Everyone designs. Business people have focused on designing organizations to reliably generate profits. Today’s designers have focused on designing products and services to be truly compelling to customers. What is most compelling to customers though, is often not rational or logical. So designers have evolved effective and efficient trial-and-error approaches that recognize and accommodate rational and non-rational factors. When these heuristics have been applied to strategy and business modeling, it has produced businesses such as the Apple’s iTunes and iPod ecosystem. Design Thinking balances left brain and right brain decision-making, and when applied to strategy work often creates bigger win-wins for companies and their customers, than achievable through conventional thinking.

In this short experiential workshop, based on techniques used at HP, we will provide a brief introduction to the key concepts, break up into small teams and step through a facilitated Design Thinking exercise. At the end of the session, we will regroup to learn from each team’s experience with the process.

The Design Thinking approach is collaborative, interdisciplinary and highly relevant to anyone involved in the development of new products and services: product managers, engineers, designers, and marketers. The objective of this workshop is to provide you with the foundations of Design Thinking and launch your on-going learning on the topic.

Due to the interactive nature of the exercise, we’ll have to limit the number of registrants so register early to make sure you get to participate that evening.

A special thanks to the Oregon Technology Business Center (OTBC) for hosting this event.

March PDMA Learning and Networking Event

If your development has started to embrace Agile methods, you’ll quickly notice the team is acting strangely. All of a sudden an MRD becomes a “backlog”, software releases become “sprints”, requirements become “user stories” and new languages such as “estimating poker” and “fist to five” start creeping into meetings.

A successful transition also requires that Product Management behaves differently to leverage the benefits of Agile. During this transition, Product Management can either become the hero that helps Agile to shine as a serious business tool, or a villain that drives Agile deep into the dark corners of development.

We’ll discuss some of the following specific challenges the Product Managers often experience in this transition among others: - Converting visions to backlogs - Driving and reporting roadmaps in Agile - Working with Product Owners… or being a Product Owner - PM’s role in iteration and release planning

The Oregon Chapter of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) invites you to its March Learning and Networking Event. At this event, experienced professionals will share their experiences with transitions to Agile and offer specific tactics to make your transition successful. They will then lead a vigorous discussion based on Q&A from the audience.

A special thanks to the Oregon Technology Business Center (OTBC) for hosting this event.

Speakers

• Tony Aiello, Consulting Vision Engineer, Machine Vision Consulting

• Dorian Simpson, Managing Partner, Planning Innovations

• Miki Tokola, Managing Partner, Micom Consulting

Date, Time, and Cost

• Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 5:30-8:00 PM
• $20 on-line registration prior to the event
• $25 at the door
• To register for this event, click on the website address above
• A discount is available for PDMA members

The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) is the premier global advocate for product development and management professionals. The Oregon chapter's mission is to help local professionals and organizations to identify, develop, and launch more innovative and profitable products and services through cross-industry collaboration, thought leadership, and the sharing of best practices and practical knowledge. For more information about the Oregon Chapter of the PDMA, please contact:

Miki Tokola, Chapter President

[email protected]

Delivering real customer value is a challenge for every business. Customer value is often interpreted by marketing, designed by engineering, delivered by operations through a series of hand-offs and not through a consistent process. Existing approaches lead to missing the mark on delivering real value and result in declining business.

The Oregon Chapter of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) invites you to its May Learning and Networking Event. At this event, John Geffel will describe a comprehensive value framework. This framework provides a clear approach to finding the value drivers, understanding how the customer perceives value, and describing how to deliver customer value. This talk will emphasize the practical aspects of the approach so that the attendees will leave with an understanding of the steps needed to use it themselves.

Moderator: Louis Testa

Speaker: John Geffel

Managing Partner at VALUE:driven Group, previously SVP at Sage and SVP at Timberline Software

Date, Time, and Cost

Thursday, May 24, 2012

5:30 – 6:00 Registration, snacks and networking

6:00 – 7:30 Presentation and discussion

7:30 – 8:00 Snacks and networking

$20 on-line registration prior to the event

$25 at the door

A discount is available for PDMA members.

Go to the website above to register for this event

A special thanks to the Oregon Technology Business Center (OTBC) for hosting this event.

Acknowledgement: For more details on the event and the speakers and to register on-line, visit www.pdma.org/oregon

The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) is the premier global advocate for product development and management professionals. The Oregon chapter's mission is to help local professionals and organizations to identify, develop, and launch more innovative and profitable products and services through cross-industry collaboration, thought leadership, and the sharing of best practices and practical knowledge. For more information about the Oregon Chapter of the PDMA, please contact:

Miki Tokola, Chapter President [email protected]

The Oregon Chapter of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) invites you to its November Learning and Networking Event on Emerging Trends in Product Management and Marketing. New ideas and different approaches emerge regularly in the disciplines of product discovery, development and delivery. Examples are design thinking, open innovation and product owners for Agile. As a group, we’ll assemble a list of the major trends that we’re observing. We’ll review what the industry thought leaders are talking about and then try to put these trends into context; whether they are major inflection points redefining product management or passing fads that detract from the execution of product management fundamentals.

The source material for this event is based on the presentation voted the “Best Session” at May’s ProductCamp Portland. The session will be interactive in nature. In addition to presenting research results, we’ll draw on the insights and opinions of the audience during a Q&A session to add greater depth and different perspectives. Come prepared with several trends you’ve heard about which you’d like to contribute to our conversation. Hopefully, you’ll leave with at least a couple of topics you’ll want to explore further.

A special thanks to the Oregon Technology Business Center (OTBC) for hosting this event.

Discussion Leaders

David Nash

Vice President, ADP Dealer Services

President-elect, PDMA Oregon Chapter

Miki Tokola

Principal, Micom Consulting

President, PDMA Oregon Chapter

Date, Time, and Cost

Thursday, November 29, 2012

5:30 – 6:00pm: Registration, refreshments and networking

6:00 – 7:30pm: Presentation and Q&A

7:30 – 8:00pm: Refreshments and networking

$20 on-line registration prior to the event

$25 at the door

A discount is available for PDMA members

To register on-line visit the website above

Your Oregon Chapter of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) - the folks who bring you ProductCamp Portland - invites you to its November Learning and Networking Event with featured speaker Gerry Langeler.

Product and business success in general has three fundamental elements - Vision, Process and Output. Unfortunately, not everyone is equally skilled in all three areas. Gerry started forming a model to describe eight “characters” around the presence or absence of those attributes during his time at Mentor Graphics and has been refining it over the years. He will offer an overview of this model at our event. By understanding Gerry’s “Success Matrix”, you will have a better understanding of why some individuals and product teams flourish while others struggle. You will also be able to apply this model to your individual professional growth and career advancement.

Don’t miss this opportunity to meet and learn from one of the most successful and experienced high-tech executives in Portland. We will also preview our exciting program for 1H 2014, including ProductCamp Portland 3.0.

Our Presenter - Gerry Langeler

Gerry Langeler currently serves as Managing Director and Partner of OVP Venture Partners and focuses on investments in the digital energy, software, imaging and digital biology sectors.

Prior to joining OVP in 1992, Gerry was co-founder of Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) in Portland, OR in 1981. There he served as President, and over eleven years helped lead Mentor through its IPO to over $400M in worldwide sales and over $1B in market capitalization. He began his technology career at Tektronix. Langeler received the Lifetime Achievement award from the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network in 2011.

Date: Thursday, November 21, 2013

Schedule:

5:30– 6:00pm Gathering / Networking / Refreshments**

6:00 – 6:15pm Announcements (upcoming events, who’s hiring, etc.)

6:15 – 7:00pm The Success Matrix

7:00 – 7:30pm Q&A / Open discussion

7:30 – 8:00pm Networking

Cost:

$10 on-line registration prior to the event **

$15 at the door

A discount is available for PDMA members.

To register online, go to http://www.pdma.org/p/cm/ld/fid=1022

** Note: This is a no-host event. The complete Lucky Lab food and drink menu is available. Grab a cold ale & bite to eat - and bring a friend or colleague to add to the discussion.

Roadmapping: Best Practices for Determining "What's Next"

PDMA Learning and Networking Event

Thursday, February 20, 2014

6:00 - 8:00 PM

Your Oregon Chapter of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) - the folks who bring you ProductCamp Portland – and Pragmatic Marketing invite you to a February Learning and Networking Event featuring a special moderated panel focused on the challenges of product roadmapping.

