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Mind the Product

Guest Post

Building for change: When transformation and product management meet

Product Development

What are product features? Definition, examples, and 5 types

B2B product management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Building Product Teams

Business Strategy

Data Driven Product Management

Digital Transformation

Diversity and Inclusion

Minimum Viable Product

OKRs

Prioritisation

Product Design

Product Research

Product Development Process

Product Ethics

Product Discovery

Product Leadership

Product Management Career

Product Strategy

Stakeholder Management

🌎 <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/world-product-day/" style="color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;">Happy World Product Day!</a> Be sure to celebrate product, yourself, and your peers today! 🎉

Why teams often struggle with OKRs: A conversation with Jeff Gothelf

Lessons from my first year as a Prod Ops Manager

How Google makes AI work at Enterprise scale – Miku Jha (Director, AI/ML and Generative AI, Google Cloud)

5 ways to invent and simplify as an AI/ML product manager

Louron Pratt

<p>ProductTank organiser <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/benfwirtz/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Benjamin Wirtz</a></span> gives us a sneak peek of what the product scene is like in Sydney Australia.</p>
<h2>What is it that motivates you to run ProductTank meetups?</h2>
<p>Product Management is still poorly understood in most companies down under. The people who ultimately manage product managers often have no experience in the role and can offer little guidance, so we decided to bring the community together every month or so to share their experiences and best practices they discovered. All the talks are quite practical, so people can apply what they learned the next day and build better products.</p>
<h2>Who plays an important part in Sydney’s ProductTanks?</h2>
<p>There are loads of people who support our <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/producttank-about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ProductTank</a></span> but really, it’s the senior product people in Sydney who attend our events and share their lived experiences that help to make it what it is.</p>
<h2>How many members does your ProductTank have?</h2>
<p>2300</p>
<figure style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/os-wXeag61h9ZI4RjxY9gyMEnx2BxQwfqwqHbYTPYyFt5YSAHu_5DJrLd0u08lxF5K2THkEtL5RHYI_SSkC43GkQwkThtHMDtPA-tm3u2kfE2ZMbAAohgJK8TsyLjubQ7zCBuaHS" alt="World Product Day header picture " width="874" height="493" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">A meetup group header picture in Sydney every year at World Product Day. Taken in 2019.</figcaption></figure>
<h2>How many ProductTanks have there been in Sydney to date?</h2>
<p>When it comes to event planning, we had an amazing 21 events to date. Many of the big tech companies like Atlassian, hipages, IRESS and Xero have hosted us in the past (and sponsored food as well as drinks). Other companies with product teams like Macquarie, Arq and BlueChilli have been involved as well.</p>
<h2>What can you tell us about Sydney’s Product Community?</h2>
<p>Sydney&#8217;s product maturity is lagging behind the UK and Silicon Valley, but we managed to create a few breakout successes like Atlassian and Canva. The challenge for most tech companies is that they are usually quite founder-driven and don&#8217;t make the transition to letting product managers drive product strategy bottom-up instead of just focusing on execution. This is a trend we will have to change if we want to see more unicorns growing far beyond the billion-dollar mark.</p>
<h2>Which talks have been a hit?</h2>
<p>One of our most popular sessions was a live job interview — I asked Steen Andersen, who is a director of product management at Atlassian, some of the questions he was asked during his interview and we discussed the answers. The community gets little visibility of what is going on behind the scenes, especially with product leadership roles, so it was invaluable to shine some light on the topic.</p>
<h2>How does ProductTank help product people?</h2>
<p>Invaluable connections have been made — people have found mentors, new jobs or winning ideas that took products or careers to the next level.</p>
<h2>Can you share any fun facts about Sydney?</h2>
<p>Until 1961, Sydney had one of the largest tram networks in the world. The politicians dissembled the network in favour of allowing more cars on the road – until they realised that cars don&#8217;t scale as well, so in 2019 we have opened our first new tram line with plans for new lines. Not a very lean experiment, but it sounds like the right lessons were learned some 60 years later…</p>
<figure style="width: 1600px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/LRfR2kOX-8KBqJ8TLdTDnwyK0_7cQy0buClz80QVYVBSJa-EnQkoT2b5L1p4MsYUHpHT2H65yvODJN4EDTU49vzqvmBvif2Qsay3Drb5-La2OMHWamUhXOBpmUUD-5-NLIOqxwar" alt="Tramline in Sydney " width="1600" height="1065" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Sydney&#8217;s new tramline (Image: Shutterstock)</figcaption></figure>
<h2>Enjoy more from ProductTank</h2>
<p>ProductTanks are informal meetups, <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">created by Mind the Product</a>, to bring local product people together and to enable speakers to share amazing product insights. Today we have ProductTanks in more than 200 cities across the globe and there’s probably one near you.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/producttank-about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Learn more about ProductTank</a> – find your local meetup, explore more ProductTank content, see the latest ProductTank news, and discover ways to get involved!</p>

core/freeform

Product Management Community

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Unusual business in the product discovery stage by Kristian Collin Berge

The good, bad, and ugly of OKRs by Jenny Herald

What we learned at #mtpEngage Hamburg 2022

Robotics and society by Cynthia Yeung

Building an industry product by Nick Eales

How to encourage clicks without shady tricks by Paul Boag

Mindset – Being Empowered To Manage Your Stakeholders With Papa Akuffo

Mindset – Blaming the Framework, Core Team Communication, and Remote Working With Matt LeMay

Stories from the ProductTank Community – Sydney

Louron Pratt

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