Over the course of the day, we had 28 talks to choose from in our multiple streams. There’s no way to get to everything but we’ve tried to capture some summaries. Thank you to everyone listed here who volunteered to share their knowledge & experience!
Post redundancy: securing a job in this challenging market – Jade Dignam shared her experience of redundancy & looking for work which included lengthy interview processes such as 1 possible employer with a process of 8 interviews!
She broke down the job hunt process. Here’s some of her tips for each area:
Getting the interview – leverage your network, use recruiters for advocacy, have a 1 pager cv
The interview – nail your introduction, interview them, use STAR or another tool to prepare
After the interview – always ask for feedback & follow up if not provided
Missing out – don’t take it personally. Every opportunity is not right for everyone & sometimes another person has slightly different or bespoke experience that is right for the role
Time management & taking care of your personal mental health – time box applications, have a side project
Get Your Digital Sh*t Together – Felicity Bodger did a deeper dive into the topic she explored back in May during a Product Anonymous short talk and shared how she has built her own second brain.
AI Powered Product Strategy – Will Sheers showed us that by combining lightweight product strategy techniques and employing AI agents, you can quickly uncover product strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats with impressive accuracy. Will’s session was a live exercise where he asked a team of AI agents to conduct research on one of the companies someone in his session worked at. The agents collaborated to deliver an accurate analysis of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
“Multi-Agent AI represents the next evolution in practical AI applications. Frameworks such as CrewAI, AutoGen, and Agency Swarm offer a great starting point, and there are YouTube tutorials available to guide you.” Will Sheers
Change Quest –Calum Dabb led a fun and interactive “choose your own adventure” of change management, looking at how change is implemented and how success is measured along the way. Calum used a case study and asked his audience to make a series of decisions, voting on the best outcome. At the end of the session they were able to reflect on how well the decisions they made along the way aligned to their agreed outcomes.
“Overall, we learned that when implementing change, measuring success is difficult. We took away some good learnings about how to best stick to our outcomes to ensure we prioritise the right things, all the time.” Calum Dabb
Over the course of the day, we had 28 talks to choose from in our multiple streams. There’s no way to get to everything but we’ve tried to capture some summaries. Thank you to everyone listed here who volunteered to share their knowledge & experience!
Generative AI: Friend or Foe?– Amir Ansari took a packed room through a lightning masterclass on Generative AI. Amir gave a comprehensive overview of the foundational concepts of this emerging technology, and discussed the economic benefits for organisations who use it well. He also covered important ethical considerations, and provided some practical use cases to get people thinking about how Gen AI could be applied in their own organisations.
“AI is here to stay! As digital knowledge workers, we need to stay across and skill up so we can use this emerging technology effectively and safely.” Amir Ansari
Mastering your Product Management Skills toThrive in any Organisation – Teresa Huang gave us an enlightening look at organisations in different stages of growth, and the way Product Managers need to respond and adapt in order to be successful.
In the ‘Wild West’ of startups, Product Managers need to be entrepreneurial and responsive to find product-market fit fast. Scale ups are all about bridging chaos and order in the service of longer-term goals, by fostering a deep understanding of customers and collaboration across the business. Enterprise Product Managers must be able to influence and navigate bureaucracy to ensure the organisation stays connected to the customer problem to solve.
Teresa shared the way that mindset, influence, and the practice of product management need to be adapted to ensure that as a Product Manager you are able to successfully create value for customers in any business.
What does Sales Led vs Product Led Actually Mean?Craig Brown from Everest Engineering led a discussion about what these 2 concepts are and how product & sales can come together.
What are some of the things we can do together? Some examples: we can share knowledge with each other, understand each other’s processes, celebrate together, work together to develop a customer onboarding process.
What’s your priority?Kate Edwards-Davis ran a session on the myriad of prioritisation frameworks we can choose from including Buy a Feature, RICE, Kano, Cost of Delay, etc. Everyone jumped into groups to then use 1 of those frameworks on a set of assigned features.
No framework can accommodate the full complexity of the real world – but they are still useful to get started. The discussions you have while stepping through a framework are just as valuable as the results of the prioritiation framework. Everyone agreed there is more value in prioritising as a group than doing it by yourself.
Over the course of the day we had 28 talks to choose from in our multiple streams. There’s no way to get to everything but we’ve tried to capture some summaries. Thank you to everyone listed here who volunteered to share their knowledge & experience!
Alexandra Jacquet spoke on How to Build a Strong Relationship with your Founder. The key takeaways are:
Understand Your Founder’s Motivations
What are they trying to achieve? What are their personal and business goals? Who or what influences them? Whether it’s a podcast, journal, or someone within the company, knowing these can guide your approach.
