November 4, 2017 was a chilly morning, and I was excited to go to Roosevelt Island for the first time. Where was I headed? To the new Cornell Tech campus to attend the 2017 New York Product Conference.
Bringing in product leaders from well-known organizations such as Jet.com, Trello, and The New York Times, this all-day conference focused on how product managers can master their craft by better understanding users.
“When we’re introducing new technologies, we’re shifting user attention from one thing to another”
– Naveen Selvadurai, Partner at Expa
“Whatever you build, people will use it in a different way than you’d expect.”
– Brian Smith, VP Marketing at UserTesting
“Worst answer you can give on who your product is for – everyone!”
– Nikita Dyer, Product Lead, Trello at Atlassian
“No test is going to be perfect or correct. Have the ability to look at the problem and constantly iterate.”
– Thor Ernstsson, CEO at Alpha
“To create organizational change, you need buy-in from a very high level for a very long time.”
– David Lipkin, Founder of Method
“Listen to customers but also make judgements. People too often rely just on customers to avoid conflict.”
– Sarah Bernard, VP Product at Jet
“Doing less is better. Be very deliberate about the features you want to ship.”
– Camilla Velasquez, VP, Product & Marketing at Justworks
“Make sure products both solve user problems and have a sustainable business model.”
– Miles Begin, Head Of User Experience at Updater
“Qualitative, quantitative, intuition – leverage them 1/3 each to learn about users.”
– Christina d’Avignon, CEO at Ringly
“Setting up the right team and processes, plus defining what product management is to your stakeholders is key to executing at legacy organizations used to doing things in a certain way.”
– Alex Rainert, Head of Product & Design at The New York Times
For an in-depth look at the day’s various sessions, check out Brent Tworetzky’s recap of the conference.
I recently had the chance to experience a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – Synergy Global Forum’s A Master Class in Disruption conference at New York City’s Madison Square Garden.
This two-day conference gathered world leaders and experts onto one stage to discuss how new technologies, innovations, and strategies are causing disruption and bringing forth a new world. Some of the well-known icons on stage included Sir Richard Branson, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jack Welch, Steve Forbes, Simon Sinek, Malcolm Gladwell, and Guy Kawasaki. With over 7,000 participants in attendance, it was the “blockbuster event” to attend!
Here were the highlights and recaps from the various speakers.
In his talk, Guy Kawasaki remarked that working for Steve Jobs was difficult, but it helped him to grow and become a better business person. Here are the lessons in disruption he learned from Steve Jobs:
Steve Forbes spoke about the guiding principles for success and lessons business leaders can learn from ancient leaders:
In his talk, Malcolm Gladwell spoke about weak link vs. strong link organizations. Some food for thought:
Jordan Belfort spoke about how sales isn’t just for sales people—it’s for everybody. Key takeaways:
One world describes Gary Vaynerchuk’s morning session: electrifying. He spoke about what got him to where he is today (his parents) and the things he’s learned in the process:
According to Daniel Goleman, EQ is key to leadership and needs to be actively practiced. Key insights:
Simon Sinek focused his talk on how businesses should focus on playing the infinite (not finite) game. In other words, you aren’t trying to beat your competition—you’re trying to outlast them. Here are his tips on what’s needed to build an infinite organization:
This line sums up the key takeaway from the session:
“Screw it. Let’s do it!”
Here were the resources mentioned by the speakers throughout the conference:
Rachel Fairbanks, Product Manager at Viacom, recently shared her tips to user test for success at the Product School in NYC. Here are the key takeaways from her user testing session.
