I stole this title line from someone on Twitter much more comically nimble than I, but I just couldn’t resist.  As many of you know, the members of the B2B Product Makers team are working on ProductCamp Chicago. I’m on the committee that is organizing the event, Thierry is going to be presenting on leadership via influence and Josh is going to talk about effective pricing practices.  Both excellent topics – I plan to attend and contribute.

I want to take a few minutes and explain why we got this whole thing started. When I joined Twitter and finally figured out that there was a wealth of product management wisdom available by following the #prodmgmt tag, I noticed that everyone was tweeting about something called ProductCamp. I searched the web for it and found that there was a large community participating in this event in many different cities.

I searched for anything related to ProductCamp Chicago and was really disappointed to find nothing.  I tweeted out a request for a link to ProductCamp Chicago and got several tweets back indicating that, by asking about ProductCamp Chicago, I had just volunteered to start up the first one.  When I tweeted out that I was more than happy to found the ProductCamp Chicago community, I received replies from the four other co-founders almost immediately.   So I knew that we had the means and the interest for a great “unconference”.

So that’s how we got this started – but why?  We started this up for the same reason that I joined the B2B Product Makers blogging team –  to discuss product management topics in a forum where people can both contribute and learn.  When I first spoke with Thierry about this blog, he made it very clear that this blog was not about broadcasting our ideas as much as starting intelligent conversations and encouraging insightful participation.  There are no egos here – it’s all about gathering as many points of view as possible and learning as much as we can.

I see ProductCamp as the same concept.  When I present a topic at ProductCamp Chicago, I expect that some in the audience will have strong objections and I want to hear those objections.  I want to learn their perspective on the issue and incorporate their thinking into my point of view.  In my opinion, the worst thing a product manager can do is to close himself or herself off to new ideas and concepts.  Active participation in ProductCamp can save you from this fate – as will active participation in online discussions, such as the ones on this blog.

This concept is furthered by the idea that ProductCamp is an unconference.  We’ll have many sponsors, but those sponsors understand that they cannot influence the topics presented at ProductCamp.  This way we won’t have content that is slanted towards buying a product or using a service. This also helps because this will ensure that we have 100% fresh content.  The content at ProductCamp isn’t recycled content that you heard from the same vendor at a different conference.  Its going to be fresh and relevant content because if its not, people are not going to participate and will probably walk out on it.

The final reason we wanted to start this is because we need it in Chicago.   Chicago doesn’t have as strong of a Product Management community as does Silicon Valley, Austin, Boston or Seattle, although we have an exceptional amount of PM talent here.   We expect that this conference is going to show the level of talent we have as well as the diversity of Product Management in the Midwest.  We’ll have software, technology and biotech product managers as well as participation from three of the best business schools in the country.  I think we have the ingredients for an incredible experience. We really hope to see you there.

I also just want to give a quick shout out to the four other co-founders – Joshua Steffan, Parissa Behina, Roshan Shankar and Shawn Emery.  When ProductCamp Chicago is a roaring success, it will be due to their intelligence, tenacity, creativity and sheer will.  It’s a true honor and pleasure to work with them.