Good Product Managers are the CEOs of their product. They have a vision, and communicate it effectively, for how their product will grow, evolve, and successfully meet its key objectives. The product roadmap is one of the product manager's key instruments for laying out this vision in more concrete terms, but it's inherently full of challenges. This session will tap into panelists experience to uncover best practices for road mapping including critical factors for feature prioritization, political considerations, and how best to communicate them internally and externally.

Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from three top local product executives on this compelling and challenging area of product management.

Panelists:

Bill Lynch - Co-Founder and Advisor, Jive Software

Bill Lynch is a software entrepreneur and advisor. He is one of the co-founders of Jive Software, a company he started in 2001. Bill led product development efforts for 6 years and then transitioned to Product Management at Jive until his retirement from the company in 2013. Jive grew from two co-founders to a team of almost 700 globally and a successful IPO in December 2011. Today, Bill is an advisor to local startups, organizes networking events for area Product Managers, and serves as the Entrepreneur in Residence at the Portland Development Commission. Bill has a BS in computer science from the University of Iowa.

Andy Mallinger – Director of Product, Iovation

After 5 years as a software developer Andy moved to the dark side (marketing) in order to get free lunches traveling with the sales team. Frequently jumping between product management and product marketing, Andy has been deep in new product research, product road-mapping and go to market planning and execution at Portland companies CenterSpan, Digimarc, RNA networks and Iovation. A lover of variety, technology focus includes SaaS fraud prevention, secure document issuance, mobile-connected content, memory virtualization, and peer to peer networks. Andy grew up in Pittsburgh and earned his BA in computer science at Denison University and an MBA from Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management.

Julie Anne Reda - VP of Product Strategy, Yesmail Interactive

Julie Anne Reda, is a seasoned product management executive and is responsible to drive the product vision, strategy, roadmap and launch of Yesmail products. Julie Anne, along with her team manages product development and ensures products exceed market demands for innovative solutions that fit the changing landscape of digital marketing. Julie Anne has enabled large organizations such as Walt Disney Company, Fox Broadcasting, Sony Pictures, Ticketmaster and CitySearch.com to evolve their products to tailor toward the marketplace.

Moderator:

David Nash - VP Product Management, ADP Dealer Services

Schedule:

6:00 – 6:30pm Gathering / Networking / Refreshments**

6:30 – 6:45pm Announcements (upcoming events, who’s hiring, etc.)

6:45 – 7:30pm Panel Discussion

7:30 – 7:45pm Q&A / Open discussion

7:45 – 8:00pm Networking

Cost:

$10 on-line registration prior to the event **

$15 at the door

A discount is available for PDMA members.

To register online, click on the website above and scroll down to the "Cost " section

** Note: This is a no-host event. The complete Lucky Lab food and drink menu is available. Grab a cold ale & bite to eat - and bring a friend or colleague to add to the discussion.

SPONSORED BY PRAGMATIC MARKETING

In addition to being a venue sponsor for the upcoming learning and networking event and a returning platinum sponsor at [ProductCamp Portland] (http://productcamppdx.org/), Pragmatic Marketing is supporting the Portland Product Management community by offering three courses in Portland on Feb. 25-27. Instead of buying an airplane ticket, you and your product colleagues can attend their Foundations, Focus and Build courses right here in town. And as an exclusive offer only for our ProductCamp Portland and PDMAO friends: mention ProductCamp Portland or PDMA to receive a free copy of Tuned In when you register for the Portland Pragmatic courses. Find out more at [Pragmatic Marketing in Portland] (https://buy.pragmaticmarketing.com/buy/events/detail/9813).

Join us at ProductCamp Portland 3.0, Portland's annual "unconference', now in its third year, where product managers, product marketers and product developers unite.

Why attend?
ProductCamp is a user-driven “unconference” that brings together passionate product managers and marketers who are interested in collaborating to share insights, learning best practices, and networking with other top professionals in the Portland product community. You decide the topics, you pick the agenda, you participate in making this unconference a great learning opportunity.

Ready to participate?
Register for ProductCamp Portland 3.0: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/productcamp-portland-2014-tickets-9352961961

Submit a topic: http://productcamppdx.userecho.com/

Learn more about facilitating a discussion: http://productcamppdx.org/propose-a-session.html

We look forward to your participation.

Thanks to our Sponsors!

• Pragmatic Marketing
• Jama
• Rally Software
• ADP
• AudaExplore
• Proficientz
• PDMA Oregon
• Pichler Consulting
• Blackblot
• SVPG Silicon Valley Product Group
• Actuation Consulting
• Brainsnacks Cafe
• Mironov Consulting

“USER EXPERIENCE – WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?”

PDMA Learning and Networking Event

Thursday, May 15, 2014

6:00 - 8:00 PM

Join PDMA for an interactive discussion with seasoned local Designers and Product Managers on how their experiences at the junction between design and product have driven business results. What do Product Managers need to know about UX and how do Product Managers and UX Designers effectively work together? How can Product Managers incorporate best UX practices into their daily lives? We hope you can join us to explore this exciting topic!

Panelists:

Clodine Mallinckrodt—Manager of Planning Analytics,

Providence Health and Services

Clodine is passionate about the communication and architecture of information - especially in the design and delivery of tech-based products and services. From Wall Street to MarCom Way, Clodine's varied background spans agency-based, vendor-side and strategy consulting work. Her career has touched: •Data and Business Intelligence •Interactive Media and eLearning •Web App & Software Development •Localization •Program & Change Management •Management Consulting

Currently, Clodine is Manager of Planning Analytics at Providence Health & Services, one of the top 20 integrated healthcare delivery systems in the U.S. Her specialized team delivers both quantitative and qualitative Market Intelligence in support of Oregon Region Strategic & Business Planning. This work supports the organization's response to healthcare transformation. She is also helping to develop Providence Consumer Segments, and is a GE-certified Change Facilitator. As of 2014, Clodine is Program Co-Chair for CHIFOO.org, the Computer-Human Interaction Forum of Oregon.

Margi Waite – Senior Product Manager, ADP Dealer Services

In her current role as Product Owner at ADP Dealer Services, Margi is responsible for delivering Common Services for new products being introduced in 2014. In this role Margi partners with UX every step of the way from research to design to UX testing and application development. Margi has over fifteen years’ background managing B2B products including CRM, ERP, and Financial Services software, and has always been a strong advocate of UX as she considers it essential to the success of her Products.

Mike Lonergan -- Interaction Designer and Systems Engineer

Intel Security Group

Mike is an Interaction Designer, Product Owner and Systems Engineer for a suite of business apps in the Intel Security Group at Intel. He handles the requirements, mockups, prioritization and acceptance testing for all aspects of the site design, and factors every user's needs in the interactions, information and visuals that help them achieve their goals. Mike designs apps and processes down to the least cripplingly necessary overhead, and dreams of the day when his smartphone will recognize him half as well as his dog.

Schedule:

6:00 – 6:30pm: Gathering / Networking / Refreshments**

6:30 – 6:45pm: Announcements (upcoming events, who’s hiring, etc.)

6:45 – 7:30pm: Panel Discussion

7:30 – 7:45pm: Q&A / Open discussion

7:45 – 8:00pm: Networking

Cost:

$10 on-line registration prior to the event **

$15 at the door

A discount is available for PDMA members.

To register online, click the website above

** Note: This is a no-host event. The complete Lucky Lab food and drink menu is available. Grab a cold ale & bite to eat - and bring a friend or colleague to add to the discussion!

The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) is the premier global advocate for product development and management professionals. The Oregon chapter's mission is to help local professionals and organizations to identify, develop, and launch more innovative and profitable products and services through cross-industry collaboration, thought leadership, and the sharing of best practices and practical knowledge. For more information about the Oregon Chapter of the PDMA, please contact: David Nash, Chapter President, at [email protected].

We encourage everyone in Oregon who is interested in the Product Development Manager's Association to become a member of the National PDMA. For a great explanation on the benefits of membership in the PDMA, click [] (http://www.pdma.org/p/cm/ld/fid=171).

Companies who have ‘gone Agile’ often experience several failure modes. We know that Agile brings unprecedented transparency to adopters - but this often exposes organizational dysfunction which has ‘always been there,’ but often neither acknowledged nor addressed. This can result in one of the most disruptive transitions a company can go through. What to do?

-How can we spare ourselves months of what seems like inevitable struggle? -What have some veteran Agile practitioners learned, and done, to accelerate their transition, and reap the rewards that have eluded others? -How have they measured success?

Our panel of Product & Development experts will share their experience and strategies, to help you cross this minefield successfully and faster.

