A Conversation with Marty Cagan ∞ Webinar

The 2020 Knowledge Continuum, CMIT’s annual thought-leadership event focused on trending issues in IT management, was originally scheduled for Friday, May 8, 2020.  Unfortunately, the event at UVA was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, and instead, we held a virtual conversation with our keynote speaker, Marty Cagan, Founding Partner of the Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) and Author of INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love. Marty joined us to discuss his new book and the importance of project teams in technology firms.

Marty Cagan is driven by a desire to help others build successful tech products. As a Founding Partner of Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG), he regularly offers his expertise to startups and established companies. He also heads a team of industry veterans who share a vast pool of experience and best practices about how to develop innovative, popular tech and guide organizations with the necessary courage and vision to create it.  During this virtual conversation with Professor Ryan Nelson, Director of McIntire’s Center for the Management of Information Technology (CMIT), Cagan shared insights on industry-defining products and what it takes to launch, manage, and transform companies that produce the kind of tech that leads the way. He also reflected on how product teams can continue to collaborate, innovate, and disrupt in the current distributed work environment.

An in-demand speaker, adviser, coach, and author, Marty Cagan has drawn on his years of experience for his book INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, with its second edition informed by the techniques he’s had a hand in implementing and studied in the 10 years since the seminal volume debuted. Marty worked as a Developer at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and as Vice President of Netscape in the earlier part of his career and served as Senior Vice President of Product and Design for eBay.

The webinar was co-hosted by Professor Ryan Nelson, Director of CMIT, and Professor Ryan Wright, Associate Director of CMIT.