AT Product Diaries — Reflecting on #ProductCon 2023
Two Business Analysts, two Product Leads and a Developer walk into the Barbican Centre. Not to be confused with the start of a joke, this was how our Tuesday began last week when a group of us from Auto Trader went to this year’s ProductCon London.
ProductCon is the largest Product Management conference with over 2000+ in person attendees at the Barbican Centre in London and 10,000+ online viewers. There were a range of keynotes and panel discussions featuring product managers from a broad range of businesses and backgrounds.
As we did with Mind The Product 2022, we decided to pen our reflections on the conference and what we’ll takeaway into our roles at Auto Trader:
In the past few years that I’ve worked in product, I have always wanted to attend ProductCon in person and it did not disappoint! This was an excellent opportunity to feel part of a wider community and I picked up a lot of valuable insights from various speakers throughout the course of the day.
One of the talks really stood out for me and this was Saying No With Confidence — The Customer Centric Way by Subhayu Ghosh. As a Product Manager (PM), I’m often having to juggle various perspectives, ideas and requests from across the business and this talk helped me to pinpoint the how to better identify what is a priority and where to simplify things, so that I can make the best decision for my target users.
Rachael Poole — Product Lead (LinkedIn)
My favourite talks from this year’s ProductCon were Yi-Wei Ang’s ‘Have Courage: How to Do the Hard Things as a Product leader’ and Christine Siu’s talk ‘Go Global With Your Product’. Christine talks about ‘walking in your customers shoes’ to get deep into building an understanding of the market they operate in and tailoring a product solution to their needs. She also stressed the importance of backing decisions with facts and data. These are things I’ve tried to double down on during my last few projects so it was really valuable to her Christine dig into these points.
Yi-Wei talked about the importance of courage in building products and innovating for customers. That could be courage to not know the answer, do the customer centric thing or pull the plug. As someone earlier in my product career journey, often feeling outside of my comfort zone when working on new products and projects, it was energising to hear a product leader speak with conviction on this topic. I would have liked to hear more about product managers working in cross-functional development teams with developers, designers and analysts, as the talks seemed to miss this key role of a PM out.
Outside of the talks, it was fantastic to spend some quality time with my Auto Trader colleagues and meet product leaders at other companies, feeling part of a supportive product community.
Callum Barker-Nicol — Business Analyst (LinkedIn)
ProductCon was a fantastic event to get a real insight into the world of product. The talks contained variety ranging from how to scale a product to an international level, to 3 steps on unleashing the power of inclusion in the workplace. The talks would go into detail on how to really capture the consumer needs and how product development should be solution led, not problem led. I remember the Chief Product Officer (CPO) for TIER Bikes, going into detail on the power of focus. How 20% of customers can unlock 80% of growth ambition. There was also a panel discussion on the future of AI in product management which was truly relevant given the popularity of Chat GPT.
What I loved the most is the opportunity to meeting product people from all over, you could really feel the sense of the product community when networking with people from the likes of Amplitude, Product School and Microsoft. Overall, it was a wonderful event and I look forward to attending in the future.
Yahya Patel — Business Analyst (LinkedIn)
In retrospect, perhaps as a developer I was an imposter at this conference. Having attended only tech conferences in my 20+ year career, I was keen to get a glimpse of product side of the software creation, to learn about latest in product thinking and to hear from industry experts on how they practice the ever-evolving discipline.
Alas…
I found some of the content interesting, but overall this conference was a let-down. Several talks focussed on Product Led Growth (PLG) so perhaps a marketing or a sales professional would have found them more relevant. None of the talks touched on the dynamic or experience of a product development team or project. A few felt like sales pitches. And some were just derivative.
However, there was one stand out for me: “Have Courage: How to Do the Hard Things as a Product Leader” was fresh and honest and it was delivered engagingly by Yi-Wei Ang, CPO at Delivery Hero.
Emina Cholich — Principal Developer (LinkedIn)
This was my first Product conference and whilst I enjoyed it, I had a mixed experience.
Firstly, it was great to see so many delegates from a wide range of industries, demonstrating just how much product has grown as discipline. There was a sense of community which I appreciated especially since in my experience, Product has often been one of the smaller teams in the office, whose job is misunderstood. But at last, I found my people!
Through some of the case studies presented by the speakers, it was valuable to get a glimpse into how others go about solving customer problems. The talk from the very charismatic Subhayu Ghosh (VP of Product & Growth at Tier), which included conducting deep problem analysis, to drive solutions that deliver deep value to customers — was my favourite. It echoes my approach to product and provides you with an arsenal of artefacts to back you up when ‘saying no to stakeholder’ which was the main theme of the talk.Likewise, I really took a lot from hearing about Yi-Wei Ang’s (Delivery Hero) journey into product through his talk on courage. Rightly or wrongly, as a PM it is often expected of you to have all the answers, all the data, all the time — so it was reassuring to hear that he has also had to go on a journey getting comfortable, with being uncomfortable.
The panel discussion on Chat GTP felt relevant given the recent popularity, but I was surprised by how AI as a concept, was discussed — as if entirely new.
I had hoped to come away with new perspectives, ways of thinking and concepts that would inspire me — but I was disappointed in that respect.
Credit to the live band that kept us entertained between the talks — they were amazing.
A’ida Brown — Product Lead (LinkedIn)
We’re super thankful to ProductCon for hosting the event and Auto Trader for making it possible for us to attend together. We look forward to attending more conferences together throughout 2023.