Mark Bednarski has worked with iGrafx since 2007, starting in Germany as a Business Process Consultant and Six-Sigma Black Belt. He transitioned into Product Management in October 2013 when he transferred to iGrafx headquarters in Tualatin, OR. iGrafx goal - to reduce the release cycle from 18 mos. to 6 mos. - required major changes in both Dev & PM processes, which Mark will lead to completion by the end of this year. This goal screamed for an Agile approach, causing Mark to learn and discover on his own – a tough learning curve, which started to pay back just a few months ago.

Tony Aiello has spent 20 years in machine vision / factory automation engineering, and 5 years in the movie business. He's regularly intrigued by how much these disciplines actually have in common from development / production viewpoints, and gratified that the skills are transferable.

We will confirm the remaining two panelists early next week.

Questions? Contact [email protected]

According to a recent article, the Product Manager is the fourth most valuable corporate job. Unfortunately, there is little agreement on what a person in that position is responsible for, what skills they need, and how they should be evaluated. Given that uncertainty, it’s no surprise that the career path for a Product Manager also lacks clarity and consistency.

We have assembled a panel of Product Management veterans to explore how one can enter the profession, what it takes to be successful and advance, and to what types of senior positions a seasoned Product Manager can aspire. There will be significant interaction with the audience to make sure your specific career questions will be addressed.

Panelists:

Susannah Axelrod, Director of Product Management at Puppet Labs, Inc.

Susannah has over 15 years of Product Management experience from Intel, Intuit, Sage Software, and Thomson Reuters. She is known for combining the voice of the customer, competitive and market research into real, actionable roadmaps and strategies. Susannah has an MBA from the Wharton School.

Pamela Jones, Principal at Jones Partners Executive Search Firm

For more than 20 years, Pamela's firm has recruited board members, C-level executive team members across all functions, and critical contributors to execute on projected growth plans of start-up, emerging, and transitioning technology (high tech, healthcare, and agriculture) companies nationwide. She has served on the boards of Oregon Public Broadcasting, Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, Technology Association of Oregon, and other community organizations.

Olaf Kowalik, Director of Product Management at Janrain

Previously, Olaf was Vice-President of Product Management & Development at Waggener Edstrom, and previously held management positions at Point B, RealNetworks, and Ernst & Young. In April, Olaf led a popular session at ProductCamp PDX titled, “Product Management Interviews: Asking the Right Questions and Giving Great Answers.”

Matthew Lange, Senior Director, Product Management at Northwest Evaluation Association

Matthew has over 27 years of experience in the software industry while working in the Aerospace, Construction and Education markets. Matthew’s Product Management experience spans over 15 years, including both C-level and leadership-level management roles.

The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) is the premier global advocate for product development and management professionals. The Oregon chapter's mission is to help local professionals and organizations to identify, develop, and launch more innovative and profitable products and services through cross-industry collaboration, thought leadership, and the sharing of best practices and practical knowledge. For more information about the Oregon Chapter of the PDMA, please contact: David Nash, Chapter President, at [email protected].

We encourage everyone in Oregon who is interested in the Product Development Manager's Association to become a member of the National PDMA. For a great explanation on the benefits of membership in the PDMA, click here.

PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGE IN VENUE TO LUCKY LAB MULTNOMAH

Schedule:

6:00 – 6:30pm: Gathering / Networking / Refreshments**

6:30 – 6:45pm: Announcements (upcoming events, who’s hiring, etc.)

6:45 – 7:30pm: Panel Discussion

7:30 – 7:45pm: Q&A / Open discussion

7:45 – 8:00pm: Networking

Cost:

$10 on-line registration prior to the event **

$15 at the door

A discount is available for PDMA members.

To register online, click the website link above.

** Note: This is a no-host event. The complete Lucky Lab food and drink menu is available. Grab a cold ale & bite to eat - and bring a friend or colleague to add to the discussion.

DIGITAL RESEARCH BEYOND GOOGLE

How B2B Marketers Can Gather Better Intelligence In A Big Data World

PDMA Learning and Networking Event

Thursday, September 18, 2014

6:00 - 8:00pm

Presenter: Sean Campbell, Cascade Insights

This event is for anyone who wishes to gather meaningful competitive and market intelligence from digital sources. Sean will share examples that illustrate how internet tools, such as LinkedIn, Indeed, Twitter and SlideShare can be used to answer specific questions and give you valuable insights into important market trends and your competitor’s strategies and tactics. In addition to his informative presentation, there will be a Q&A session during which time attendees can explore details of intelligence gathering.

Sean Campbell is an internationally recognized, speaker, author, and, expert in the fields of competitive and market intelligence. Sean has been quoted in Forbes, the New York Times, ZDNet, LA Times, and other publications and has presented at MIT’s Sloan Management School and SCIP (Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals) conferences in the US, Europe, and Asia.

The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) is the premier global advocate for product development and management professionals. The Oregon chapter's mission is to help local professionals and organizations to identify, develop, and launch more innovative and profitable products and services through cross-industry collaboration, thought leadership, and the sharing of best practices and practical knowledge. For more information about the Oregon Chapter of the PDMA, please contact: David Nash, Chapter President, at [email protected].

We encourage everyone in Oregon who is interested in the Product Development Manager's Association to become a member of the National PDMA. For a great explanation on the benefits of membership in the PDMA, click(http://www.pdma.org/p/cm/ld/fid=171)

Schedule:

6:00 – 6:30pm: Gathering / Networking / Refreshments**

6:30 – 6:45pm: Announcements (upcoming events, who’s hiring, etc.)

6:45 – 7:30pm: Panel Discussion

7:30 – 7:45pm: Q&A / Open discussion

7:45 – 8:00pm: Networking

Cost:

$10 on-line registration prior to the event **

$15 at the door

A discount is available for PDMA members

To register online, click on the website above

** Note: This is a no-host event. The complete Lucky Lab food and drink menu is available. Grab a cold ale & bite to eat - and bring a friend or colleague to add to the discussion!

Annually, PNSQC provides a two-day technical program and a one-day workshop during our fall conference. PNSQC events draw participants from Universities and Corporations from around the world. Among the major participants are ADP, Boeing Computer Services, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Mentor Graphics, Tektronix, Microsoft, Portland State University and Oregon State University.

ProductCamp is a user-driven “unconference” that brings together passionate product managers, product marketers and others who are interested in collaborating to share insights, learning best practices, and networking with other top professionals in the Portland product community.

Join us for our fourth camp!

Want to learn how to take your projects to the next level?

Practical, Hands-on Training for Scrum

Join us for an all day Scrum workshop on August 20th, 2016; hosted by the IBEA featuring Suzanne Ward MBA MEng PMP CSM CSPO PSM CSP, a Scrum Master & Agile Coach/Trainer from Intel. Our world is changing fast. Markets and consumers are demanding faster, cheaper and better products. Demands for quicker turnaround on new product development and innovation have only increased. How do companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Apple keep up? They practice agile techniques, in particular they utilize scrum to manage their projects. Scrum has the power to transform project management across every industry, every business, and even across your personal life. By using Scrum, you’ll become more agile, discovering how to react more quickly and respond more accurately to the inevitable change that comes your way. By staying focused, collaborating, and communicating with customers and your team, you can accomplish what truly needs to be done — successfully. Come get a taste of the future of project management and learn about the Scrum process. This one day classroom training with exercises will cover the material from scrum introduction certification class and Product Owner role in the Scrum Process.

STRUCTURE OF EVENT: Day 1 – Learn about the Scrum Process, Learn what a Scrum Master is responsible for, come away with insights on how to manage your next project

BENEFITS Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs) Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies

Additional for Audience: SW Engineers: eXtreme Programming, Test Driven Development, Pair Programming Project Managers: Bridging the Gap between Project Management and Scrum

WHO SHOULD COME? People whose work is completed through projects and through teams; Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals.

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS? If you share our event via Linkedin using @ibea then you have front row seats to this event! Thanks for spreading the word. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected].

Our Topic

Did you think you were more healthy before you started wearing a FitBit? In this talk, Laure will review how using data can help to make better decisions for products, software development, and life in general. The human brain depends on a combination of rational processes and gut reactions, and learning how and when to trust them both in concert allows for great decisions.

Our implicit and unseen biases often step from good intuition, but in order to make reality-based choices, it helps to use quantitative and qualitative data to check ourselves and get the facts.

