Author Archives: Khachik Badeyan

About Khachik Badeyan

I like to experiment to try out various ways to improve things and use the data to understand what is, or isn't working and why. I like to get things done, and believe that quick iterations lead to better results.

ProductTank Yerevan, August, 2016

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After a long pause the organizers of the ProductTank Yerevan meetup announced their next meetup, the ProductTank Yerevan, August, 2016 at the Armenian-Indian Center for Excellence in ICT. The schedule is as follows:

  • 7:00 PM: Attendees start to arrive. Mingling over drinks and food
  • 7:30 PM: First presentation
  • 8:00 (ish) PM: Second presentation
  • 8:45 PM: More mingling
  • 09:15 PM: Event ends
clock 10 August at 19:0
clock Armenian-Indian Center for Excellence in ICT
1 Alex Manoogian, 0025 Yerevan, Armenia
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RSVP on Eventbrite

Who attends ProductTanks?
Our members are Product professionals from companies all over Armenia. Most of our audience is comprised of Product Managers, but we also have Designers, Marketers, Engineers, etc. At the meetups, we usually have 80-120 mid-to-senior level professionals.

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ProductTank Yerevan, November, 2015

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After a successful meetup at the Ayb High School, another ProductTank Yerevan meetup is on the way, this time at the Synergy International‘s headquarters. The schedule is as follows:

  • 7:30 PM: Attendees start to arrive. Mingling over drinks and food
  • 8:00 PM: First presentation
  • 8:30 (ish) PM: Second presentation
  • 9:00 (ish) PM: Third presentation
  • 9:30 PM: More mingling
  • 10:15 PM: Event ends
clock 25 November at 19:30
clock Synergy Business Center
A. Armenakyan 2/5, 0047 Yerevan, Armenia
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RSVP on Eventbrite

Who attends ProductTanks?
Our members are Product professionals from companies all over Armenia. Most of our audience is comprised of Product Managers, but we also have Designers, Marketers, Engineers, etc. At the meetups, we usually have 80-120 mid-to-senior level professionals.

ProductTank Yerevan, October 2015

With little over a week to go, we’re also looking for a venue to host the second ProductTank Yerevan. If you have a great location that can host up to 100 people or know someone who does, let us know using this form:http://goo.gl/forms/6nsWN1kAxk

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Our team has already organized two events around product development and they both were great success. The next meetup will take place on the October 15th. And we’ll soon come back to you with details.

In the meanwhile please drop us your note, if you have proposals for topics, talks, locations for the first round.

Schedule:
19.15 – Speaker setup
19.30 – Start attendee registration
20.15 – ProductTank introduction
20.20 – First Speaker
20.40 – Second Speaker
21.00 – Third Speaker
21.20 – QA with all 3 speakers
21.45 – Event finish (followed by post event drinks)

Event’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/846975342090069/

ProductCamp Yerevan 2015

ProductCamp Yerevan (PCY) is the first and the only unconference for product managers, product marketing managers, entrepreneurs and others with passions for product, online and IT, in Yerevan, Armenia. ProductCamps are held regularly all over the world.

The PCY 2013 took place at TUMO Center for Creative Technologies, and hosted 250 participants, which is an impressive number for Yerevan. The keynote speaker was Wouter Blok from Google (Industry Manager Travel).

PCY 2013 was a huge success, it was supported by many local and international companies, and spread the word about the developing product community in Yerevan. During the full day event 250 young professionals and seasoned entrepreneurs were discussing topics varying from starting a company to exit strategy, from legal issues to entering the American market, from SEO to behavioral marketing, from developing an MVP to Agile, and others.

Despite ProductCamp being annual event series we did not have PCY 2014, however the PCY 2015 will only be 2 months late. We plan doing it in mid February or early March. We believe growing the product community in Armenia is our country’s future’s guarantee, and we should do it together.

Why is it important?
Because there are smart people in Armenia, who can create and want to create, and they need guidance. We have strong leadership in many Armenian tech companies and startups, and as new graduates look for job and new tech companies come to exist, the need for mentorship and evangelists arises.

