My Thoughts on Product at Heart 2023
If you’ve been following my blog or social media accounts lately, you probably already know that Product at Heart took place from June 28–30.
Since I wrote a few weeks ago about why I was bursting with excitement in the lead-up to the event, I figured I couldn’t leave you hanging. In this post, you’ll find a quick recap of how it all went. Spoiler alert: It was an exciting, exhausting, inspiring, and overall amazing experience.
Wait a minute—what is Product at Heart? If this is the first time you’re hearing about this conference I co-organize especially for curious product people, learn more about Product at Heart here.
And without further ado, here are my thoughts on the 2023 inaugural event.
Everything went pretty smoothly!
Of course, as organizers we always see the 100 little things that aren’t going as planned, but there were no major glitches. And the attendee feedback so far has been super positive, both in the qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys. (We are product people at heart, after all, so we love our qualitative and quantitative data!)
Going indie gave us a lot of freedom (and responsibility)
I mentioned in my previous post that this was our first year running Product at Heart as an indie conference. This gave us a lot of freedom and it meant that decisions were easier to make because there was no one else to approve or reject them. But with great freedom, as the expression goes, comes great responsibility. We were aware of the fact that we bore total responsibility for the entire experience, whether that was for attendees, sponsors, vendors, support staff, volunteers, or speakers. While this meant we had to make a million little decisions (which was hard), it also meant we could do unique things like asking Sarah Plochl to open the conference with a spoken word performance inspired by Derek Sivers’s “How to Like People.”
We ♥️ our branding
There’s not a whole lot to say here, other than the fact that we were so thrilled with how our branding turned out. It was truly magical to see it printed on signs, rollups, and stickers splashed all over the massive Kampnagel venue.
I loved having lots of (short but sweet) conversations with other product people
It was SO.MUCH.FUN to hang out with other product folks. Everywhere I turned I could easily get pulled into an intriguing conversation. But of course I could only stick around for so long before I had an organizer duty to attend to. So if we saw each other and didn’t get to have the in-depth conversation you were hoping for, let’s find another occasion to meet and talk!
The good vibes were palpable
When Arne and I made the decision to co-organize Product at Heart, we thought about the kind of people we wanted to attract (as speakers, attendees, volunteers, etc.). The qualities that mattered most to us were: curious, diverse, friendly human beings. And based on all of the people I’ve met and all the stories I’ve heard, this seems to have been the case. Only good vibes.
Curious to learn more? You can do that here!
We’ve already started sharing conference content, so you can learn more about the event. Videos from each of the presentations will be coming out in the coming months and will be shared in our video archive.
Product at Heart (main conference)
Leadership Forum
Workshops
Oh, and by the way, if you want to join us next year, we’ll be doing it again from September 11–13, 2024! Watch this space or follow me on social media to find out when tickets go on sale.