Our Presenter, Laure Parsons

Laure Parsons is a Senior Product Manager at Notion, the analytics layer for intelligent teams. Prior to her work at Notion, she led the marketing-communications efforts at live chat leader Olark, and lead specific projects that spanned product and operations. As a consultant, she also helped a number of startup companies on product acquisition and activation.

Before moving into technology, she held a number of leadership roles in independent film distribution and production. Laure has served on several non-profit boards and, in perhaps the highlight of her career, was a DJ at WFMU, the country’s premiere independent radio station.

Building great products takes a lot of work, but hard work isn't enough on its own. No matter what you're building, you're going to need a plan for how you'll get there. In this talk, we'll talk about the Heroku Postgres team's working habits as it scaled a 24x7 high-availability product while maintaining close contact with its users over a long period. We'll focus on the specific and practical techniques the team used to plan, organize, and execute its work, and talk about the principles behind them. After a tour of some of these techniques, Heroku Postgres founding member Peter van Hardenberg will answer your questions about scaling from startup to acquisition and massive scale.

Speaker Bio:

Peter van Hardenberg was an early team member at Heroku and co-founded Heroku's Department of Data, the team behind Heroku Postgres. Heroku was acquired by Salesforce.com in December 2010 for $212M less than four years after founding. Prior to joining Heroku, he worked as an Arctic oceanographer, game developer, and Shakespearean scholar. He lives in San Francisco and, among other things, advises high-growth software companies like Zapproved and Auth0.

REGISTER >>

Product managers and product teams face unprecedented challenges as business environments and product ecosystems become increasingly complex and unpredictable.

Customers have tremendous freedom to choose among competing products, and user experience has become a big factor in many purchase decisions. Time-to-market pressure is unrelenting, while product complexity and technical challenges keep increasing. In this environment, businesses must offer solutions that solve the right problem for the right consumer at the right time and the right price.

Solutions Thinking offers a fresh look at how to develop holistic solutions for customer problems. Solutions Thinking helps teams balance business, usage, and technology to create a compelling and sustainable set of products and services to meet the customer’s current and future needs. Solutions Thinking helps teams go from opportunities to solutions using a value-driven approach, and works with traditional, Agile, and hybrid development life cycles.

Many teams just focus on making products when they should be thinking about developing solutions. Solutions Thinking blends a unique collection of proven industry models into a coherent methodology for solution development. The approach is specifically designed to work in complex environments.

*This is a free, one-hour introduction to Solutions Thinking, which is typically a day-long workshop. We will not have time to cover topics in depth. After an overview of the topics, there will be time for a deeper dive into one additional module based on participant preferences. If you would like to participate in the day-long workshop on February 21st, please make a reservation here. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/solutions-thinking-for-product-managers-tickets-30741063348

Who typically attends? Product managers, Product owners, product planners, product marketing, architects, designers, product engineers, and others working on holistic solution discovery, definition, design, and delivery.

Brought to you by https://www.nucognitive.com

Product managers and product teams face unprecedented challenges as business environments and product ecosystems become increasingly complex and unpredictable.

Customers have tremendous freedom to choose among competing products, and user experience has become a big factor in many purchase decisions. Time-to-market pressure is unrelenting, while product complexity and technical challenges keep increasing. In this environment, businesses must offer solutions that solve the right problem for the right consumer at the right time and the right price.

Solutions Thinking offers a fresh look at how to develop holistic solutions for customer problems. Solutions Thinking helps teams balance business, usage, and technology to create a compelling and sustainable set of products and services to meet the customer’s current and future needs. Solutions Thinking helps teams go from opportunities to solutions using a value-driven approach, and works with traditional, Agile, and hybrid development life cycles.

Many teams just focus on making products when they should be thinking about developing solutions. Solutions Thinking blends a unique collection of proven industry models into a coherent methodology for solution development. The approach is specifically designed to work in complex environments.

*This is a free, one-hour introduction to Solutions Thinking, which is typically a day-long workshop. We will not have time to cover topics in depth. After an overview of the topics, there will be time for a deeper dive into one additional module based on participant preferences. If you would like to participate in the day-long workshop on February 21st, please make a reservation here. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/solutions-thinking-for-product-managers-tickets-30741063348

Who typically attends? Product managers, Product owners, product planners, product marketing, architects, designers, product engineers, and others working on holistic solution discovery, definition, design, and delivery.

Brought to you by https://www.nucognitive.com

Product managers and product teams face unprecedented challenges as business environments and product ecosystems become increasingly complex and unpredictable.

Customers have tremendous freedom to choose among competing products, and user experience has become a big factor in many purchase decisions. Time-to-market pressure is unrelenting, while product complexity and technical challenges keep increasing. In this environment, businesses must offer solutions that solve the right problem for the right consumer at the right time and the right price.

Solutions Thinking offers a fresh look at how to develop holistic solutions for customer problems. Solutions Thinking helps teams balance business, usage, and technology to create a compelling and sustainable set of products and services to meet the customer’s current and future needs. Solutions Thinking helps teams go from opportunities to solutions using a value-driven approach, and works with traditional, Agile, and hybrid development life cycles.

Many teams just focus on making products when they should be thinking about developing solutions. Solutions Thinking blends a unique collection of proven industry models into a coherent methodology for solution development. The approach is specifically designed to work in complex environments.

Who typically attends? Product managers, Product owners, product planners, product marketing, architects, designers, product engineers, and others working on holistic solution discovery, definition, design, and delivery.

Refresh Portland is presenting this special event. We're honored to be hosting Daniel Szuc, who is coming all the way from Hong Kong just for us. Tickets are on sale now for $10. Snacks and drinks provided.

What if we could create an ecosystem that encourages people to thrive?

People love …

• Working with other people and projects that matters
• Positively influencing and learning from the people they work with
• Energising people they work with to be and do better
• Having a shared sense of narrative and purpose
• Continuously learning from customers.

But sometimes people spend significant amounts of time at work on projects that do not provide meaning for themselves and others.

We all get caught up with the workings, speed and delivery of our projects that we forget about …

• Our own wellbeing
• To reflect on our project stories and observations
• To share those observations with the people we work with on our own teams and on other teams
• Collate the aggregated learnings from projects to determine what it means for better integrated practices over time.

This results in people feeling purposeless, stressed, unhealthy and in a state of “sleepwalking.”

So this presentation together will help us …

• Take a step back and breather from our projects
• Examine the frustrations at work
• Look at what a successful project does and does not do
• Examine the soft skills needed to nurture our own capabilities
• Look at key project artifacts needed to help us prioritise and focus on what matters
• Look at an integrated framework for make meaningful work

Finally, this presentation will leave participants with a manifesto for make meaningful work and an integrated framework to help us all move from being stuck (“Sleepwalking”) on projects to help us flow (“Sparkle”).

Our Presenter, Daniel Szuc

Dan is a co-founder and principal at Apogee and co-founder of Make Meaningful Work, as well as the co-founder of UX Hong Kong. He has been involved in the UX field for over 20 years, and has been based in Hong Kong for over 20 years. Dan has lectured about user-centered design globally. He has co-authored two books including Global UX with Whitney Quesenbery and the Usability Kit with Gerry Gaffney.

Level up your skills, network with peers, and learn to deliver better products, services, and solutions with this unique workshop from nuCognitive.

Developing solutions to customer problems is complex balancing act. Some products fail due to a flawed business model while others are neither desirable nor useful. This workshop invites teams to shift their thinking from developing a product or service to delivering a holistic solution that balances business, usage, and technology.

The Three-Circle Model is both a descriptive and a prescriptive approach to develop holistic solutions. It is based on the three fundamental perspectives needed for a balanced and compelling solution; Business, Usage, and Technology. -The Business circle represents the economic viewpoint. A solution must be marketable, profitable, and affordable. -The Usage circle represents the conceptual viewpoint. A solution must be desirable, usable, and useful. -The Technology circle represents the implementation viewpoint. A solution must be manufacturable, functional, and consumable (by the industry and associated ecosystems).

These three circles can be arranged in a Venn diagram with overlaps for Value, Capability, and Ingredients.

The Three-Circle Model forms a cohesive and consistent taxonomy that can be used by organizations as the basis of a shared vocabulary, thereby reducing misinterpretations and wasteful communication churn. The model is also the underlying architecture for a solution life cycle. Unlike other life cycles with phases that are based on activities (e.g. exploration, planning, development), the solution life cycle’s phases are based on the state of the solution itself. This makes the life cycle activity and method agnostic, so it works with Agile, Lean, traditional, and hybrid approaches.

