I attended Product Camp Atlanta last weekend hosted at the Georgia Tech Research Institute Conference Center. 
It was my first product camp, so the only knowledge of format and content I had going in was from the description on the web site. The topics of the conference focused on product management and marketing which are the two primary areas of my career experience and interests.
Overall I was pleased with my decision to go to the all-day camp. Time was given to the sponsors to introduce themselves since they provided the financial backing to make the event possible. However, it was very non-intrusive to the day and didn’t come off as a sales pitch. Participants voted on a list of possible break-out session subjects that were submitted by other participants. This allowed the group to discuss a variety of topics over the course of the day. Each hour there were four choices so that participants could pick a session that matched their interests. In my opinion, the best sessions were those where the speakers facilitated a discussion rather than giving a presentation. I say this because my understanding and expectation in attending the conference was that the sessions would be more collaborative and discussion oriented. For the most part, I felt speakers honored this conference format.
1. Value of business cases
- Removes pet features
- Keeps discussions on merits of the features
- Removes emotion
I liked this thought because typically businesses case development gets a lot of groans and whining when people mention the topic. It’s not easy to complete a business case, but it does provide and important function for the business to adequately allocate resources to work. This bullet list provides a quick and easy-to-understand value for the effort expended on the business case.
2. The voice of the customer is more relevant than your individual job tenure, experience, or credentials
The context of this quote came in a discussion about how a cultural shift is needed to take learnings from the classroom to the operations of a business. When we attend conferences, take classes, or receive training we often come back to our organizations with great ideas and learnings. But implementing these ideas is another story, especially if we are the only member of our business to receive the new knowledge. It requires a cultural shift to implement learnings. Tools that give us an insight into the voice of the customer are readily available, but often overlooked.
3. Google Wave was not in use by most of the attendees
4. Solve for competing priorities by using a percentage based resource allocation strategy
In one session we discussed various methods and techniques for resource allocation and project prioritization. One way to complete development team resource allocation is by dividing the time against development areas on a percentage basis:
- x% new development
- y% architecture
- z% support/defects