On Product Management

Curious people can change the world: +1 for ProductCamp Austin

by Prabhakar Gopalan

Tweet this: @PGopalan: Curious people can change the world: +1 for ProductCamp Austin http://wp.me/pXBON-2OM  #pcatx #pcamp #prodmgmt

This past Saturday, I was at ProductCamp Austin – a biannual un-conference for product leaders.  What a treat it was!  Apart from the privilege of presenting a session myself, I had the opportunity to learn quite a bit attending sessions as much as I could, have fun in an interestingly themed Game room track and chat with a number of like minded community members.

Earlier this year I wrote about why ProductCamps are the future of how conferences will turn into.  This time I’m going to focus on the people that attend and how they are different from everyone else in the product management community.

ProductCamp goers are curious people.   People get up bright and early on a Saturday morning, come to vote for their fellow peers’ sessions and stay all day learning and networking.  If you thought what’s the big deal in that – after all it is just a bunch of sessions by normal people (no celeb status) and you could get all that information in books and slideshare presentations anyway, you are mistaken.  It is about identifying yourself with a community of forward thinking people who want to test their hypothesis, listen to fresh ideas and are actually, curious.  Yes, curious.

Curiosity comes to all of us when we are born.  We are curious about how the food we eat tastes, the air we breath smells and much more.  But over time, as we ‘grow’ up, some nurture it, others suppress it or throw it outright.  Those that are not curious get into routines because routines are comfortable ways.  Until something disruptive happens.   And it is then, they do not have any ability whatsoever to absorb or adapt.  They scramble for the product roadmap, the plan and swot analysis and other routine strategies.  Alas, nothing works.  Not so with curious people.  Because they are curious, they’ll always be ready for changes.  They’ll embrace it, live it and try new things, continuously.

Curious people don’t need marketing, don’t need gimmicks, don’t need a sales pitch.  They are self organizing.  If you go and ask a ‘consultant’ on how to build a community, he’d give you a best practices document with 100 tricks and charge you an arm and a leg.  He’d also tell you to ‘price’ the ‘product’ and ‘promote’ it in multiple ways and make sure it’s ‘placement’ is appropriate channels.  All that fails when you have something like ProductCamp.  Because it is unconventional.  It is not the norm to see 300+ product leaders show up for a conference entirely on their own account to stretch their imagination.  But curious people make it happen at ProductCamp.  The not so curious people may have excuses – the dog ate their calendar or they were too busy with something else.  That will not stop where the world is headed.  For the curious people will carry the ideas forward.

Hats off to the founders, organizers, volunteers, attendees and sponsors at ProductCamp Austin!

- Prabhakar

Tweet this: @PGopalan: Curious people can change the world: +1 for ProductCamp Austinhttp://wp.me/pXBON-2OM  #pcatx #pcamp #prodmgmt

Related posts:

1. The Change Cycle – How people accept change over time
2. How different people handle change
3. ProductCamp Austin Winter 2009
4. ProductCamp Austin was our Woodstock. Can we morph from Folkfest to Rock Spectacle?
5. PCamp Austin: Please weigh in with questions and suggestions