Learning Outcomes: -Describe the three fundamental perspectives of a solutions: Business, Usage, and Technology -Describe the three two-circle overlaps in the model: Value, Capability, and Ingredient -Understand what a balanced solution means -Evaluate a product, service, or solution using the model to locate weaknesses and knowledge gaps -Apply the Three-Circle Model to a solution life cycle -Improve communication among teams using a common vocabulary and taxonomy for solution development -Use the model to diagnose and improve issues in solution development

Who should attend: Product management, product owners, product developers, service designers, architects, product managers, engineers, business development, business strategy, marketing, planners, project managers, software developers

Level up your skills, network with peers, and learn to accelerate stakeholder value delivery with this unique workshop from nuCognitive.

The first Agile principle is "Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software." However, in practice this does not seem to be true nearly as often as it should be. Teams often fail to provide early, frequent delivery of stakeholder value. Instead, they focused on spikes, class libraries, infrastructure, and other inward-focused work, without an understanding of their stakeholders and what they value. As a result, many teams start with what is most familiar, easiest, or most convenient for them rather than what stakeholders value most.

Why do teams often become focused on (or even obsessed with) feature development and maximizing development velocity? Without explicit focus on value, the association between velocity, feature development, and value-delivery is weak - perhaps even non-existent. At best, these projects are conducted sub-optimally. Frequently, they fail when stakeholders remove funding because they perceive a lack of value add.

Value-driven delivery is achieved using the answers to three simple, but not at all easy, questions: 1. Who are your stakeholders? 2. What do they value? 3. What are you doing in the next two weeks or less to provide value to them?

Teams often have many more stakeholders than they first realize. Value-driven Delivery ensures those stakeholders are made explicit, and that the list of stakeholders is kept current throughout the project.

Value-driven delivery captures and maintains stakeholder values in a quantified, verifiable way. This ensures that teams can know the real effects of each stakeholder value delivery, and prevents work based on an outdated understanding of value.

Value-driven Delivery also challenges teams to sequence deliveries so that they deliver the most valuable things first. This can have tremendous benefits, generating early business results and reducing the time required for the team to get into a positive Return on Investment for the project.

Value-driven delivery makes a natural overlay for Scrum, but does not require Scrum's use to be effective. Value-driven delivery does not ignore features and velocity, but it explicitly places value delivery above those things as the top priority.

Two other advantages to Value-driven Delivery worth mentioning: First, it is not limited to software, but applies to all aspects of an organization, including the executive suite, human resources, finance, IT, and product teams. Second, it is not focused on or limited to any particular scale. In fact, it is scale-free, working on small teams and teams of more than 500 engineers in a 100K-person company.

Learning Outcomes: -The definition and nature of value -The principles and practices of Value-driven Delivery -How to use Evolutionary Delivery to manage value-driven work, alone or in concert with Scrum -Fundamentals of several disciplines and models that aid value-driven work, including the Kano Model, elements from Diffusion of Innovations, UX Proof Points, and the HEART Framework -Attendees will gain enough understanding to begin using Value-driven Delivery in their own work if they desire. -Additional sources of information will be provided for continued learning.

Who should attend: Product management, product owners, product developers, service designers, architects, product managers, engineers, business development, business strategy, marketing, planners, project managers, software developers

Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) is a 2-day course that provides the knowledge needed to work with Scrum in a highly practical way. The course is a combination of instruction and team-based exercises where students experience how the Scrum framework improves product development efforts.

Over the 2 days, students will develop and solidify their knowledge of being a Product Owner through instruction and team-based exercises. The breadth of the role’s responsibilities in delivering a successful product will become more clear from an Agile perspective. Metrics are identified to track the creation of value and the successful delivery of the product to the marketplace.

Scrum.org selects only the most qualified instructors to deliver this course. Each instructor lends his or her individual experience and expertise to the course, but all students learn the same core content. This improves their ability to pass the Professional Scrum assessments and use Scrum in the workplace.

This course will be limited to 12 people to enable a high-touch experience. Sign up early to get your spot.

Join Product leaders and experts for a lively panel discussion about how to incorporate customer feedback to make products your customers love and deliver a better overall customer experience. We'll share best practices from industry leaders and give attendees a chance to ask their questions as well! 

The evening will be hosted at Vacasa’s office in the Pearl and emceed by the unofficial Godfather of Portland Tech, founder of Silicon Florist, cofounder of Portland Incubator Experiment, cofounder of Oregon Story Board, cofounder of TechfestNW, Rick Turoczy. He’ll moderate a panel discussion with Patrick Lightbody, SVP of Product Management at Delphix, Heather Knight of Airbnb, Greg Goodman, CEO of ProductPlan, Dan Podsedly, VP of Pivotal Tracker, and Kevin Steigerwald, CPO of Notion.

There will be snacks and drinks and plenty of time for networking and discussions.

AGENDA

• 5:30 Arrive

• 6:00 Panel Discussion: How Product can leverage Support to build better products

• 6:40 Q&A

• 7:00 Networking, Food, and Drinks

ABOUT THE PANEL

HEATHER KNIGHT

Heather is a former healthcare worker turned techie.  She started out on the Customer Experience at Airbnb and is currently on the Business Travel Team as an Account Coordinator for Enterprise-level companies.  She has developed a deep interest in product development and was part of a beta test group for a new internal product that was recently released into the wild.  When Heather is not working, she's learning how to code at Alchemy Labs part time program in the evenings. In her not so free time, she's also the Portland City co-director of Lesbians Who Tech.  Someday soon, when code school is finished, she hopes to resume her hiking, backpacking and international travel addictions.

GREG GOODMAN

Greg Goodman is the co-founder and CEO of ProductPlan. He has a passion for building products and companies. He was the founder of Miramar Systems, which was acquired by Computer Associates and has advised and invested in numerous technology startups including AppFolio, RightScale, HGData and Apeel Sciences. He has degrees in Computer Science and Business Economics from UC Santa Barbara.

DAN PODSEDLY

Dan Podsedly is a Pivotal Labs VP and the General Manager of Pivotal Tracker, the popular project collaboration tool for modern software teams. Dan has been with Pivotal Labs since their nascent days in the mid-2000s, and has experience in every aspect of software development, including engineering, product management, and UX design.

KEVIN STEIGERWALD

Full-stack product designer with over 10 years of experience designing, researching, marketing, planning, and building products. From package design in big-box retailers to indie games in the App Store, my passion is for designing experiences that make our lives easier and more enjoyable. I believe pies are for dessert not for charts, tortillas make the best utensil, and the iPhone 4 is the proper screen size for a phone.

For our next meeting on October 3rd, we'll have two amazing speakers. Betsie Hoyt, Product Manager at Vacasa, and Colin Murphy, Product Consultant at MOJO PSG. Their talks will help you up your game as a PM and give you tools to move ahead. See you there!

The Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) course is a 2-day course on how to maximize the value of software products and systems. Product Ownership in Scrum today requires more than knowledge of how to write requirements or manage a Product Backlog. Professional Scrum Product Owners need to have a concrete understanding of everything that drives value from their products.

Students develop and solidify this understanding through instruction and team-based exercises. The breadth of the role’s responsibilities in delivering a successful product beco8010 N Charleston Ave, Portland, OR 97203 mes clear from an Agile perspective on product management. Metrics are identified to track the creation of value and the successful delivery of it to the marketplace. This defines the perspective from which the role of the Product Owner in the Scrum framework is taught.

Details and registration here --> https://www.agilesocks.com/training-courses/professional-scrum-product-owner-portland-2/

Feel free to contact me at [email protected] with any questions and to help you determine if this is the right fit for you.

This month we want to introduce Peekay Chan from ebay!

Peekay is currently a Senior Product Manager at eBay. He spanned his career across both technical and product management disciplines. Some of his achievements include launching a platform that enabled millions of IoT devices with Intel/Samsung, machine learning based authentication solution for Starbucks and Amazon. Peekay has experience working for Fortune 500 and startups including one of he co-founded! He is passionate about customer/lean development with a focus on technological innovation.

Please join us and help learn from a successful PDX Product leader!

Please join us for an awesome ProductTank meetup. There will be food, sponsored by Cloudability, and beer! And 2 great talks for Product Managers and product people.

Want to take your career to the next level?

Practical, Hands-on Training for Advanced Excel Formulas & Functions

Microsoft Excel is perhaps the most important computer software program used in business today. That's why so many workers and prospective employees are required to learn Excel to enter or remain in the workplace. Unfortunately many college students, recent grads, and professionals haven’t mastered Excel or have the adequate Excel skills employers are seeking. According to Payscale, “ 80 percent of job openings require spreadsheet and word-processing software skills. Yet so many people never even give Excel a chance because it has an intimidating stigma around it.”

