SVPMA Workshop - Keeping An Eye On The Competition: Going Beyond Google Speakers with Sean Campbell and Scott Swigart of Cascade Insights December 4, 2010

Organization: SVPMA - Silicon Valley Product Management Association
Topic: Keeping An Eye On The Competition: Going Beyond Google
Speakers: Sean Campbell and Scott Swigart of Cascade Insights
Date: Saturday, December 4th, 2010
Time: 8:30am - 12noon
Location: Network Meeting Center at the TechMart - 5201 Great America Parkway, Santa Clara
Cost: $25 for pre-registered Members. $40 for pre-registered Non-Members. Add $10 after Dec. 1st.
More info: http://www.svpma.org/workshops.html

Workshop Summary:
Understanding your competitors’ next moves or knowing how well they are putting their current plans into effect can mean the difference between success and failure in your market. During this seminar you’ll learn how to leverage social media, search the deep Web, and use human intelligence to gather actionable insight into your competitors’ future direction. However, there are ethical pitfalls in conducting competitive intelligence studies – we’ll reveal what they are and discuss how you can avoid them.

This ½ day workshop will cover all you need to know on how to gather competitive intelligence via Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) resources, elicit information from human intelligence sources, how to apply the information you’ve learned to product planning, product marketing, and sales efforts, and lastly how to pull it all together and communicate it effectively throughout the organization.

Don’t miss out – all attendees will receive the book “Go Beyond Google: Gathering Internet Intelligence” – authored by Sean and Scott and published this year.

Workshop Topics:
• Mining Social Media
How to mine social networking sites for valuable competitive intelligence information. You’ll learn how to determine critical facts and information about your competitors – where they are investing, features of their upcoming products and tips on identifying their customers.

• Mining The Deep Web
How you can use free web tools and sites such as SlideShare, Silobreaker, Glassdoor, and other targeted search engines, portals, and sites to get a much better view of your competitors’ positioning, and their current activity in your market. You’ll learn about their culture and ethics; their strategies, as disclosed by their own leadership; how to quickly get a deep understanding of their offerings; and even see how they stack up against your company.

• Human Intelligence and Qualitative Research
How to identify and recruit individuals who can provide insight into your competitors’ moves and the industry trends you’re facing. We’ll show you how to conduct effective interviews once you’ve identified the right potential targets in partner, reseller, and influencer channels. We’ll also discuss techniques to make recruiting these individuals more effective via social networking and in person events. Lastly, we’ll highlight ethical and legal concerns that you need to take into account when conducting these types of activities.

• Pulling It All Together
Pull together human and OSINT sources to show you how can effectively package competitive intelligence for internal consumption, package it for partner, field, or customer audiences, and how to recognize when competitive intelligence efforts should be paused or change direction.

About the Speakers:
Sean Campbell and Scott Swigart are the co-owners of Cascade Insights. Together, they have built two different businesses over the past 10 years, in the broad arena of technology industry focused marketing and consulting.

Their first business, founded in 1999, was a technical consultancy whose clients included some of the largest companies in the software and hardware field. While building 3 Leaf, Sean and Scott also wrote three books on best practices in the technology industry, two of which were published by Microsoft Press and one by Intel. After growing and developing the company over six years, Sean and Scott sold the company and founded Cascade Insights.

Cascade Insights, founded in 2006, focuses on providing competitive intelligence, qualitative market research and strategic marketing services to clients in the hardware and software industries so that they can more effectively assess, compete with and beat the competition.

Sean and Scott also regularly write articles and deliver presentations on qualitative research and competitive intelligence topics. Recent presentations and articles have been delivered through and published by organizations such as SoftwareCEO, the Association of International Product Marketing and Management, MarketingProfs, Willamette University’s Graduate School of Business, RainToday.com and the Marketing Research Association. Their work has also been featured in the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals’ (SCIP) Competitive Intelligence magazine and in Quirk’s Marketing Research Review. Sean was also recently awarded a national Catalyst Award for his work with SCIP.

SVPMA Workshop Series:
The Silicon Valley Product Management Association (SVPMA) was founded to address the needs of Product Managers, Product Marketing Managers, and other professionals working within the Product Management field.

The goal of the SVPMA Workshop Series is to provide our members with hands-on, interactive product management training delivered by leading consulting and professional services companies, lecturers and trainers

Official Website: http://www.svpma.org/workshops.html