Set an Actionable Plan to Build Trust
Have honest conversations, set measurable goals, and aim for quick wins. The active strategies will help you take a methodical approach to build trust.
Educate on the Power of Experimentation
Regularly share insights from customer learnings and data. Bring your founder along on your journey, explaining your decisions and viewpoints with evidence.
Speak the Same Language
Is it data, research, money, frameworks, or something else? Aligning on communication styles can significantly improve collaboration.
Fernando Perra – SQL Coding for PMs – Fernando gave a mini lesson on SQL as he believes SQL skills empower product managers with data autonomy. By learning some of the basics, you can be more self reliant on getting the data & understanding it. He’s posted the slides here on LI
Empowered to improve product ROI: A cross-functional view of levers across the product lifecycle was a workshop Nhat Tran ran to help people focus how we can deliver better outcomes to influence the product & ROI. Check Nhat’s post with slides and here’s the session takeaways:
There are levers, across the prod dev cycle, that can impact product performance/roi
Levers can positively/negatively impact ‘return’, or ‘investment’
Exec and individual contributors can both be empowered to proactively impact roi by owning tasks, along the prod dev cycle
Some specific, actionable tasks are:
Align on the right metrics, specifically ‘when customers experience value’
Focus product backlog on actionable metrics, e.g. sub-metrics to ‘when customer experiences value’
Minimise team blockers, e.g. via having clarity on ways of working , proactively unblocking future design, tech stack issues
Value the product backlog as ‘investments’, with an ‘expected value’, which accounts for expected return, but also probability of success
Improve the speed & quality of customer feedback loops, in order to better measure and manage ‘when customer experiences value
Katerina Karanikolopoulos ran the workshop, Getting to Yes, Herding Stakeholder Cats. The workshop explored what challenges we have with stakeholders & how we have approached this. Kat used a tool to run the workshop & below is the summary it provided along with Rebecca’s sketchnote.
“The main themes from the responses regarding challenges with stakeholders are centered around communication issues, resistance to change, and alignment problems. Team members have faced specific issues such as dominant opinions derailing agendas, CEOs resistant to new opportunities, stakeholders withholding information or having hidden agendas, misaligned goals, and a reluctance to listen to others. There are also difficulties mentioned with stakeholders frequently changing priorities, last-minute feedback, trust issues, power struggles, and different communication styles. Some stakeholders were described as know-it-alls, non-committal, or having authority bias.
In trying to manage these challenges during decision-making, various approaches were attempted including one-on-one meetings to understand perspectives, gathering supporting data, openly discussing trade-offs, and using executive meetings to diplomatically raise issues. Other tactics involved using data to tell a story, involving stakeholders early in the process, prioritization workshops, breaking down decisions step by step, and using frameworks to help analyze opinions. Some team members mentioned personal coping strategies such as meditation and imagination to handle the stress caused by difficult stakeholders. Despite these efforts, there were mixed outcomes, with some approaches leading to better alignment while others did not persuade key decision-makers.”
And we welcome yet another great new sponsor to the Product Camp Melbourne family – Monash University!
With the scale, scope, expertise, and partnerships to make change at a global level, Monash is committed to leaving a positive impact on the world so that future generations can thrive. If you are interested in being part of our community of change makers, join the team at Monash to support learning, teaching, research and the professional business of a global university
What really does that mean? Almost all the talks of our multiple streams during the day are presented by and voted on my the people attending that day. Submit your idea here to drive some hype and glory 😉 , pitch during the morning of the event and enjoy the day.
Some folks who have already submitted talks (scroll down for more details):
Experimentation – Running Cheaper yet better experiences – Jack Rust
Mastering Product Management to thrive in any organisation sizes – Teresa Huang
Fake it till you make it – The Non-Tech PM’s Journey – Samantha Raphael
Submit your talk. Not sure what you should suggest? Think about what your coworkers compliment you on? Is there something you could share? What have you learned that others could benefit from? What are you currently struggling with that you’d like to crowdsource help?
What do unconference sessions look like? Here’ some examples from 2023.. they can have slides, they can be interactive, they can be conversation, a workshop, a game, etc…
Inclusion in Action: From Saying to Doing – Baani Ahluwalia
If you have ever wondered ‘how can I be more inclusive?’, come along to hear actionable insights for running inclusive meetings and workshops. Let’s turn our inclusive intentions into impact. Baani is a product manager, data nerd, storyteller and DEI advocate. She is deeply passionate about championing diverse representation in tech and building organisational culture that embrace our unique strengths.
Cheaper experiments, better results- Jack Rust
A guide to experimentation that keeps them easy to design, cheap to run, and gives you the information you need. Know when to be rigorous, when to be scrappy, and when to skip the experiment all together. Jack is a Software Engineer turned Product Manager Currently working at SEEK.