If you walk through the finance or accounting department at any major corporate office, you will see computer screens filled with Excel spreadsheets outlining financial results, budgets, forecasts, and plans used to make big business decisions. Marketing and Product profesionals using Excel to list customer and sales targets; managing thier sales force and planning future marketing plans based on past results. Pivot tables to quickly and easily summarize customer and sales data by category with a quick drag-and drop. HR professionals using giant spreadsheets full of employee data and understand exactly where the costs are coming from and how to best plan and control them for the future. Supply logistic professional to manage inventory and forecasts demand.In essence, you can turn an entire department around just because you know how to manipulate data in order to get an aggregate view.

STRUCTURE OF COURSE

Advanced functions and formulas

 *Logical functions
 *Conditional functions
 *Financial functions
 *Text functions
 *Date functions
 *Array formulas

Lookups and data tables

 *Using lookup functions
 *Using MATCH and INDEX
 *Creating data tables

Advanced data management

 *Validating cell entries
 *Advanced filtering

Advanced charting

 *Chart formatting options
 *Combination charts
 *Graphical objects

PivotTables and PivotCharts

 *Working with PivotTables
 *Rearranging PivotTables
 *Formatting PivotTables
 *PivotCharts

Exporting and Importing Data

 *Exporting and importing text files
 *Getting external data

Analytical Tools

 *Goal Seek
 *Scenarios

Macros and Visual Basic

 *Running and recording a macro
 *Working with VBA code

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Martin Jetton has 30+ years of advanced supply chain analytics, predictive analytics, and statistical consulting experience. He's currently a Principal at the Liberty Advisor Group, where he works in advanced supply chain analytics. In his previous role, he was the Senior Predictive Consultant at Corios; where he developed predictive models and scorecards, forecast trends, identify uncertainties, and assign the ideal strategies to maximize performance. The firm’s clients are in the banking, brokerage, credit, utilities and healthcare industries.

BENEFITS

Not only are many business professionals using Excel to perform everyday functional tasks in the workplace, an increasing number of employers rely on Excel for decision support.The ability to analyze data is a powerful skill that helps you make better decisions. Microsoft Excel is one of the top tools for data analysis and the built-in pivot tables are arguably the most popular analytic tool.

MAKE YOUR RESUME STAND OUT

They are NOT seeing if you simply have Excel as a skill. They are diving deeping when it comes to determining which candidate to interview and hire. They look for Pivot Table, VLOOKUP, Macros, VBA, Conditional Formatting, Charting and Filtering…These are far more telling of your ability to an employer then writing Excel. Someone who writes VLOOKUP, Pivot Table, Filtering demonstrates an ability to analyse data and so has eliminated a potential barrier in the mind of the hiring manager reviewing your resume. In essence, use actual Excel functions in your Resume!

INCREASE YOUR EARNING POTENTIAL

Did you know that Excel know-how can instantly increase your job prospects as well as your starting salary? Excel is a transferrable skill that any hiring manager understands is critical. Research shows job applicants who know MS Excel make $22.66 per hour on average compared to the $20.14 per hour their peers make who don’t know the program. That’s roughly an extra $20 per eight-hour workday and $100 per work week, simply for knowing how to use a single computer program. Moreover, full-time employees in certain industries can see a starting salary bump of anywhere from $1,000 to $7,000 per year based on their Excel skills. That’s not chump change you can ignore.

INSPIRING ENTREPRENEUR?

A majority 63 percent of twenty-somethings want to start their own business. How will you stay organized, track data, or forecast your finances if you’re not spreadsheet-savvy? Many millennials simply want their first job. But, what about your performance once someone hires you? The biggest complaint employers have about millennials is that they lack basic hard and soft skills.These skills include things like teamwork and problem solving, but also basic administrative skills like MS Word and Powerpoint. Once you’re hired, you want to meet the basic requirements of your role without stressing.

WHO SHOULD COME?

People whose work is completed through MS Excel; Software Engineers, Finance Professionals, HR Professionals, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals.

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS?

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected].

SOLD OUT?

This is one of our high demand classes. In the case, we sale out; email us at [email protected] and ask when our next course will be in

We'll have two 20-minute talks, each followed by 10 minutes of Q&A. We'll have plenty of time at the start and end of the meetup for tasty beverages and networking.

Speakers

Impacting Product Development with Net Promoter Score & Customer Data
Camila Morrison, Product Manager

As a product manager, you may have different types of feedback and data from product users/customers. Some of that could be Net Promoter Score (NPS) results, e-commerce data, community media verbatims, or other survey information. Learn what’s going on with NPS and other customer data to look at it from a product use perspective. Then see how to translate that into making changes to your product to better connect with customers, improve your value proposition, and make more revenue.

Camila Morrison is a product manager in tech who has worked across a variety of areas in product management from concept/market/UX roles to managing a team in the development arena. Also in her experience, is running a Net Promoter System to drive improvements across the customer product lifecycle. She was in marketing management for companies that included utility control center software. Her background includes leading marketing research projects for tech, utility, transportation, ad/media, healthcare, retail, tourism, and non-profit industries.

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The Product Manager Career Lifecycle
Mike Kruse, Product Manager

After spending many years as a product manager in both large and small organizations, Mike would like to share the application of a tool we use in our day job to our career.

Mike began in software development and fell into the product manager role – initially informally and then formally. He has worked in a number of B2B and B2C markets including graphics processors, networking systems, digital media, educational software and currently fintech. One item on his bucket list is to master all 37 activities on the Pragmatic framework or to visit all 50 states in the US.

Mike is also one of the ProductCamp Portland co-founders, an annual product management un-conference that began in 2012. It provides him with the opportunity to create a new product every year and in doing so, apply a wide range of product management skills that he rarely gets to exercise.

The elusive product manager. Who are they? What do they do? What makes them most effective? Large, seminal studies have been done across various corporate leadership roles, but product management leadership remains a role with much less examination.

Join us for a discussion on the key findings from a recent survey of 300 product leaders conducted by Pendo and Product Collective. You’ll learn about PM career paths and progression, their spheres of responsibility, decision making authorities, alignment with other functions, reporting lines, and the outlook for the future of the role. Some of the findings are bound to surprise you, others will probably confirm what you suspected but didn’t know for sure.

Join Eric Boduch, chief evangelist and co-founder of Pendo, for a rich discussion on the key characteristics of the highest performing product leaders. If you’re a product manager, a product executive or aspire to hold a product leadership role, you’re bound to walk away better prepared to master your role.

About Eric

Eric Boduch has been involved with both startup and publicly traded software companies in senior management positions since 1995. He has extensive technology marketing, product management, strategy development, and business development experience. He has been a co-founder of 3 different startups that have raised over $75 million in aggregate and has been an executive at two different public companies.

He currently is a founder and the Chief Evangelist of Pendo, a venture-backed software company. Pendo delivers a complete platform for product teams that helps companies create products that customers love. With Pendo, product teams can understand product usage, collect feedback, measure NPS, onboard users, and announce new features in app - all without requiring engineering resources. Founded in 2013 and backed by Meritech Capital, Spark Capital, and Battery Ventures, Pendo has raised $56 million, and grown revenue by 400% in the past year. Used by hundreds of innovative software product leaders, Pendo tracks 20 billion user actions and improves the product experience for 22 million users every month.

Previously, he was CEO of SMaSh, a mobile SMS technology company, and was VP of Marketing for Vitria Inc., a publicly traded software vendor based in silicon valley. Before Vitria, Mr. Boduch held senior positions at Embarcadero Technologies, ProductSoft, and Cerebellum Software.

Eric has been a public speaker for multiple companies over the last 20 years. He has spoken at analyst conferences, universities, product camps, and company events. Today, he regularly speaks at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh on entrepreneurship speaks about product management at industry events like Industry, Pendomonium, and the CS100 Summit and has participated in regional product events in Toronto, Chicago, LA, and other U.S. cities. He has a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

About VACASA:

Vacasa is the second largest U.S. technology-enabled vacation rental management company with operations in 16 U.S. states, Europe, and Central and South America. Leveraging proprietary technology, Vacasa drives revenue for homeowners and provides a seamless experience for guests. Founded in 2009 and based in Portland, Oregon, Vacasa has grown from two to more than 1,400 employees in eight years, has been honored as the Oregon Better Business Bureau Large Business of the Year and was ranked ninth on the Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies list.

