Does your team look up to you as some sort of super hero? Who they can rely on to swoop in and protect them from the maleficent deeds of some evil villain? Do you sometimes feel like a victim, a target for others to blame when things don’t play our as we forecast? RSVP

Ah! Welcome to the dynamics of drama! Our efforts to protect others may actually perpetuate a cycle of conflict and anxiety.

Would you like to better understand the common causes of drama & conflict in the workplace – and how you can interrupt that cycle with one of our favourite tools – a POST-IT NOTE!

RSVP to learn how to kill off that drama and setup a winning dynamic of success.

Thursday, September 30th 6:20pm via Zoom

Our Speaker:

Kate Edwards-Davis is a product manager at Karista.com.au

Kate circled around the profession of Product Management for many, many years – starting in the 1980s as an IT Project Manager, switching to Business Analyst, to Product Owner and then finally to Product Manager.

With all of those titles, Kate says she essentially played the same role – listening to the customer, getting to know their most important problems, then working with teams of super clever people to deliver a solution.

Random Kate facts!

• Kate once pursued a career as a classical musician. She performed solo in a national live broadcast on ABC classic FM. On recorder – yes, that instrument you all played in primary school.
• She danced with Prince in a small London nightclub.
• She has a collection of vintage calculators. They fit right into Kate’s very retro 1970’s house. (Wait til you see the fake wood paneling!)
• She has never ever managed to do a cartwheel.
• Her kids really don’t understand what she does for work, and frankly don’t care, as their Dad’s work is way cooler. He works in the design team for Moose Toys.
• She’s still not sure what what she wants to do with her career  

Our Sponsor:

Cogent

If you need great people to help build your product, we do that and a whole lot more. Over the years, we’ve worked on more 100 digital products loved by millions of users, from small startups through to tech giants like Square, Xero and REA.

So whether you’re leading a small product team or the CPO of a growing tech company, our focus is on supporting you to design and develop products that your users love.

In mythology and folklore, having the ability to change form has alternately been seen as a gift from the gods or as the foulest of curses. And, yep, it’s kind of the same with product managers.

Our roles are, by their very nature, not clearly defined compared to those of our co-workers. Freedom to focus on the things that matter from day to day is part of the job description. It’s absolutely glorious but it can also get us into some serious trouble if we’re not careful.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does a product manager. Our jobs naturally bump up against others in the organisation and it can be hard to tell where product management stops and functions like marketing, corporate strategy, design, research and execution start. And, as shapeshifters, we have a natural tendency to quietly fill the gaps when we see them.

This talk will cover which areas we sometimes need to extend our roles into, where we should step back, what we need to communicate about our jobs to our stakeholders and what we neglect at our peril.

Details:

RSVP for August 26 (zoom) login about 6:20pm for a 6:30pm kickoff

If we can do in-person, we’ll update on Meetup.

Our presenter:
Daniel Kinal has been in product management for over 18 years, chiefly working in IT, focusing on B2B products & services.

He began his marketing, communications, and consulting career but soon learned that the aspect of marketing he loved most was working out what to build, for whom, and why.

He gets excited about helping businesses become more effective in decision-making, more efficient in their processes and more engaged with their customers. Daniel is at his happiest when waving his arms about in front of a whiteboard with a bunch of smart people, exploring problems and weighing up solutions.

Our sponsor:
Cogent – If you need great people to help build your product, we do that and a whole lot more. Over the years, we’ve worked on more 100 digital products loved by millions of users, from small startups through to tech giants like Square, Xero and REA.

So whether you’re leading a small product team or the CPO of a growing tech company, our focus is on supporting you to design and develop products that your users love.

Right now we’re doing research on how product teams in Aus & NZ work best together. Participate in the survey to tell us all about it.

We love getting customer feedback – and there are some times we don’t love getting customer feedback! RSVP for Thursday July 22

Our speaker, Dipa Rao, will share her experiences of dealing with both
solicited AND unsolicited customer feedback. Dipa will discuss:

• setting the right expectations for getting feedback
• how to manage responses
• how to prepare for managing everything that comes your way including hippos & distressed customers!

RSVP for Thursday July 22nd

Closer to the date we’ll know if we can do this session as both in-person and online streaming.

