How do you think about your value prop?

Or maybe the question is – do you think about your value prop? How do you communicate your value prop?

This month we’ll organise you into small groups to do a bit of a workshop. We’ll have an exercise that might mean you need to bring your own paper and scissors to help you think about your products value proposition. Jen + Liz + Steve B will be your fabulous fun hosts.

NOTE: We have some stationary from Product Camp but if you have your own sharpie to bring, that would be helpful! Sharpie colours are good!

RSVP for Thursday March 21st

Our hosts – Chargefox!

Chargefox is part of the AMS Group. Every day thousands of drivers charge their vehicle on the Chargefox network – the largest and fastest growing EV charging network in Australia. We’re owned and operated by the NRMA, RACV, RACQ, RAA, RAC and RACT. The same companies supporting drivers for over 100 years.

Driving Outcomes with OKRs

RSVP for Thursday, Feb 22nd

Upgrade your product delivery with OKRs (Workshop)

One of the best things we can do as Product people is get our teams excited about solving real customer problems and measuring success. We’re going to cover just that in this session, we’ll explore how to go from strategy and discovery, to validating the impact once launched with the Objective and Key Results (OKR) framework. A goal setting framework used by some of the world’s leading product businesses, like Google, LinkedIn and SEEK. This will be a practical session, so be ready to work on your product!

Our Speaker:

Tim Newbold, OKR Coach and founder of OKR Quickstart will be our speaker. Tim founded OKR Quickstart to help tech companies unlock growth. They do this by creating focus on the biggest growth constraint, getting the team behind the plan to solve it and delivering meaningful results. He has a background leading product engineering teams in SaaS and Fintech businesses. Tim loves to work with some of the worlds leading tech businesses, such as ELMO Software, Domino’s, SEEK, Carsales & Connective.

Our Host:

David Jones
As one of Australia’s most iconic retailers we have a rich 185-year history of being a curator of world-class brands. Our people are driven by the passion and desire to inspire our customers with seamless service and experiences like no other.

RSVP here!

Helping Teams Do Product – October Wrap

As software companies scale and the product team grows, the difference between building ‘stuff’ and performing the practice of product management can be massive. It can greatly impact the ability to find product market fit through to the ability to scale with pace and grace.

Our speaker, Nick Wodzinski, has worked at several start-ups and shared his first hand experience of moving the team into the practice of product management while being resource constrained.

Nick’s 3 tips are:

Think about roles, not job titles

Nick shared some previous conversations that helped to shape this guideline including talking to a founder about Marty Cagan’s idea that each team should have a product person and the founder saying they can only afford him – the one product person. Or having to do some UI and design work although he’s the product person and wondering if he really should be doing this (although there’s no designer at the company).

In order to solve this, think about the role, not the job title. Get comfortable, especially in startups, that someone who might not have the training is going to be doing a specific role. And the person doing that role may change over time. The person doing that role might even be different for different areas of the product. AND this is ok.

If you find yourself in this situation, be clear on who is responsible for each thing. Have a conversation about who will play each role so everyone knows what is expected of them and who is responsible. Having some sort of indicator is also helpful – a hat, an emoji, listed on the wiki page, etc.

Resources: Marty’s 4 Big Risks & John Cultler’s Top 1% Product Managers

Talk in ‘bets’ with founders and execs

Ever had a founder or exec approach you with an idea they got from a competitor’s webinar or something their friend told them about (the old ‘airplane magazine syndrome’)? The person telling you about this and asking why you aren’t working on the same is coming from a good place – a place of trying to keep the company afloat – though these conversations can be distractions to the strategy.

You want to have a productive conversation that doesn’t create tension between you & this person. You want to frame the outcome for the business and the team, not talk about how important the discovery is.

Nick referenced a talk by Kirsten Mann at LTP where she talked about executives want certainty. You might feel like showing your work will help them understand but really you want to remove the language of product & design from these conversations and focus on the commercial acumen – what is the expected impact?

Another way to frame this comes from General ‘Salty’ Saltzman from the US Space Force. He wants to know what is your theory of success. You should be able to tell someone what you’re trying to achieve and how it will help achieve success.

Nick suggests using the language of ‘bets’ to get out of our jargon and move more towards risk, portfolio of bets and that losing might be an option. This also helps to move away from the conversation of when something will be delivered but should we back other bets or continue to continue to back this bet based on the data we have gathered. He then shared a great conversation he had at one company where ‘getting to parity with a competitor’ was being encouraged and Nick asked what would the impact of ‘parity’ be? Would it get us every deal? No. Would it get us half the deals? What if we did something different that solved a real problem that could help us win more than half the deals? How long would we fund this bet? How long should it take us to understand this bet? This conversation led to a new strategy with a new market to sell to.

References: John Cutler’s The Basics and Place Your Bets plus the Spotify Rhythm

Managing your career growth if you’re the 1st (or only product manager)

You might have dreams for your product manager career – getting promoted, earning more money, whatever you dream of. That might not be the reality you work in. You might not get great feedback (keep doing what you’re doing!). There might not be the opportunity for promotions or not a clear idea of how that would ever happen (keep deliverying value says the boss). You probably gather your data from salary surveys and put forward your case but if the organisation doesn’t have the money, they can’t give you a raise.