Get your Digital Sh*t Together – Felicity Bodger
I will reveal my very own, never before shared, completely unbacked by any scientific research whatsoever, metaphor of how your brain works. Followed by the most condensed summary of every productivity expert on the planet, all through a product thinking lens. This session is a follow up to Felicity’s previous lightening talk at Prod Anon by popular demand (as in 2 people asked additional questions – so PMF verified) but you don’t have to have heard that talk to benefit from this one. Felicity is a product manager who has been somewhat obsessed with personal knowledge management and productivity for the past couple of millennia. Let’s just say that unlike everyone else who bought the iPod touch to listen to 10,000 songs, I paid the Apple tax just to be able to sync my calendars.
Mastering Product Management to thrive in any organisation sizes – Teresa Huang
Ever wanted to master your product management skills and thrive in any organization, big or small? Discover the three essential skills that will make you adaptable and successful: the right mindset, foundational craft, and powerful influencing techniques. Get ready to scale your career to new heights! Teresa Huang has been in product management for over ten years and has worked in various industries, including financial institutions, media, health insurance, aviation, and e-commerce. Teresa is a driven and focused individual with extensive experience across all product management and software development lifecycle phases. She is passionate about innovations in the technology sector, emerging web, mobile trends, and start-up communities. She is also a part-time YouTuber who loves sharing her experiences, strategies, and tools, which inspire us to keep growing in our product careers.
Ai for Fintech! – Mankaran Singh Saggu
How to make products and day to day better without giving into the hype of LLMs. Mankaran is a product guy with experience in insurance and fintech startups
Change Quest: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Session on Change Management – Calum
This interactive session will guide attendants through a difficult period of organisaitonal change – where the decisions the PM makes will be made by the audience themselves. In this choose-your-own-adventure style presentation the audience will set outcomes, make decisions and then come together to measure success! Calum is a Product Manager at SEEK working across growth and platform products.
Unlocking User Engagement: The Power of Product Analytics in Product Management – Ahmad Fotovat
Imagine unlocking the secret sauce behind user engagement! In my upcoming talk, I’ll reveal how product analytics is the key to understanding user engagement and their habit loops. We’ll explore real-world examples from my journey at REA Group, illustrating how product analytics boosted our understanding of user behaviour and helped us make smarter decisions to elevate our products. This session promises to be a blend of data-driven strategies and practical stories, all aimed at helping you elevate your product to new heights. Ahmad Fotovat is a Melbourne-based product and analytics enthusiast. He has recently joined Canva to unlock product potential. Most recently, he led the consumer product analytics team at REA Group, helping product teams understand user behaviour and translate that into strategic and product decisions. Before this, he co-founded Iran’s leading online real estate agency, transforming it into a market leader with innovative data-driven solutions. Ahmad’s expertise lies in identifying how data insights and products can have an impact.
Panel – Why Australian Product Managers are weak on commercial nous? – Nick Wodzinski
From my observations working with product folks in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney, it is very common that product people are over-indexed on planning type skills (planning the activities across the double diamond, running agile and scrum type rituals) and under-indexed on commercial skills (pricing, financial forecasting, ROI modelling). I have some guesses as to why this is the case. Join this panel discussion. Nick is Head of Product at Chargefox, Australia’s largest EV charging platform
Pathway to GenAI – How to deliver results and get buy in – Tom LeGrice
This session delivered by AWS will suggest strategies for incorporating GenAI into your products based on delivering value, and map out a pathway of critical elements you will need to build over the next 2 years to be succcesful with GenAI. We will also highlight the single biggest risk – and opportunity – of GenAI that AWS can see globally. Tom has over 25 years experience in ICT across UK, NZ and Australia in sales, product, marketing and digital transformation. His current role is Principal SaaS Consultant for AWS in the Asia Pacific Japan region, where he talks to hundreds of software companies annually on how to deliver high growth customer experiences.
What does Sales led versus Product led actually mean? – Craig Brown
If you find yourself in the narrative of sales led versus product led, you’re having the wrong conversation. Let’s instead take some time for empathy and understanding. I’ve done both jobs, and I don’t believe the dichotomy to be true or useful. I’ll be sharing some of the things I have seen and experienced and will propose a couple of ideas of what we can do to dissolve this difference. Then we will leverage the experience of the room and expand our ideas for working better together. Craig is the Co-founder of Everest, Former leader at Aconex, 30 years in industry, & sponsoring the drinks. 😉
The Insights Hero Formula: SQL + PM Skills = Unstoppable Success – Fernando Parra
Tired of waiting on analysts for crucial product insights? In this hands-on session, we’ll demystify SQL for PMs, showing you how to uncover some golden nuggets about adoption, profitability, and more. You’ll learn Essential SQL queries every PM should know, How to generate actionable insights that are validated with ground-truth data, How to work with data teams iterating on insight generation with your newly acquired skills. There will be a quiz at the end, and the winners get a special prize. Fernando is a 3 times PM converted into an analytics engineer with heaps of real-life experiences bringing data to the table.
