Software where he managed implementation projects, drove product management processes, and managed a product line. Jason also managed an e-commerce network at MCI Worldcom and served as a Marine officer for over nine years.