What a year it has been for Product Talks! With the introduction of the New York chapter, stretching the community across 13 cities globally, the Product Talks family is bigger and better than ever.
We close off the year with 40 Product Talks events, ranging from topics such as OKRs for Product Managers, Product Ops, Dampening Imposter Syndrome, Avoiding Digital Product Failure, Product Analytics, and How to Get Your First Role in Product Management and Thrive.
We also ended the year on a high with the annual Product Party, in conjunction with our Product Meetup friends Product Anonymous, Product Mavens, Product Women and Product Book Club.
Let’s look back at some of the highlights from the year.
First Event of 2021
Product Talks Melbourne, hosted by Steve Forbes, kicked off its first event of 2021 with ‘OKRs for Product Managers’ starring Tim Newbold. If you can cast your mind back to January 8, 2021, then you would remember that Tim explored how you can focus your teams by harnessing an outcome-based goal-setting framework like OKR.
LTP DIGITAL 2021 | APAC Pitch Fest
We then held our LTP DIGITAL 2021 | APAC Pitch Fest across Australia and New Zealand on March 18, 2021. Product Talks was delighted to co-host this event with the amazing team at Product Anonymous.
This Pitch Fest gave participants the opportunity to speak at the Leading the Product Conference and this year, the first-ever duo of speakers comprising of Steve Bauer and Jane Register were crowned the Judge’s Choice Award.
Jane and Steve likened their transformation journey over the past three years to the journey of Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In addition, Tasneem Gould was selected for this year’s People’s Choice Award speaking about when it’s time to start a revolution; a product revolution. Tasneem alluded to the fact that when done well, revolutions create lasting change for the better!
Both presentations were notable highlights of this year’s LTP DIGITAL 2021 | APAC.
Which city hosted the most events this year?
The Product Talks Sydney team, championed by Emily Chen, Marco Tebaldi and Tracy Collantes, have hosted 9 events across the year, which was the most hosted event from a singular chapter in 2021. There most notable events include ‘Avoiding Digital Product Failure’ with Amir Ansari, ‘Language Really Matters’ with Andi Mastrosavas, ‘Fireside Chat’ with Mina Radhakrishnan, and ‘A Practical Guide for Product Strategy’ with Franco Fagioli which had a whopping 163 attendees join us online.
Welcome Product Talks New York!!
We welcomed Product Talks New York to our family in 2021 and it is now the 13th chapter of our Product Talks series. We have hosted some amazing international speakers to present, including Steven Haines, JJ Rorie, Radhika Dutt, Adrienne Tan and Terri Soller.
We are happy that our newly found friends in the Northern Hemisphere have been gaining so much from this installation, learning about Dampening Imposter Syndrome and Creating Purposeful Professional Development Strategies to The Five Immutable Truths About Great Product Managers and Changing the World through Radical Products while Embracing Responsibility. We look forward to growing this community in 2022, especially with LTP DIGITAL 2022 | USA just around the corner.
Product Talks Singapore
In conjunction with IMDA, Product Talks has been able to grow the Product community in Singapore by organising a series of events to target those wanting to break into Product Management and those who want to accelerate into Product Leadership roles.
IMDA really wants to nurture the Product Management community in Singapore and we have loved teaming up with them to reach this goal.
The Product Talks Singapore community now stands strong with over 1120 members, and it is growing by the minute. Over the past 2 events, we have heard from 6 speakers and 3 recruiters. They shared their journey into the Product Industry, all having a common goal of helping those around them break into similar roles.
The most recent event, held on 10 December 2021, saw over 100 ambitious, Mid-to-Senior Product Managers join us online to hear from Product Leaders Anupama Hoon, Nina Xiao, and Michael Ong share their insights on ‘How to Accelerate into a Product Leadership Role?’.
We loved the energy and enthusiasm the 3 speakers brought to their presentations while sharing their journeys into Product Leadership. Nina shared “Great to meet other PM folks and learnt a great deal from the sharing and chatting” and Michael Ong was quick to post about his time with Product Talks on his LinkedIn. Here is an excerpt:
“Great time sharing at Product Talks Singapore with Anupama Hoon and Nina Xiao this week! It was the end of a long week on Friday evening but everyone brought in their energy and attention to stay engaged and learn together. Was happy we got to cheers together from different parts of the world :)
3 points stood out from stories shared by Anupama & Nina :
- Importance of developing your authentic leadership style
- Building Trust by giving feedback and alignment
- Help your team by teaching them how to fish vs fishing for them
For my story, I structured it around an impact map for product leadership to consider how we are designing for the other 90% and framing our personal WHY, WHO, HOW and WHAT that acts as a compass to help us navigate the journey.”
There will be 1 more upcoming Product Talks Singapore event on February 11, 2022 on ‘Building Product-Led Cultures’. Please spread the word to your networks to invite other Product Professionals to join the community.
Last Product Talks Event of 2021
Product Talks Auckland, in partnership with Product Tank, closed off the Product Talks 2021 line-up with ‘Let’s Talks Product Ops‘ on December 14, 2021. Product Talks Auckland’s chapter lead and host, Shipra Mahindra, wanted to share some words about this event.
“Product Ops is a new and emerging space which is all about enabling Product managers to do their role better. These could include a number of things like finding better ways to collect the right data, improving communication tools for product strategy, improving product planning / decision making processes, standardising career paths within the product organisation, etc.
We were lucky to have an amazing panel of three female leaders from various companies around NZ – Chardi, Bianca and Megan. And what I learnt from them is that Product Ops is being done differently in those companies based on the needs of the business. But one thing was common and resonated with me. If Product Ops is done well, no one in the organisation notices it. But if it’s not done well, there are fires everywhere. This speaks very much around the enablement and operational aspect of the function. It also needs to collaborate very tightly with Design Ops and Dev Ops where they exist.”
It is Product Party Time!
Last, but not least, we thoroughly enjoyed the Product Party for 2021.
Over 100 Product lovers gathered together for an afternoon session of celebration, collaboration, learning and fun.
We had networking sessions to get to know one another, an informative presentation from Product legend John Cutler, a fiery Q&A to delve into the topic “Can you have Product Led Growth without a Product Led Culture?”, miro board shenanigans, and a high-stakes Product Trivia with a big giveaway (the winners received an engagement workshop for their team with Nir Eyal and the runner up won a 1:1 session with John Cutler).
Here is something that the Q&A host and Product Anonymous Co-Founder, Liz Blink, shared about her experience talking with John Cutler at the event.
“I had the pleasure of chatting with John Cutler at the Product Party this month and asking him a varied number of questions from the audience.
I’ve been absorbing his work for a little while, and appreciate both his deep thinking on the topics we’re all tackling in product as well as his visual approach to externalising his thinking. It not only helps consolidate problems you’re grappling with yourself but really enables follow on discussions with peers.”
We couldn’t have done this without the support and help from our sponsor Amplitude and our friends at Product Anonymous, Product Mavens, Product Women and Product Book Club.
If you would like to be a volunteer or a sponsor for Product Talks in 2022, reach out to our team! The more the merrier, we say! We love bringing people together over the common passion for product and have loved collaborating without our partnerships this year.
We look forward to seeing what 2022 has in store for us. We hope you are as excited as we are! We wish you a very Merry Christmas and all the best heading into the New Year. See you in 2022!
