A full day of Lean Startup Workshops on December 4, 2012

This post was co-written by Eric Ries and Sarah Milstein, co-hosts of The Lean Startup Conference.

This year, for the first time, we've added a day of workshops and site visits to The Lean Startup Conference. We’re really proud to present the workshops, which we're holding on December 4, and we wanted to tell you more about them. (We’ll talk about the cool site visits in a separate post.)

If you’re looking to dive deep on Lean Startup skills, our workshop sessions provide professional development at a serious bargain. They’re led by established experts in the community, and the rooms we’re holding these in are limited, so you’ll get a chance to ask your questions and share your experience. We’ve just opened a new block of early-bird tickets, and you'll need a Gold or Platinum Pass in order to get into the workshops. (Keep in mind that the price goes up when this block sells out.)

We have a slew of workshops you can choose from—the last two just added:

• Validate Your Learning Engines with Janice Fraser and Laura Klein. In this workshop, Fraser, Founder/CEO of LUXr and Klein, Director of Product & UX at One Jackson will offer practical techniques for getting and using customer feedback. You’ll learn how to conduct the right kind of customer interviews, prioritize high-risk assumptions, design experiments, and measure the effectiveness of your product (not your marketing).

• The Lean Entrepreneur: Embrace the Unknown to Go Big with Patrick Vlaskovits and Brant Cooper. Lean startup principles work differently in different environments. In this workshop, the authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development and The Lean Entrepreneur help you determine the optimal strategy and tactics for your kind of company, focusing on customer development and market segmentation.

• Build Successful (and Sane) Iterative Apps with Kelly Goto, Principal at gotomedia. In this workshop, Goto will take you through the application development process and shre behind-the-scenes techniques for rapid prototyping. You’ll learn how to enhance your current process to include iterative usability testing cycles and how to verify development requirements before you code.

• Lean Analytics: Using Data to Build a Better Startup Faster with Alistair Crolland Ben Yoskovitz. In this workshop, Lean Analytics authors Croll, Founder of Solve For Interesting, and Yoskovitz, VP of Product at GoInstant, will teach you how to use analytics to find product/market fit before your money runs out. You’ll come away with techniques for: putting data to work in a startup; understanding the long funnel from awareness to engagement; finding the One Metric That Matters; and applying analytics at every stage of the business, from need discovery through to exit.

• Lean Startup in the Enterprise with Proof co-founders Josh Seiden, Jeff Gothelf and Giff Constable. Lean Startup techniques have tremendous promise—and have delivered tremendous value—in the enterprise. But applying these techniques inside large organizations means grappling with obstacles that small firms never encounter. From functional silos to risk-averse managers, from compliance officers to global markets, practitioners who have tried to make headway can find frustration at every turn. In this workshop, Constable, Gothelf and Seiden—plus special guests—will present case studies, discuss lessons learned, and lead a lively round table discussion that will further your understanding of Lean Startup in enterprise environments and provide concrete advice you can apply to the challenges you face in your organizations.
  
  
• Engineering Your Sales Process with Sean Murphy and Scott Sambucci. All companies, even those that take a lean approach, face these problems in B2B sales: you can’t get potential customers to call back; they won’t make a decision; they seem to like a never-ending beta, but they will not buy; your deals stall. This interactive workshop will help you learn from these problems by using conscious planning and experimentation. Traditional sales training stresses “every no moves you closer to a yes.” Murphy and Sambucci’s approach to engineering your sales process says instead, “What looks like noise is often actually data.” Designing and debugging a repeatable sales process is key to a sustainable business, and this workshop will teach you how to diagnose common problems to determine likely root causes. You will leave with a scientific approach to understanding your customers' needs and their buying process so that you can scale your business in harmony with it.

All of our previous early-bird blocks sold out quickly, and we expect this one will, too. Gold and Platinum Passes get you into the workshops. For the best price, register today.