I started my official product manager role in 2000 at a company called AUSTAR. I was there to create an internet service for regional Australia. Even before that, I always felt like I was doing product work, which at its core meant seeing problems in work patterns and taking the initiative to solve them.
Early on, and I still think this now, product work is a lonely pursuit. Even today it’s hard to succinctly capture what we do and how we add value to organisations. Each of us tells our product story a bit differently, because we experience it differently depending on the industry, the company size, the product’s life stage, and the customers we serve.
I figured out how to do product during my time at AUSTAR. It seemed intuitive to speak to customers, to articulate the opportunity, to design the product alongside the engineers, to write the requirements, and of course to nurture the product once it was in market. Could I have done things better? Of course. It was trial and error, and I would have jumped at the chance to attend a training course early in my career.
What was probably more pressing, though, was the emotional challenge of taking on product work. There’s a strange and rather strong desire to deliver the best product for your customers, and there were plenty of times I didn’t feel like I was doing that. There were many tears, and more than one hard conversation with the General Manager, trying to garner support for the product experience we needed to build. Looking back, I think what I was missing was somewhere to share those challenges and get different views to help me find the right solution.
That’s the genesis of Leading The Product.
We built a place where product people could come together and feel supported, learn from each other, and know they weren’t figuring this out alone. For a long time, that place was one day a year.
But the pace of change in our world doesn’t wait for a conference date. Product roles, tools and expectations are shifting month to month, sometimes week to week, and a single day in May was never going to be enough to keep up with that.
So this year, Leading The Product is becoming “Always On” because one day a year was never enough.
It’s about Craft, because the work itself keeps moving. What made you great at this five years ago isn’t enough today, and staying sharp means staying close to what’s changing and what’s next.
It’s about the Conversation, because none of us figures that out by reading about it alone. We talk about the craft, we share the stories that don’t make it into a case study, and we learn from people who’ve already been where we’re headed.
And always it’s about Connection, because somewhere in that conversation, something else happens. You stop feeling like the only one carrying this. You feel like you belong to something.
It’s been twenty-two years since I left AUSTAR, and I still think about how different those early years would have been if Leading The Product had existed back then. I would have loved having somewhere to take my problems, and people who’d understand them without me having to explain the whole backstory first.
I went on to build Brainmates not long after, and honestly, that was its own kind of lonely too. Different problems, same feeling of working it out on my own.
So when I talk about making Leading The Product being “Always On”, this is really why. It’s not just a new format or a busier calendar. It’s the thing I wish had existed for me, twenty-two years ago and every year since. A place to come back to for the craft, the conversation, and the connection with the people who get it.
#LeadingTheProduct
