All tech marketing all day

Tomorrow, I’m attending Product Camp Toronto. This is a full-day of keynotes, seminars, 5 minute presentations, interesting hallway chats and workshops dedicated to all things product development, product management and product marketing.

In this case, those three “product” terms refer to the tech sector. Here is a very broad and general explanation of the difference of those three areas in technology.

The development of tech products (think hardware, software, apps …) is usually led by the product development team who are quite technical. After all, they are the ones inventing, creating, configuring the product. Next in the cycle is typically product management. This team is a bridge between the technical side of the company and the business side. These folks can get into the speeds and feeds conversations with engineering and turn around and explain the company’s new product to a five year old. Product management has a major say in the product requirements, lifecycle, versions, features. Then we come to product marketing which “generally” resembles the “typical” marketing responsibilities of awareness, sales enablement, customer support, distribution, pricing.

Again, those are broad and brief and definitions of each area. Depending on the company, there can be quite a debate about which area is responsible for what. Pragmatic Marketing has a more detailed breakdown of the differences between product management and product marketing activities.

The event starts at 9am for registration, 10am for the BlackBerry keynote, and runs all day. There is probably still room to sign up for Product Camp if you’d like. Otherwise, follow the learning on Twitter with #pctoronto. If you’re going, let’s meet there – find me on Twitter @jenkellyjen