What will it give to the community?
The PCY is one of the initiatives that brings together product managers and marketers, online concept developers and business owners from technology companies and other innovative businesses, with a single goal of fostering and growing the product community in Yerevan.

How is it done?
Most of the event and all of the sessions are held and run by the participants. The general process is supported by self-organized volunteers.

ProductTank Yerevan 2014 Spring

ProductTank Yerevan
It’s that time of the year again when the product-people of Yerevan gather together to discuss great ideas, share their experience and be a part of the growing product-community of Yerevan.

The first product-driven un-conference in Yerevan, the ProductCamp Yerevan 2013 was a huge success: 150+ product specialists, enthusiasts, and students gathered together last December at Tumo Center for Creative Technologies to have a full day of thinking, networking and fun.

Here we are again! On the April 30th Ginosi Corporation Yerevan Office is calling for a second product-driven un-conference at its headquarters – the ProductTank Yerevan 2014 Spring.

ProductTank sessions are quarterly organized meetings in the field of Product Management. As opposed to its older sister ProductCamp, ProductTank session is organized more often and is aimed for product professionals working in the mobile and web industries who come to exchange ideas and experiences about:

  • Product Management
  • Design
  • Business Modelling
  • Metrics
  • Usability

ProductTank features talks from guest speakers on both technical and business related topics and good old-fashioned networking over wine.

3 topics will be presented to discuss at ProductTank.

Follow the event on its Facebook page.

Of products and product managers

The New Normal in Marketing
by Khachik Badeyan

Management

Gone are the days when a boss would sit in an armchair in his cozy room isolated from his employees who are just a cog in the mechanism generating money for the former. What matters nowadays is the team and the management.

A good manager is the one who can outsource as much routine and repetitive tasks to his employees and respective departments as possible. However in the case of CEO or any high rank manager even that is not enough as there is a need to monitor all the job done and the product progress. If we look even further – when a new project starts the high rank managers won’t have enough time to monitor all change and keep up with the daily tasks.

Who are Product Managers?

Product managers are people who grow products, whose each decision is based on numbers, on analytics and logical reasoning. The product is their sun and they revolve around it. Their sole goal is the product growth.

Every product manager has KPIs and all of them unite in one term named growth.

What is Product?

As stated by Simon Sinek in his why/how/what presentation at TED it does not matter what you offer to people, if you don’t know why they should want have it, and how you shall make the product exist and deliver them to customers. A product is the feeling, an urgent need to have the thing a company can offer.

Companies shall never proceed to thinking about how to deliver a commodity to the customer before

  1. creating an itch or finding a pain that troubles many
  2. putting the product there to comfort those
  3. creating an emotional bond

Product Growth.

No matter what is the product and what are the KPIs of a product thes 3 steps are crucial to every growth strategy

  • Getting Visitors
    make people see your product
  • Activating Members
    make people take action
  • Activating Users
    make people believe in your product

The most important for doing the above of course is having the right data and the right tools to analyse it. Implementing the analyitics is one of the most important tasks of a product manager.

A thing to remember – product manager without numbers is a disaster.

The Team

The 2 cornerstones of hiring:

  1. CEOs hire Product Managers who know more than them.
  2. Product Managers hire those who know what they don’t and do what they don’t (want to) do.

The big problem with old style business was that only people with lower than the employer qualifications would be hired (mostly). But the progress shows that managers shall hire people from whom learning something is possible.

Automation

The next big piece in this game is the time management. The product manager shall automate whatever actions is possible (paying bills, sending response emails to customers, shipping) and outsource as much action to his employees as possible.

Often employees need to decide whether to accept the money transaction or the refund dispute or reject it? In the old style business all employees need permission from superior officers. The new business on the other hand won’t work like that: employees shall inherit a part of the decision making permissions from higher ranked personnel. The last also creates ground for the employees to grow both as professionals and business owners (by the means of being part of the decision making process).

Product manager suggests but does not force. All in all the best Product Manager is the one who leaves the company and nothing breaks.