What shall we talk about?

Yesterday was ‘Mind the Product’ – a conference for product people at the Barbican and online.

Of course, it was a hugely polished affair with a wide selection of extremely interesting speakers. It absolutely reminded me of what I like about attending conferences.

A few highlights:

• Tim Hartford (‘the undercover economist’) picked out a few relevant topics from his books. A point he was trying to make about platforms vs products (paper vs printing press) could’ve been better connected to (e.g.) development tools and frameworks, but he made some good points about our inability to escape our current context, and the polarising effect of AI – making some peoples lives better and richer, and others worse and more boring.
• Nilan Peiris (above) gave a great summary of a decade at Wise and the incredible progress they’ve made. His example of simple metric (speed) but almost impossible execution (integrations with major national banks) and the need for incredible tenacity was brilliant. And his deep dive into the concept of autonomous teams was fascinating and useful for any of us trying to structure product and tech organisations. Also quote of the day: ‘If you aren’t in that state of existential crisis, you aren’t trying hard enough’.
• Susana Lopes (slides here) started with an honest recollection of the struggle to get to CPO and realisation it wasn’t what she wanted. Discovering that the job was mostly politics, updates, and people management, Susana became fascinated how to become a senior individual contributor and get back to doing product work. Today, she gave a really well researched (slightly ironic) playback of how that can be structured and managed, and what firms are doing.
• Marc Abraham popped out in shorts next to talk about ‘failing fast’. This was when we started to hear the phrase that would quickly become the mantra for the rest of the day: ‘as you will already know…’. Marc rounded up a few good examples and a couple of useful tools. I like the problem-solution description of ‘candy, vitamin and pain killer’. And I love the suggested technique of going back to research participants 24 hour later and seeing what they can remember.
• After lunch, Keij Adedeji, gave a remarkably honest account of her experience of becoming a CPO and the ‘gremlins’ of the reality of product life.
• Claire Woodcock gave a somewhat basic summary of machine learning.
• Randy Silver reprised the theme about product people getting on with other senior managers.
• The excellent Jane Austin talked about the relationship (sometimes broken) between product and UX.
• And finally Randeep Sidhu (NHS Covid app, Babylon) talked about product superheros. A very polished presentation that touched a wide variety of issues. Sometimes bizarre if honest, Randeep spent a couple of minutes talking about the realisation that humiliating his team in public was not a winning move.

Amongst the swag being handed out at the conference was a canvas bag bearing a variety of product slogans, such as ‘what problem are we trying to solve?’, ‘who is the customer?’.

These are good product questions. So, perhaps we should be able to answer them for the conference itself?

I’m not trying to detract from any of the speakers, who were excellent. But does it make sense to get so many people together and talk about these topics when product is now a reasonably well-defined discipline?

Of course, when Mind the Product (or rather, ProductTank) started out in 2010 with a bunch of people meeting at the back of a pub, it was social, the whole idea of ‘product’ was forming, people had a lot to learn and a lot to share. Heady times.

But who’s it for now? A lot of us have been in product for decades. We’ve read the blogs, thought the thoughts, faced the challenges, met a lot of people, attended a lot of parties and so on.

More or less every speaker was entertaining. But for me, the only really useful presentations were on the organisation of product teams. Susana in particular covered this in great detail, and where else do you really get to hear the reality of autonomous teams in company with the size and sophistication of Wise? Jane and Randy also some practical steps about bridging the UX divide and the importance of perception.

If I was new to product, I might be more interested in learning the basics or laughing at the politics, but it’s hard to suggest that this is a conference for people who are new to product. And – if that is who it’s for and the problem it’s trying to solve – a more structured syllabus would make sense.

Maybe I’ve been to too many of these things (or too few). And as I said, very slick: a great venue, well organised, good food and everything else made the day enjoyable. But could we do more when we collect this heady group of product people together?