Our Speaker

Dipa Rao is a Product Experience at Australia Post. She has worked as an Agile Coach and consultant at Elabor8 with clients such as Coles, UniSuper, Seek & the Alcohol & Drug Foundation. Twitter:@dipanjali 

Our Sponsor

Yellowfin is a global analytics and business intelligence (ABI) software vendor with a suite of world-class products powered by automation. Yellowfin is recognized as an innovator by the world’s leading analyst firms. More than 29,000 organizations and over 3 million end-users across 75 countries use Yellowfin every day. https://www.yellowfinbi.com/

Thursday, June 17th RSVP

Continuous discovery is often referenced as a way to build an organisational view of customer needs; ultimately bringing focus to solving the problems that add value for customers and by extension the business.

However, the road to building this ideal is neither straight nor clear. There are multiple obstacles, anchors and false starts, especially if you’re starting from a position where your organisation is neither wired nor ready for such a journey.

Over the last four years, FatSecret has inched toward a continuous discovery model that is by no means complete, but they’re getting closer to the end goal, and learned a lot along the way. This session will cover a few of their lessons, missteps and wins along the way.

Our presenter

Head of Product at FatSecret, Ben Ryan. 

Ben started in product when he applied for a Producer role at REA at the end of 2012. By the time he actually got hired, that role had become a Consumer Product Manager. Soon after, he got to be the guinea pig in an experiment to merge REAs Consumer and Customer Product Manager roles and didn’t dislike the change.

Later, after a year (possibly less) working in the Death Star (aka NAB’s 700 Bourke Street), he decided to take a punt on a company he’d never heard of and became the first Product Manager at FatSecret. They’d also never heard of a Product Manager, so there were lessons to be had by all. Since then, he’s helped the company launch a consumer offering and grow revenues by 60% YoY.

Try as he might, he can’t help but look down on people who use “learnings” in sentences…or in any form, for that matter.

Session Details

We are not sure if this will be a f2f/zoom or some combination of the two. When you RSVP, let us know your likelihood of joining Zoom or in-person.

Event: Thursday, April 15th RSVP

There is a general consensus that one should use user data to validate thinking and steer products in the right direction. But as you probably know all too well, the inputs that go into product roadmap decisions aren’t so neat and tidy.

There’s an endless onslaught of competing ideas and requests from executives, team leads, customers, and often a lot of personal investment in the ideas being suggested. With all this influence, how do you make sure the right signals are heard through the noise?

Our speakers have a slightly different angle on this problem because they work at an agency! Since they have the advantages inherent in being an agency and paid outsider, they’ll share how they set up an engagement from the get-go to promote better decision-making and ultimate project success – and how all this could be applied by internal client teams.

They will take us through a technique called the Diagnostic, which will help you get the buy-in from sponsors/stakeholders, alignment on the objectives & ways of working plus increase the likelihood of avoiding Hippos. This way you can focus on building a great and sustainable product.

This is an in-person event!

• Doors: 6pm
• There will be a check-in for contract tracing purposes
• Yes, there will be pizza and beverages
• Kick off: 6:30pm
• If there’s interest, a post session beverage somewhere nearby often happens!

RSVP for Thursday April 15th

There will be a post-session summary here on the blog. We are looking at how we would do streaming and in-person at the same time but assume this will be in-person only.

Our Speakers

Jim O’Malley – Head of Strategic Design, Isobar Australia

Jim has over 15 years of experience designing and leading the development of innovative products and customer experiences across digital channels. He has worked across multiple industries for start-ups and global brands, including Travel & Leisure, Pharmaceuticals, Health, Superannuation and Automotive.

Su Lim – Associate Design Director, Isobar Australia

Su is an Associate Design Director in Isobar’s Products & Services team which exists to create and innovate new products and services that generate value and drive revenue.

Day to day, she collaborates with cross-functional teams to uncover opportunities then rapidly prototype, validate and deliver new digital experiences for a range of organisations, from start-ups to enterprises.

As a designer with 15 years in the industry, she is passionate about solving problems collaboratively, and strives to design experiences that are simple, effective and beautifully crafted.

Our Sponsor

About Isobar: Products & Services team

We are a global digital agency transforming businesses and brands through a creative use of digital. Our mission is delivering experience-led transformation, powered by creativity through our end-to-end service offering.

The team delivering the content for this Product Anonymous edition are the Products & Services team. A highly autonomous and cross functional arm of Isobar, offering deep expertise in innovating new products and services that quickly create impactful customer experiences and build valuable businesses.

The team works across the entire product lifecycle and provides innovation services for early stage idea direction, validation, and product and service development; with access to complementary services and partners; and an inherent bias towards action

RSVP for this in person session – Thursday April 15th

OK… it’s not live. but it was tonight.

