ProductCamp St. Louis 2015 Recap

By Nicole Nelson

On Saturday, March 28th, St. Louis Product Management Group, a not-for-profit organization, hosted the 4th annual ProductCamp St. Louis event.  The ProductCamp St. Louis event, or “unconference” as they like to call it, is for anyone that markets, designs or builds a product or service.  The unique part about this event is that the attendees vote on what sessions will be held throughout the day and of the 47 submitted only 30 were picked. The event was a huge success with over 400 people in attendance at the CIC building.

Attendees started to arrive at 8 am for registration, where they were given lanyards for their name tags and an info sheet that included session locations and the official event hashtag.  Once they were checked in they were able to enjoy coffee, network, visit sponsor tables and vote on session topics.  Around 9 am Marc Bowers, co-founder of St. Louis Makes, gathered everyone together for opening remarks and acknowledged the volunteers and sponsors.  Marc then announced the session topic winners and sent everyone off to their first round of sessions.  The day consisted of four 50 minute blocks with six sessions going on simultaneously for a total of twenty sessions.

Michael Werner, Strategic Director at SYNEK, spoke during the first round on “How to Make $Half-Million on Kickstarter in a Few Days: A Cautionary Tale”.  Michael explained that “Kickstarter goes by the concept, will you come if I build it”.  He went on to give attendees tips on how to prepare before even initiating the Kickstarter.  Elise Connors, Online Marketing Manager at Traffic PRM, presented during the second round on “Social Listening: What’s Your Social IQ?”.  She opened up her session with a fun icebreaker to get people thinking and tied it in with social listening.  She said that “you can’t rely on your gut alone when posting on social media or making business decisions.”
After the second round was over everyone enjoyed a delicious lunch from Hollyberry Catering.  Once lunch was over attendees headed off to hear the rest of the amazing speakers of their choosing.  At 4pm Marc gathered everyone up again for closing remarks, thanking everyone for coming out to the “unconference”.  All attendees, speakers and sponsors were invited to a Happy Hour at Humphrey’s for more networking fun.  ProductCamp St. Louis will be back same time next year, so don’t miss out!
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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTfWZhg69iI]