Ai Co-Pilot for Product Management… Is it even possible? – Alexander Cohen
Ai is fundamentally changing the way that Product is being created. We are quickly moving to a world where software will be generated instead of developed. In this world, what is the tooling Product managers need to harness in order to continue delivering value for customers. Let’s walk through some tools that are available and unpack the journey of creating GoScope.AI. Alexander is a Product Manager, Software Engineer & Co-Founder of GoScope.AI. Alexander has spent 15 years creating emerging technology products. He’s currently build an AI CoPilot for Product Management & Requirement Gathering.
Team Topologies and why it matters to build great products – Peter Lam
We often talk about cross functional teams. However as you grow to multiple teams – how you organise your people really really matters. One of the set of patterns people are using is Team Topologies – let’s step through the key concepts and how you can make it work for you. Peter helps companies untangle delivery. When he isn’t doing that – he runs one of the larger Project Management meet ups in Melbourne. He genuinely thinks that life would be better if Project Managers, Product Managers and agile folks just worked together to build awesome things for customers.
Getting to Yes: Herding Stakeholder Cats – Katerina Karanikolopoulos
Join an interactive workshop where we tackle the art of managing tricky stakeholders—think herding cats but with more success! We’ll kick off with tips and tricks from my adventures in the C-suite jungle. Then, it’s your turn! Share your war stories and winning strategies in our group session. Our goal? To build a toolkit to transform any “no” into a resounding “yes”. I’ve had more careers than hairstyles. Most recently Katerina has been a strategist leading corporate strategy teams. Now she’s taking on the challenge of learning the product management ropes as the founder of stradegio.ai. My Product Camp goal is to share what I’ve learned about influencing challenging senior/C-suite stakeholders while soaking up as much as I can about building great tech products that people love.
Fake it till you make it – The Non-Tech PM’s Journey – Samantha Raphael
A brief summary on the journey of becoming a Product Manager without a technical background. We’ll debunk the myth that you need to be a coding wizard to excel in product management and highlight the diverse skills and perspectives that non-technical PMs bring to the table.
Another new sponsor to welcome to the Product Camp Melbourne family – Equiem!
Equiem activates real estate with technology that understands people.
Founded and headquartered in Melbourne 12 years ago, Equiem was the original Tenant Expeirence platform. Now Equiem operates around the globe, trusted by 150+ leading real estate organisations in over 900 buildings. Equiem enables real estate owners and operators to create responsive, human-centric working and living environments, by integrating building operation tools, flexible space management and community engagement into one smart building management platform.
Another new sponsor to welcome to the Product Camp Melbourne family – Vic Roads!
VicRoads is a government joint venture in the state of Victoria, Australia. We are here to help provide Victorians with safe and easy connections to the people and places that matter most to them, and we are responsible for driver licensing and vehicle registration.
We’re embarking on a large modernisation journey and our vision is to become Australia’s most progressive registry! If you think Product, come join us.
And yes! Another awesome new sponsor to the Product Camp Melbourne family – Mantel Group!
Mantel Group is an Australian-owned technology consulting business with capabilities across Cloud, Digital, Data & Security. Since our inception in November 2017, Mantel Group has experienced remarkable growth across Australia & New Zealand and are honoured to be recognised as a Great Place to Work for 4 years in a row!
We hire smart and talented people and get out of their way. As a principle-based organisation we have a flat structure with no hierarchy. By focusing on our five principles and not getting caught up in red tape, we trust you to get the job done!
Our team develops end to end solutions to business problems that help organisations move from idea or concept to delivery and ultimately our focus is helping businesses make human decisions about digital products.
Last year Seek hosted Product Camp Melbourne and this year… we’re back in their fantastic office!
SEEK has been helping Australians live more fulfilling and productive working lives for 25 years. SEEK is a diverse group of companies, comprised of a strong portfolio of online employment, educational, commercial and volunteer businesses. As a market leader in online employment marketplaces that span ten countries across Asia Pacific and Latin America, SEEK makes a positive contribution to people’s lives on a global scale.
Product Camp Melbourne is an unconference – ie most of the talks you see on the day are voted on by you – but we do organise a few talks before hand including our keynote.
This year we’re talking about culture – and your role in creating and shaping it. You do not need to be the head of HR or head of the department in order to influence the team and organisation culture.
Our speaker, Sara Zabukovec, will explore the essence of company and team culture, debunking common myths and emphasising how every team member, from individual contributors to leaders, shapes it through daily actions and decisions. She will share her insights on building a collaborative culture with software teams.