This does not mean you can’t continue to grow! You need to create your own path. Nick is creating a growth framework for his team which explains the competencies for a PM at different levels.

Nick reflected on his own dreams of presenting his roadmap to the board right after starting his new job. He was advised by that 1st you need to show that you can present it to your team and that they understand the vision and how they contribute to that vision. If you’re doing well with the team, then the next step could be to present to the company at the next all hands. Think about what are the levels you can do this at and how you can stretch and grow.

Note: If you want to learn more about product competencies and setting one up at your company, see the notes from our event earlier this year with Aaron Hardy from PageUp.

Resources: check out some frameworks here, here and here

https://twitter.com/confidantduk/status/1717445531595850100

Our Speaker

Nick Wodzinski is the lead product manager at Chargefox – Australia’s largest public charging network for electric vehicles. His background is in construction tech, and he has worked setting up product teams with startups and scale ups over the last 5 years in the Australian software industry.

Our Host

Our wonderful friends at Everest Engineering will be our hosts for the evening.

Everest Engineering: A bold, people first community, building digital products for those who do things differently.

October – Helping Teams ‘do product’

What is the difference between a product team building a product and product teams ‘doing product’? As software companies scale and the product team grows, the difference between building ‘stuff’ and performing the practice of product management can be massive. It can greatly impact the ability to find product market fit through to the ability to scale with pace and grace.

Join us Thursday October 26th RSVP

Our speaker, Nick Wodzinski will share his experience of going from product hire #1 in startups & scale ups and working with teams building product to setting the formula for growing from 1 to many product teams. Nick will reflect on his experiences of setting up teams over the last 5 years with SignOnSite, EstimateOne, Mastt and Chargefox.

Our speaker:

Nick Wodzinski is the lead product manager at Chargefox – Australia’s largest public charging network for electric vehicles. His background is in construction tech, and he has worked setting up product teams with startups and scale ups over the last 5 years in the Australian software industry. Fast 5 Q&A with Nick

Our host:
Our wonderful friends at Everest Engineering will be our hosts for the evening.

Everest Engineering is a bold, people first community, building digital products for those who do things differently.

How to Dip Your Toe into the AI water

As a product manager, have you gotten caught into the AI frenzy? Or feel like you’re missing out and not sure where to start?

This month we’ll talk about how to make use of AI and tools like ChatGPT in your product world. RSVP for September 21st

– How to use Generative Ai in your workflow, i.e. pad out a persona

– How to incorporate it into an existing product i.e. Shopify launching Sidekick, a personal commerce assistant

– What could you do to build from the ground up with chatGPT, as an example. i.e. this is the hardest to predict at the moment as well but we can explore some of the future opportunities

Our speaker:

Tim O’Neill is the Co-founder of Time Under Tension. They help companies make sense of Generative AI and how it can be used for their products.

Find out more at www.timeundertension.ai and his LinkedIn profile.

Our host:

Thank you Catapult for being our September host!

Catapult exists to unleash the potential of every athlete and team on earth. Operating at the intersection of sports science and analytics, Catapult products are designed to optimize performance, avoid injury, and improve return to play. Catapult has over 400 staff based across 24 locations worldwide, working with more than 3,800 Pro teams in over 40 sports across more than 100 countries globally. To learn more about Catapult and to inquire about accessing performance analytics for a team or athlete, visit us at catapult.com. Follow us at @CatapultSports on social media for daily updates.

RSVP for September 21st

Product Camp 2023

Take your mind back to August 2019.. it was a bit chilly and we had 300 people interested in product all together for Product Camp. We celebrated 10 years of Product Camp in Melbourne, where Rich Mironov virtually spoke to us about the importance of community and history of Product Camps, Georgia Murch helped us understand feedback, Antony Ugoni shared his knowledge and experiences with bringing the data and about 20 of our community gave talks (after they pitched & the attendees voted on what they wanted to hear).

AND then there was that thing – that prevented us from gathering together.

But we’re excited to say… we’re back. Join us on Saturday August 5th (RSVP)!

Same familiar ‘unconference’ style event where we organise the venue and keynotes (including Ken Sandy and one TBA) and make sure you have some food and water during the day – but you (!) are active participants! You can pitch a talk idea, or run a panel discussion or ask for a working talk to help you work thru a problem.

For more details and to submit a talk idea, go to https://productcampmelbourne.com

NOTE: If Camp is at waitlist, we recommend you add yourself and check back in. As the day gets closer, numbers will change and spaces will become available. If you are one of the people who have RSVP’d but something has changed and you can’t make it, please change your RSVP to no so others can attend.

Making retention fun – how games get players coming back for more

RSVP for Thursday July 20th

Retention and engagement are often a key focus for product teams, and the games industry has some great insights into how they think about these 2 concepts to attract and keep their users.

While games have some unique difference to many products, the concepts in this talk are ones any product team can apply in their user journey. Retention is also not a once and done job, so thinking about opportunities to keep your customers engaged along the entire lifecycle of using your products will also be something discussed in this talk.

