Product Gin & Tonic Retreat 2018 — Debrief and What’s Next ?

*this post was shared to the Bali retreat group on April 26th 2018

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ― Margaret Mead

WOW! What a retreat that turned out to be ! I hope you enjoyed yourselves and seeing the various check-ins from Wisnu, Aditi, Francois, Casper, Ceci & Dan+Jo on Whatsapp and LinkedIn, it looks like there is a lot to unpack in the coming months!

After the retreat, I followed Nick’s advice to think about what’s next and how to ensure that all the energy we have harnessed isn’t lost to the day to day. Here’s my reflection.

How do you feel?

I am excited and glad that enough people now have a shared understanding of what this collective community (of communities) is about and could take an active step towards the future in South East Asia (and beyond!).

Sad that the retreat is over and didn’t get a chance to talk to all the community organisers in depth. Will be organising a check-in May 11th before flying off to US for 6 weeks!

Mad that I didn’t extend stay in Bali till Sunday! Found a lovely villa in Lovina all to ourselves and could stay there if internet wasn’t so bad!

Excited about what’s next for the community in the years ahead and personally about the upcoming 6 weeks cycling the US Pacific Coast!

What Happened?

Product Gin & Tonic Retreat in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia on 19th to 21st April 2018 brought together 43 product people from Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Spain, South Africa & Singapore.

We spent first day in deep conversations about conditions for product success and collectively found common themes to spend deep dive topics on.

• Changing Culture (by setting things on fire)
• Scaling Product Teams
• Build Better Relationships + Make Meaningful Something
• Building Product Community in SEA (and beyond)

During the days, we had lots of conversations from our collective knowledge about product teams, our stories in success (and failures) to form bodies of knowledge to continue the conversations in the years ahead.

What did you learn?

Majority are engaged on practices to apply to their work and not many are thinking of the wider implications of decisions that impact the world and society (yet).

Waste as a topic was covered interestingly four different ways. In organisations, teams, community and personal action.

Setting fire (to rid old ways of work) and scaling (to grow) was brought up.

That these two themes were in the same space was intriguing!

The other two themes of Making meaning of our work and community to support and nurture learning saw about 15 participants engaged in the discussions. The spaces spelled “GO” (a sign we are doing things right?)

Open space continues to surprise in both community and client work!

How does this relate to the real world?

After 5 years involved in community (Agile, UX, Product), it’s amazing to see the threads overlap, converge, diverge and meet the people who might contribute to the next 5 years in community.

Excited that Mike Dickinson is taking steps towards working together (have to thank Lisa Matthews for introduction!) and that many others are likewise thinking about it.

Sincerely believe that with invitation, that creates a genuine opportunity for engagement and value creation together.

What if?

… the different communities of practices worked together to think of the larger programs of work and conversations needed to contribute to life long learning via communities of practice, social causes and world/local issues.

What next?

Remember the retreat in a short video https://youtu.be/eIxqTVIxwLA or photos [photos link removed for privacy] (Thank you everyone who shared the moments!)

1) Have your own debrief (video link)!

• How do you feel ?
• What happened ?
• What did you learn ?
• How does this relate to the real world ?
• What if ?
• What next ?

Encourage you to find your first pair from day 1 and have a debrief chat in the next two weeks.

2) For those interested in Community next steps (and in Singapore) — Dinner on May 11th.

3) Encourage different community organisers to also plan activities towards a larger conversation on August 18th (a full day online unconference) that Colin & Michael are planning.

4) Stay in touch via Whatsapp and Facebook.

5) Interested to write? Here’s a Medium Publication that might be of interest. https://medium.com/product-team-tonic (freshly baked from the oven where I’ll be posting more about the design of this retreat and the back story). Give a shout if you like to be an Editor or Writer!

Best Regards,

Michael Ong

p.s. Check out the timeline that got us here

[Link Removed for timeline details]

*This is a series of ongoing conversations with #ProdMgmt community organisers from [ #ProductBeer #PMHuddle (Malaysia) #ProductTank (Singapore, Jakarta & Bangkok) #ProductPH (Philippines) #LTPConf (Australia)] + Product Gin & Tonic Retreat 2018 participants