Farewell #ProductBeer and Hello #ProductTonic
#ProductBeer wrapped up it’s last meetup on Thursday 28th November 2019 and we were back out in open space thanks to Zenos Schmickrath @ Hmlet who kindly hosted us. Since the unconference in October, we held meetups in Jakarta, Bandung, Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Singapore.
When we (Raven Chai, Khai Seng, Kwok Chung, Lena Quek, Anh Han, Zaizhi Cheng, Daniel Szuc, Leon Wong and myself) first met in August 2013, the idea was simple — to build a safe space for topics around product work with startups, enterprise and government . The experiment lasted 4 sessions and seeded the foundation around our values, practices and platforms we would each work on.
When we regrouped in 2015, Wen Huang and Robert Huber (and a few of the first group) suggested that we should get back together around beers and our passion in product topics which lead to #ProductBeer’s first official session in August 2015. It’s been quite a ride many years later with 106 meetups in 8 countries since we started this conversation! This period of time saw folks like Soh Ping Ting, Zaizhi Cheng, Yi Chiao Cheng, Wei Kong, Mohammed Pitolwala and Molly Kirk step up with facilitating the sessions.
A few groups like ProductCamp Singapore, PM Huddle KL, Product PH, MVP Jakarta, Product Tank Singapore/Jakarta/Bangkok/Hong Kong also started to emerge in the region. (At last count, we are tracking 25 product related communities and 73 other design, tech, agile, marketing communities!)
In early 2018, a gathering of like-minded product community organisers in the region suggested a conference would be a good time. Having helped co-organise three UXSG conferences, I wasn’t ready to commit to a full scale event and neither was anyone else willing to step up. An alternative proposal of retreats and unconferences felt more appealing and manageable.
Product Tonic was thus created with our first Bali Retreat in April 2018, Yilan in April 2019 and Unconference Oct 2018 and Oct 2019. These 4 events generated 35 topics on community, integration, meaningful work, trust, leadership, product teams and giving back. Folks like Tomas Li, Huishan Lim, Jia En Koh, Chia Chen Sung, Sander Veraar, Mike Dickinson, Colin Pal, Mulyadi Oey, Jeremy Ong, Kwok Chung Yew and Soh Ping Ting all pitched in to help make the events possible.
With the two groups (ProductBeer and ProductTonic) now at 419 people, it’s become increasingly challenging to navigate the web we have helped create! We have many touch points (Email, multiple WhatsApp groups, thankfully one instance of Meetup.com, Trello, LinkedIn, no Facebook!) and it’s a slight nightmare to navigate if you are a first time participant. I made the decision recently to fall back to email as the singular touchpoint until we design a better way to communicate.
If our 2018 theme was around Community and 2019 around Trust (& Integration), then 2020 would be one around Giving Back (and our Impact). Lessons from time in Tech, Agile, UX and Product community of practices over the last 20 years has helped to sharpen the requests for other community builders and the help we need to lift the level of conversations in Southeast Asia with meaningful dialogue.
Moving forward in 2020
Regular Local meetups: #ProductTonic (Face to face OR Online)
Annual Events
- Product Tonic Unconference Online (October)
- Product Tonic Retreat (April)
Side Projects
- Who are the Product People in Southeast Asia (work in progress)
- Who are the Community Builders in Southeast Asia (work in progress)
- Community Builders Campfire
See you around the local meetups and events!
Cheers,
Michael Ong
Product Team Tonic