We'll have two 20-minute talks, each followed by 10 minutes of Q&A. We'll have plenty of time at the start and end of the meetup for tasty beverages and networking.

Don't tell me about your solutions, I only want to hear your problems. Sasha Friedman, Lead Product Manager, Metal Toad

A variety of techniques for getting people to open up and share what their problems actually are will be covered with examples from industry. The talk will focus on three user groups: board members, managers, and end product consumers.

Sasha Friedman has worked in Product Management in one aspect or another for his whole career, from alternative fuel distribution, to cleantech research, to hydropower technology development, to energy efficiency programming, to custom software development. On a personal level, Sasha is painfully Portland... he was scouted for the TV show Portlandia a number of years ago and they told him to "be himself and just keep doing that hipster bicycle thing" while they filmed.

Want to learn how to take your projects to the Next Level

Practical, Hands-on Training for Scrum

Join us for an all day Scrum workshop on February 16th, 2019; featuring Suzanne Ward MBA MEng PMP CSM CSPO PSM CSP, a Scrum Master & Agile Coach/Trainer from Intel.

Our world is changing fast. Markets and consumers are demanding faster, cheaper and better products. Demands for quicker turnaround on new product development and innovation have only increased. How do companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Apple keep up? They practice agile techniques, in particular they utilize scrum to manage their projects. Scrum has the power to transform project management across every industry, every business, and even across your personal life. By using Scrum, you’ll become more agile, discovering how to react more quickly and respond more accurately to the inevitable change that comes your way. By staying focused, collaborating, and communicating with customers and your team, you can accomplish what truly needs to be done — successfully. Come get a taste of the future of project management and learn about the Scrum process.This one day classroom training with exercises will cover the material from scrum introduction certification class and Product Owner role in the Scrum Process.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Learn about the Scrum Process. Learn what a Product Owner and Scrum Master is responsible for. Come away with insights on how to manage your next project

BENEFITS

 * Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science
 * Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors
 * Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs)
 * Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace
 * Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies

WHO SHOULD COME?

People whose work is completed through projects and through teams; Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals, Students in MBA or undergrad business programs.

SPEAKER'S CAREER ACCOMPLISHMENTS

 * Product, Brand, and Marketing Management in diverse range of markets and industries, with P&L responsibilities up to $100 million annual sales.
 * Quick Learner of new industries/product offerings with results-oriented achievements. Created excitement around a static accessories category in condensed time frame. Created full line of support, educational, training, and presentation materials. Impact of efforts increased sales from $16.4M to $37.2M in 24 months.
 * Program management for multiple high tech/electronic development projects, averaging $3 million annual budget. Serve in project manager and product manager capacities. Two successful worldwide launches in 3 years. $1M annual OEM/B2B sales and $10M annual sales.
 * Combine demonstrated product management leadership experience with strong hands-on technical background. Equally comfortable delving into product requirements with hard-core engineers as well as presenting to executive level decision makers.
 * Uniquely skilled at fostering new ideas, building successful cross-functional teams, and nurturing a culture of consumer-driven product development and user experience innovation. Experience working in and managing cross-functional, cross-division, cross-geographic and multicultural sales, marketing and engineering organizations.
 * International program management, sourcing, engineering, OEM/ODM management/development experience. Overseas work assignments in EU and Asia with extended stay in Asia.

SUZANNE WARD'S CERTIFICATIONS

 * PMP, Project Management Professional, Project Management Institute
 * PSM, Professional Scrum Master, Scrum.org
 * CSM, CSPO, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner, Scrum Alliance
 * CSP, Certified Scrum Professional, Scrum Alliance

CERTIFICATIONS FOR THIS TRAINING

This workshop is meant to introduce professionals and students to the Scrum methodology, though the material we cover will give you the knowledge and material covered in the exam for the Professional Scrum Master (PSM) certification. https://www.scrum.org/. Our students have gone on to take this test after the event, and passed.

ADDITIONAL FOR AUDIENCE

SW Engineers: eXtreme Programming, Test Driven Development, Pair Programming, Project Managers: Bridging the Gap between Project Management and Scrum

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS?

For further information: please contact Heber Michaels, [email protected] or our team at [email protected].

Description Portland Startup Week begins April 1 (no joke!), and Sila will be hosting a conference in the middle of all the events.

Finnovation PDX is a chance for the FinTech community - its leaders, employees, investors, supporters, and customers - to come together, deepen connections, celebrate wins, and share lessons and insights.

The event will be broken up into 4 thought-provoking segments:

VC & Investment - How are VCs viewing the rise of FinTech startups, especially blockchain and crypto-specific businesses?

Consumers - With pioneering companies like Simple leading the way, how has the consumer experience around banking, finance, and FinTech evolved?

Product + Engineering - What kinds of tools and resources are changing how FinTech products get made?

Founders - The experience of building and scaling a FinTech company is radically different than it was 10 years ago. How are founders changing their approach?

Following the event please join us at the Portland City Grill (30th Floor of the U.S. Bancorp Tower) for Happy Hour, and Sila's Beta Launch!

Agenda:

11:30 - Lunch, mingle, grab a seat

12:00 - Kick off keynote with Matt Compton

12:20 - VC & Investment Panel: The Investor’s Perspective. Featuring moderator Matt Compton & panelists Hope Cochran, Geoff Harris, & Stephen Green

1:10 - Consumer Panel: Evolution of the Consumer Experience. Featuring moderator Josh Reich & panelists Randy Fernando, Melissa Geyer, Andy Van Oostrum, & Amy Pearl

2:00 - Grab a snack and check out the demo of Sila’s brand spanking new beta!

2:15 - Product Panel: FinTech Product Innovation. Featuring moderator Shamir Karkal & panelists Ian Collins, Laura Spiekerman & Angela Angelovska-Wilson

3:05 - Founders Panel: Scaling a Fintech Company. Featuring moderator Kasey Jones & panelists David Nelsen, Alexandra Horrigan, & Isaac Hines

4:10 - Final Talk with David Nelsen

5pm - Finnovation Happy Hour & Sila Beta Launch Party!!!

Meet the Speakers & Panelists:

David Nelsen Bumped

David Nelsen: Founder & CEO at Bumped, David leads the first ever FinTech company to leverage stock ownership to build one-to-one relationships between brands and their customers. Prior to Bumped, David was CEO and co-founder of Giftango, a digital payments company that brought the digital gift card to market for many of the largest global brands.

Laura Spiekerman Alloy

Laura Spiekerman: Co-founder & CRO at Alloy, where she builds APIs for financial services to manage identity verification from signup through the life of the customer. Laura also has over 8 years of experience in the financial world, including advanced work with mobile payments at Knox Payments & Kopo Kopo.

Andy Van Oostrum Cognigy

Andy Van Oostrum: VP of North American Sales at Cognigy, a conversational AI platform, Andy enables the partner ecosystem and drives client engagement in the categories of both voice and text virtual assistants. Andy is also a digital strategist, and largely sits at the intersection of marketing and technology. He worked in the Sitecore ecosystem for 10 years, and has held board positions at the American Marketing Association, Portland Advertising Federation, and SOLVE.

Melissa Geyer Seed

Melissa Geyer: CXO at Seed, a business banking startup based in Portland, Melissa builds and scales customer experience-driven FinTech support teams. She also worked previously at consumer bank Simple, where she served as Director of Customer Relations for the startup as it launched.

Geoff Harris Flying Fish

Geoff Harris: Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Flying Fish, a Venture Capital firm based in Seattle. Geoff also serves on the Seattle Angel Board of Directors, a non-profit with a mission of educating both entrepreneurs and potential angel investors, and is heavily involved in promoting angel investing within Seattle in an effort to grow the funding ecosystem for local startups. Prior to his work in investing Geoff spent 15 years at Microsoft in Engineering Leadership and Executive Leadership positions.

Alexandra Horigan Aspiration

Alexandra Horigan: Founding team member & VP of Strategic Initiatives at Aspiration, a socially conscious financial firm. Prior to Aspiration, Alexandra spent half a decade on Wall Street in sales, and as a broker for Intercontinental Exchange and Cantor Fitzgerald. Alexandra is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder, a former competitive skier, and most importantly, a mom to two boys.

Amy Pearl seedpay

Amy Pearl: Director of Community Develpment at seedpay, a financial services social enterprise that leverages blockchain technology to strengthen communities. Previously Amy was founder and CEO of Hatch Innovation, where she helped launch new local investing laws to promote community capital. She believes in working upstream to develop new tools for positive disruption.