Our speaker:
Sebastian Pattom – Director at Product at Electronic Arts (EA) will share his experiences and knowledge of his work in the retention space.

Our hosts:
Canva is a global online visual communications platform designed to empower the world to design. We create beautiful designs from presentations to infographics, videos, t-shirts and social media graphics.

We recently launched the Canva Visual Worksuite – a suite of new workplace products and features built to empower anyone to communicate visually, on any device, from anywhere in the world.

We believe that our responsibility goes far beyond business as usual, and that what’s good for business can be good for the world: This is part of our two-step plan. We truly believe that good for humanity is good for business, and times are really changing around people’s expectations of what they expect from businesses. We’ve come a long way, though we believe we’re still only 1% of the way there.

Thanks Canva! Check out their current product jobs.

RSVP for Thursday July 20th. If your plans change and you can’t attend, please update your RSVP so people on the waitlist can attend. Thank you!

June Meetup: Just what ARE you getting yourself into????

You have decided you want to be a product manager and gotten that first job – or maybe you’re in your second PM role. Is it all you thought it would be?? What really have you gotten yourself into as a new product manager?!?

And this session is not just for folks who are new to product management! Folks who have been there … we need your wise words of wisdom and you’ll learn something new too!

This month, we’ve gathered a panel of new product folk (3 years or less) to share their stories of what their grappling with at the start of this career journey. We’ll be taking questions from the audience and guiding the discussion as we tap into this moment in time, that you never get back 🙂

There will be audience participation!!!

We’ll be running an interactive component to connect our more experienced PMs with the newbies in the room and facilitate some speed mentoring rounds between those starting out in their career and those with sage learnings to share.

Our panellists:

Hugh Osborne, Jane Card & Heike Radlanski

Jane Card is a career shifter into product after fifteen years helping organisations define problems, generate solutions, adopt new business models and ways of working.  Naturally curious and a people geek, Jane is passionate about leveraging different perspectives to make the world a better place.

Heike Radlanski started her career in digital marketing before moving into a product owner role and subsequently into product management. Passionate about understanding people’s needs and pain points, Heike enjoys the process of working in cross-functional teams to create and improve products that add value for those using them.

Hugh Osbourne moved to Product Management after working in design, product design, copywriting and small business jack-of-some-trades. He’s been in successful and failing startups (sometimes in the same week), assembling a impressive toolbox of hacks, workarounds and bad habits. Working now in a growing organisation, he’s interested in the secret sauce of small teams, why data products are the best products, and how to domesticate ‘wild’ PMs

Our hosts:

A big thank you to MYOB!

MYOB has been part of the fabric of doing business in Australia and New Zealand for more than 30 years, having grown from its status as the original Australian unicorn to now employing people across Australia and New Zealand, based out of nine locations in the region. Having started life as accounting software, MYOB has undertaken significant steps toward becoming a cloud-based business management platform that brings together key workflows to fit a business’s needs.

To see what it is like to be an MYOBelievers, check out our careers site.

Kicking Ass Together – Product & Engineering

Come along on May 25th to get an insider’s perspective on engineering teams.
What motivates them? Why do they ask so many questions? And why, for goodness sake, do they keep asking to rebuild things? 🙂

Building a trusted partnership with your engineers will help you nurture a product team that is more than the sum of its parts. So how do we better work with our eng team mates? Kate Lanyon will give us some insider tips!

RSVP now for Thursday, May 25th

Our Speaker:

Kate Lanyon, Engineering Manager at Fastmail, co-founder & former CTO of Eugene Labs will share insights into the above. Kate has a led a varied career – going from full stack development, to mobile app development and back again before moving into senior leadership. She has worked with teams across many different domains including agencies, start ups and corporates. You can fund musings at her website.

Our Host:

Kogan.com is a pioneer of Australian eCommerce. We are a dynamic and rapidly growing business. Our team believes in using & building technology to improve the online shopping experience for our customers. We are pragmatic, intelligent, fast paced and driven by seeing our software shipped to production daily. The software we build – including www.kogan.com – is used by millions of customers. Check out our pride and joy https://devblog.kogan.com/ to learn more about us and how we deliver amazing products and software!

What does ‘product led’ really mean?

Join us in April to hear about being product led and how to take steps to get there. RSVP

Amy Johnson, Chief Product Office at Propel Ventures, will dive into this ‘product led’ thing with us. What is it? How does it look day to day? How can you be ‘product led’ if your company is not?

Amy will share stories from the trenches about how she’s help shift orgs towards being product-led. She’ll ensure we’re using agreed language about what it means to be product-led and what it is not. And talk to the 5 aspects you need to see to know you’re making headwind. She’ll share some practical tips to get started on your own or as a team lead, but acknowledge the small wins to show you’re on your way and not give up when you realise how much further you’ve got to go. This stuff is hard to do so let’s help each other out!

Amy is a product leader, passionate about empowering teams and fostering inclusion. Multi industry experience, now leading the product team at Propel, who partner with you to accelerate your product development and achieve product market fit faster.

Our wonderful friends at Everest Engineering will be our hosts for the evening.

RSVP for April 20th.