In COVID times, we’ve been having monthly social events. We start by eating Which often turn into cooking events. Tonight we’re making Salted Caramel Crack by Annabel Crabb

100 g butter

1/2 c brown sugar

1/2 a packet of crackers (Salada or whatever). It seems it’s more important for them to be rectangles than anything else

1/2 t vanilla essence

pinch of salt

100 grams dark chocolate – chopped – use cheap stuff, not fancy.

handful of pistachio or walnut or something. Jane recommends pistachio because it looks pretty

Take a flat baking tray, cover it in foil. then lay a piece of baking paper on top. Lay the crackers next to each other

On low heat, cook the butter & sugar. Constantly stir! or it will burn!

add the salt & vanilla right before you remove from the heat.

THEN FAST…

pour the caramel onto the crackers and smooth it across the crackers. Don’t worry if the caramel has split. It goes in the oven and the crackers absorb and it tastes great.

Put this in the oven for about 15 minutes.

Lick the spatula

Hey (Google/Alexa), set a timer for 15 minutes

Have the chopped nuts & chopped chocolate ready to put onto the top AFTER you remove from the oven.

Add the chocolate, then the salt, then the nuts.

Don’t be lazy! Put the choc bits all the way to the end. Get the sides. Or you will be sad.

– Jane

Put the finished product in the fridge to harden. You can eat it now but Jane says it’s better after it’s chilled.

When it’s not shiny anymore or wet when you press it with your finger, then it’s time to EAT!

For our last session in 2020, we are throwing open the doors (virtually) and getting our community more involved in giving talks. We love giving people the opportunity to talk and Thursday, November 26th, you’ll get to hear short talks from 7 people.

This is a good time to remind everyone that we are always looking for speakers so if there’s someone you think we should approach or you are interested in giving a talk, reach out to Liz or me (or both).

For this session, you’ll hear from:

Marc Vandamme on encouraging your entire team to wireframe

Fernando Parra about his love affair with Amplitude

Erica Wass on thanking those who help make your product a success

Elizabeth Griffiths will tell us about her 5 week journey from idea to MVP

Pari Nahata with how to make your slides more impactful

more to be announced soon

RSVP to our November session. BTW, it’s also the ProdAnon bday so we’ll definitely have some social breakout room time.

Our sponsor: A big thanks to A Cloud Guru for sponsoring! Our mission is to teach the world to cloud. Find your place at ACG.

Dumplings

This month we’ll have online dumplings on Tuesday November 10th. RSVP

What’s next?

We’ll possibly have another dumplings session in December. We’re even wondering if it could be a picnic.

Product Anonymous takes a break over the festive season and will be back in February 2021.

Yes! November is our birthday!

Over the years, we’ve mixed it up with purely social birthday drinks to give you more time to get to know each other (& Liz and I are not adverse to a lovely cocktail or wine) or the usual speaker topic session – this year we have a new plan.

One of the big reasons Product Anonymous exists is to share knowledge. Another reason we exist is to grow the local talent which includes giving people the opportunity to gain experience in front of a crowd & crafting a talk. We’re super proud that several ProdAnon speakers have gone on talk at large conferences.

So for November.. it’s time to dip your toe in the water. Yes, you!

We want you to present – for 5 minutes. It’s not a long talk, you won’t have to answer 15 questions after, nor do you need to create earth-shattering beautiful slides.

What you need to do is know what you want to express, to teach, to explain, to get ProdAnon folks excited about.

You need to be able to communicate that in FIVE minutes (warning: Liz will have her whistle). And you need to be available to do this on Thursday evening November 26th.

This is not a ‘lightning talk’. You do not have to change slides every 15 seconds and have only 20 slides. It’s your 5 minutes. It can be fun. It can be serious. It could be an insight you want to share.

What to do next?

1. Mull over your idea and submit it by EOD Saturday, October 24th
2. Those chosen will be contacted on Friday, October 30th (yes, this is encouraging you to spend Melbourne Cup wknd working on your preso!)

Submit your talk idea!

How will talks be selected?

1. Appeal of the topic to ProdAnon people
2. Your sworn ability to be able to use google slides and deliver the slides the week before the event

Our sponsor: A big thanks to A Cloud Guru for sponsoring! Our mission is to teach the world to cloud. Find your place at ACG.

Our next dumpling session is Tuesday September 8th. RSVP here.

What is this dumpling thing?

Back in the day when we could squeeze 10 people onto a small table, occasionally we’d gather to eat dumplings and talk.

Since March 2020, we’ve been running monthly dumpling sessions online. Bring your dinner, hang out, meet some folks and chat.

Warning: sometimes these turn into weird cooking shows. It started with the frothy Dalgona coffee thing then mug cake and there’s rumours of sticky date pudding one day.