“Product manager” is a difficult position to define let alone master. And to help people do both, ProductCamp is coming to Halifax next month.

ProductCamp is a loosely organized get-together in which product managers, marketing professionals and people interested in product management can meet up, find areas of common interest and mentor on another on best practices. ProductCamp Atlantic will be held Saturday Oct. 25 at the Innovacorp Enterprise Centre, 1344 Summer Street, Halifax. Admission is free and registration is available here.

If the structure of the conference is difficult to pin down, so is the group it’s targeting because there is no clear definition for “product manager.” The job description tends to vary from industry to industry and from company to company.

“In the pharma sector, it’s mainly about brand management,” said Megann Willson, one of the organizers of the event. “In IT, it can mean something completely different.”

ProductCamp is a movement that has grown out of the U.S. to draw product managers together to discuss the challenges they face and improve the performance of their companies. In the past few years, ProductCamps have been held in several cities around the world, and in such Canadian cities as Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto. The event on Oct. 25 will be the first held in Atlantic Canada.

For the record, Wikipedia defines “product manager” as the person who “investigates, selects, and drives the development of products for an organization.” They are the ones who sit between the engineers and the marketing execs. They make sure a company is producing something the market wants and ensure that product gets to the market.

Megann Willson and her husband Steve Willson, who together operate the Panoptika business consultancy, have teamed up with John Whyte, the head of marketing at Nautel, to organize the event. Whyte has taken notice of the ProductCamp movement in the U.S. and believed that Atlantic Canada could use such an event. All three are organizing the event on a volunteer basis.

Steve Johnson, a noted product management process coach from the Washington, D.C., area, will attend and participate in the event. But the goal is to get people working together to educate one another. As an unconference, the participants come together and decide among themselves what issues they’d like to discuss. They can break into groups or remain as one big session. People with experience in a given field tend to take the lead and others come forward with questions and advice as they see fit.

“We’re hoping for a range of backgrounds, from very experienced to completely new at it,” said Whyte.

The organizers added that they chose the name ProductCamp Atlantic because they’re hoping for participation from throughout the region. They also hope it will be an annual event and can be held in other cities in coming years. 

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