From Hackathons To Product Conference? WHAT?!?

As a person most well-known for organizing hackathons, I’m often asked how I got involved in the NY Product Conference.  It started via Dan Storms- a Cornell alum I met over a decade ago at a campus career fair. The acquaintance grew to collaboration and friendship.

A few years ago, Dan and his boss at the time, Brent Tworetzky (new to NYC after many years in the Bay Area), were discussing the community, the skills sharing - or lack thereof- for product managers in NYC. They ultimately decided on an MVP conference to test assumptions.  This is where I enter. Having organized several conferences, we set up a break-even budget, used borrowed space, confirmed our speakers, and launched. <I think this is called bootstrapping> The 2016 MVP sold out within weeks. In 2017 we moved to a larger venue and grew 40% in size, again the conference sold out. In 2018 we moved to The Times Center, a 400 seat professional conference venue in the heart of Manhattan. <wow, even we are impressed by this space>  Here we are in 2019 planning the fourth iteration.

The link between hackathons and the product conference? It’s all education…teaching, sharing…it’s community, tribe, networking. It is specific, focused, serving a need in an efficient, impactful, accessible manner.

I strive for quality content to level-up as an organizer <hello Priya Parker-Art of Gathering> and I know how hard it can be to find truly worthwhile, high caliber role models in my field that are willing to share their expertise; what makes them exemplary in their field.  The NY Product Conference is an opportunity to provide tactical, substantial take-a-ways for Product people to ratchet up. Brent and Dan run the Product teams at their respective companies, they source the speakers, vet the content, and set the vision.

The small aspect of the first MVP conference felt intimate and cozy. It was as if you were invited to an exclusive gathering to get up-close and personal to inspiring PMs and role models.  Though much grander, the capacity at The Times Center feels right, large enough to accommodate new attendees, small enough for meaningful engagement between speakers, attendees, and sponsors. So this is our home for November’s conference.

Bye bye panels and hello keynotes!  With twenty minute windows, our speakers’ content is crisp, concise, and on point with the theme: Skills Building.  By sharing knowledge and lessons learned, attendees will learn how to expand their impact as a product leader. Through user insights, business model innovation, social impact, and new product interfaces the range of speakers from a breadth of industries have all prepared original content. Keeping with our tradition of audience interaction, each keynote is followed by moderated Q&A.

Pecha Kucha are another addition to the agenda! These are presentations formatted in 20 slides with 20 seconds per slide. The PKs provide us the opportunity to highlight up and coming product managers. (I love this!) While I’m behind the scenes with logistics and structure, Dan and Brent lead the vision, content, and presenters. We have a new partner this year too- Tami Reiss- undertaking the Pecha Kucha speakers and presentations.

That’s the origin story,

Ami