Design leadership, the product management misconception, and the UX/PM partnership—Announcing the first 3 talks at Front Salt Lake City 2017
Front Salt Lake City 2017 is coming fast. The product case study conference is now less than 10 weeks away! We’re thrilled to officially announce our first three talks today and will share the rest of our amazing line-up over the next couple weeks. This year will be bigger and better than ever.
We hope you’ll join us for two full days of dedicated time away from your desk, learning better ways to work together and to be inspired to grow your career in UX and Product Management. At Front, you’ll forge new friendships, enjoy great food, and learn from nearly 700 talented peers, influencing the organizations they work for and changing people’s lives through technology. You’ll immerse yourself in real-world, from-the-trenches case study talks and interactive panels discussions from innovative, working professionals.
Creating amazing products requires more than brilliant ideas, meticulously crafted interactions, and cutting-edge technology — it requires a fanatical focus on users and a commitment to producing something that is both useful and desireable. It requires cross-functional teams that listen, iterate, and learn.
Tickets are on sale now and will sell out quickly.
Daniel Burka
Design Partner, Google Ventures
Daniel is a design partner at GV, Google’s venture capital group. He works with the venture funds’ many portfolio companies to solve their design challenges. Daniel has had a varied career that included co-founding an agency (silverorange), design directing at startups (Digg and TinySpeck), and founding two startups (Pownce and Milk). When Milk was acquired by Google, Daniel ran a mobile-focused design team there before moving to GV where he gets to work on everything from robots to apps to wearable therapeutics.
He will be speaking on The moment of truth for design leadership:
Design has been clamoring for a seat at the table for ages. And, all of the sudden it’s happening. Designers at startups and big companies alike are increasingly being brought into leadership discussions. In my job at GV, I see designers across a broad range of companies and I’m very worried that many designers are squandering their leadership opportunity. Let’s talk about how design is perceived by leaders and where design can truly help shape more beautiful companies.
Mariah Hay
VP of User Experience, Pluralsight
Mariah Hay is the VP of User Experience for Pluralsight, an online subscription based education provider for the technology community. As a thought leader in human-centered design and user experience strategy, Mariah enjoys working with teams whose goal is to craft excellence for the end user. Her experience with industrial and interaction design teams serving high-level stakeholders reflects her personal goals of directing business through design excellence from the ground up. Her expertise in implementing human-centered design product practices at the enterprise level stems from over a decade of tenure in the industry including serving as Professor of Design Management at Savannah College of Art and Design, Directing UX for Universal Mind, and serving as Director of User Experience AMC Health. Mariah holds an MFA in Industrial Design from Savannah College of Art and Design.
She’ll be speaking on The PM Misconception: Why Everyone and No One is Prepared to Manage Product:
It’s an exciting time to be in tech, but the pathway to a Product Management position remains shrouded in a fog of mystery. Job descriptions are unclear, roles vary from company to company, and there are few educational programs available to shed some light on what set of skills are needed. So what is someone looking to make a transition to a job like this to do? Today Mariah will tackle pinning down what knowledge is needed for a role that is “ambiguous by nature,” and talk about why many people and companies lack understanding of the true scope of the role. Using case studies, Mariah will illustrate the true value a PM brings to both would-be practitioners and team leaders who are interested in learning more about the skills and knowledge needed to be a successful Product Manager.
Josh Penrod & Kendall Hulet
VP, User Experience & VP, Product at Ancestry
Josh Penrod is Vice President of User Experience at Ancestry.com, the global leader in family history and consumer genomics with over 20 billion historical records and 3 million people in its AncestryDNA network. He leads a team of designers, researchers, writers, and prototypers creating an experience that has enabled millions of people to find out more about who they are and where they come from. He co-created the famous Ancestry “shaky leaf” hints system and helped Ancestry grow their collection of family trees to 80 million trees and 8 billion connections. Josh is also co-holder of the patent, “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CREATING A FAMILY TREE DATA STRUCTURE,” a tree building system that accesses relationship data from social networking sites and in some embodiments, other data sites (so don’t try to encroach on my embodiments). While earning a degree in psychology, Josh played volleyball for Brigham Young University and was introduced to his hobby of collecting orthopedic surgeries. He was going to get a Ph.D., but got distracted by the Internet. Instead, he personally conducted thousands of hours of customer research and lead UX at FamilyLink, Russell Investments, and SportsHabitat.
Kendall Hulet is the Senior Vice President of Product Management at Ancestry. He joined Ancestry in 2003 and has held progressively senior roles in product development and management. During his tenure, he was deeply involved in some of the most popular innovations at Ancestry, including the “Shaky Leaf” hinting system that has delivered over five billion discoveries; the Ancestry Family Tree system that has led to the creation of over 70 million family trees containing six billion profiles; the creation of the award winning Ancestry mobile app and the product development of AncestryDNA, which is now the largest consumer genomics database in the world with over three million customers based on 5 years of 100%+ year-over-year growth. During Kendall’s tenure, Ancestry has grown from 250K paying subscribers to over 2.4 million, which culminated in Ancestry’s recent purchase at a valuation of $2.6 billion. Prior to joining Ancestry, Kendall worked in product marketing at Monster.com. He holds an M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Information Systems from Brigham Young University, where he graduated cum laude with university honors.
They’ll be speaking together on UX + PM = BFFs:
Do you feel like your UX or Product partner is an ally or an obstacle? While both groups have similar goals and objectives, misunderstandings of over roles, responsibilities, and process can get in the way of effective collaboration. Drawing on a decade of experience working together, Josh Penrod, VP of User Experience at Ancestry, and Kendall Hulet, SVP of Product at Ancestry, will share war stories about their time together building successful, collaborative relationships between Product and UX while learning great (and not so great) ways to build, revamp, and kill products.
Check out or highlight video from last year. We sold out with over 600 attendees from 5 countries and 28 states across the US.
Don’t miss our team discounts: 5% off for 5–9 members and 10% off groups of 10 or more. This conference is for teams and we want everyone to be able to attend.