Matt Compton Oregon Venture Fund

Matt Compton: General Partner at Oregon Venture Fund, Matt's been an active startup investor and advisor in Oregon for the past decade. Previously he held various product, partnership, and marketing leadership roles at Yahoo! during their rapid growth period from 2002 to 2007. In 2008, he began investing with the Oregon Angel Fund, and has also served on the boards of several early and growth stage companies, including Jama and Simple Financial - currently Matt is on the board of REI.

Isaac Hines Sila

Isaac Hines: Co-founder & COO at Sila, Isaac also has 20 years of experience in the energy sector, where Isaac served as finance director and general manager and oversaw upwards of $200m in projects.

Angela Angelovska-Wilson Sila

Angela Angelovska-Wilson: Co-founder & CLO at Sila, Angela also plays a major role in the world of blockchain technology regulations as a lawyer at DLx Law in New York City. She has an extensive wealth of experience in law, and serves as a CCO for Digital Asset Holdings LLC.

Shamir Karkal Sila

Shamir Karkal: Co-founder & CEO at Sila, Shamir was also co-founder of Simple, a Portland-based bank that is digital-only, with no physical branches. He also managed the development of Open APIs at BBVA and was an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Omidyar Network.

Kasey Jones BetterGrowth

Kasey Jones: Founding partner at BetterGrowth, a growth strategy agency that helps early-stage B2B companies accelerate revenue growth. Kasey also has extensive experience in sales and marketing in Portland, having worked at Keboola, Postano, and Good Data.

Randy Fernando: Managing Director at Acorns

Hope Cochran: Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group

Ian Collins: Senior Product Designer at Acorns

Josh Reich: Co-Founder & former CEO at Simple

Stephen Green: Director of Operations at PENSOLE

We'll have two 20-minute talks, each followed by 10 minutes of Q&A. We'll have plenty of time at the start and end of the meetup for tasty beverages and networking.

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Using Wireframes to Communicate Product Vision
Amy King, Software Product Manager at Digimarc

Over the past year, I learned how designing, creating, and sharing wireframes greatly facilitate communication both for the overall product vision that impacts multiple teams, and prepping smaller product features for engineers. For product managers that did not have a graphics background like me, "design" is an intimidating skill to tackle, but one that is valuable when working with engineers, designers, and marketing teams. In this presentation, I will share:
1) How I got started
2) A couple examples of how I used wireframes to align multiple teams to work towards the same product vision
3) Recommendations and pros/cons of different wireframing software to help people get started

Amy King is a software product manager. she likes learning about different industries and how people use technology in their jobs, then figure out how her team can build software to help people be more efficient with their work

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Supercharging User Engagement by Supporting Autonomy: Practical Motivation Science for Product Managers
Jahed Momand, Head of Product Management at Conversa Health

The talk of the town in theories of behavior change in technology center on centuries old behaviorism, such as BJ Fogg's Behavior Model or Nir Eyal's Hook Model.

But, what if you're trying to precipitate a user behavior that's complex? That happens over long time domains? That isn't immediately rewardable?

How do you support users in finding the motivation to interact with your product, when push notifications just won't do the trick?

I'll talk about how we applied the science of motivation, Edward Deci's self-determination theory, to product design at Conversa Health, for outsized gains in patient engagement, retention, and NPS.

Jahed heads up the product team at Conversa Health, an automated care management chatbot for health systems, leading them to successful A and B rounds of funding during his tenure.

Before, he led the product growth team at Zoomcare, where he increased revenue and visits 240% over 18 rapid fire months, leading up to their acquisition by Peace Health.

Before that he worked with Dan Ariely of Predictably Irrational fame on applying behavioral economics to projects within Google, and worked in the adtech industry applying behavioral science to ad units (he's not proud of this work).

Way before then, he played poker professionally for a few years after grad school, where he completed an MS in Physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

We'll have two 20-minute talks, each followed by 10 minutes of Q&A. We'll have plenty of time at the start and end of the meetup for tasty beverages and networking.

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Using Wireframes to Communicate Product Vision Amy King, Software Product Manager at Digimarc

Supercharging User Engagement by Supporting Autonomy: Practical Motivation Science for Product Managers Jahed Momand, Head of Product Management at Conversa Health

We'll have two 20-minute talks, each followed by 10 minutes of Q&A. We'll have plenty of time at the start and end of the meetup for tasty beverages and networking.

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Leveraging product principles to drive better decision making
Ami Murthy, Head of Product - Mobile at eBay Classifieds Group at eBay

Product principles can serve as a strong complement to the product vision and strategy. I will share examples of our product principles and how we have successfully used them as tools to drive better and faster decisions.

Ami Murthy is a product leader who is excellent at building teams that create experiences which millions of customers LOVE and USE on a daily basis. She has experience leading diverse, global teams from product conceptualization to launch, with a proven track record of building scalable customer-centric products including 5-star apps, a multi-million dollar mobile product, and market-leading e-book solutions. She is adept at driving business results and has helped companies like eBay, Intel and Amazon grow their bottom line performance.

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What can theater teach us about software delivery
David Van der Merwe, Senior Product Manager at Radar

I've been thinking about the similarities between software development and the process of producing theater for a while. My wife runs a theater company and I'm constantly picking her brain about the creative process and theater production as a project that actually has a deadline (opening night). My hope is to share some learnings about this process and how it may apply to product managers when we need to deliver a full solution to a customer problem by a committed date.

I'm currently a Sr. Product Manager working at RADAR building privacy incident response management solutions. Like many pm's, I grew into a product management role somewhat through circumstance, some curiosity, and a desire to improve customer experiences. I was born and raised in South Africa and then immigrated to the US where I've worked in web marketing, and e-commerce solutions that served both b2b and b2c enterprises for the last 20 years.

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Also, thank you to our host, Jama Software. And thank you to Opal for sponsoring the food. Check out their job postings here:

Jama Software: https://www.jamasoftware.com/company/careers/

Opal: http://jobs.workwithopal.com/apply/Vbraj5qtQV/Senior-Product-Marketing-Manager

BrainStation Online Live Thought Leadership Series:

Join BrainStation, the global leader in premium digital skills training, as they welcome industry leaders to discuss Product Management in the time of COVID-19. In Scrapping the Roadmap: Navigating Products Through Change, three expert guests will share their experience with how they pivoted their product roadmaps to adapt to the sudden changes in the market.

Scrapping the Roadmap: Navigating Products Through Change

Wednesday, May 21st // 10 - 11am PT

Guest speakers:

Michael Ayoola, Senior Product Manager, The New York Times

Daryl Porter, Vice President, eCommerce Logistics & Operations, Walmart

Maria Potoroczyn, Head of Citi Bot, Global Consumer Bank, Citi

Register here: https://bit.ly/2yQlYkI

BrainStation is the global leader in premium digital skills training for professionals and enterprises looking to future-proof themselves in the digital economy.

In addition to empowering professionals with the skills they need to be durable in their careers, we have a thriving Community that is enabled through our Thought Leadership Series. Twice per month, we welcome industry titans to an online live panel discussion to unpack relevant and important topics as it pertains to Technology, Innovation and how to thrive in a digital economy. These events support individuals with key industry, discipline and development insights that support them as they navigate their professional growth. They've welcomed leaders from some of the most successful companies in the world, like Spotify, The New York Times, Patagonia, Vimeo, Google, Nike and many more.

Watch out for the next event in June, How World-Class Brands are Winning With Data-Driven Marketing!

In the world of product creation, negative feedback and failure are easy to come by. But it doesn't make that feedback any more comfortable to assimilate. Join this #PracticalWednesday session with Rick Turoczy to explore how to potentially turning any failure into success and opportunity to grow.

What you’ll learn in this webinar?

• How to get comfortable with negative feedback
• How to make it a critical, ahem, part of your assessments and strategy
• How to avoid succumbing to Imposter Syndrome when things don't seem to be going the way you thought they would

RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/practicalwednesday-turning-failures-into-opportunities-with-rick-turoczy-tickets-111932130014

We have two great speakers lined up for ProductTank this week! Be sure to RSVP!

Post and Pivot: a riveting discussion about the art and science of Product Management with Arif Gürsel, Director of Product and Ecosystem Partnerships at Heroku.

Bringing the Farmer's Market to you with Trang Ho and Trang Sharbaugh, both Vietnam natives now living in the U.S., enrolled in IDEO.org's online course 'Introduction to Human-Centered Design.'