Mind the Product

One week in, and the clock is still ticking. ⏰ In case you missed it, on World Product Day, we launched our very first global virtual hackathon. This year, we wanted to go beyond talking about shipping… and actually ship. Solo or in a team, builders from every corner of the world are welcome. There's still time to register, check out the format, and find out what's up for grabs, spoiler: there's a cash prize. 👉 https://bit.ly/3RglmMZ A huge thank you to our sponsor novus.ai by Pendo.io for making this hackathon possible. We can't wait to see what you build, and we would encourage you to share the struggles, the breakthroughs, and everything in between. Take us along on the journey. #WorldProductDay #VirtualHackathon

The full #mtpcon London agenda is now live, and we're so excited to finally share it. But prices increase on Monday, so make sure to grab your ticket before then. Here's a taste of what's coming on June 16th at the Barbican: 🎤 Christian Idiodi (Partner · Silicon Valley Product Group) kicks off the day with a call to return product to its roots: invention, problem-solving, and disciplined creativity. In an age of AI, the edge belongs to product creators, not feature factories. 🏥 Ben Cook (Deputy Director of Product · NHS England) brings hard-won lessons from leading product at NHS, British Airways, and Sky, and shares what it really takes to drive change when the stakes are high and the systems run deep. 🤖 Dave Killeen (Field CPO, EMEA · Pendo) asks the uncomfortable question: when anyone can build, what actually makes a great product? Expect live demos and a few truths about where this is all heading. And that's only three sessions from a packed day of keynotes, talks, and conversations. 👉 https://bit.ly/3S8uDqD #mtpconLondon

#mtpcon London speaker spotlight 👉 Simonetta Batteiger 🎤 Don't be an a**hole. How you show up in product matters more than you think In a world of gen AI slop, sycophancy, and hallucinations, your biggest differentiators are trust, explicability, and reliability. Simonetta's talk is about how to operationalise trust in your product, in your team, and in the way you work — so you can feel genuinely proud of what you build and the impact you make. Another reason not to miss #mtpcon London this June! 🙌 📍 mtpcon London | Barbican | June 16 Less than 3 weeks to go, save your seat today 👉 https://bit.ly/3XNd5Qv #mtpcon #productmanagement

In this article, Sharat Priya shares how to recognise the moment a feature starts behaving like infrastructure, and why catching that shift early changes everything about how you build. The turning point is when a feature starts to behave like infrastructure. "What appears to be a simple feature from the outside actually requires the system to manage complex, persistent state over time, making it fundamentally a platform problem rather than a feature problem." Read the full article 👉 https://bit.ly/4e3O9x7 #ProductManagement #ProductStrategy

When did thinking stop counting as work? Barry O'Reilly makes the case that the real gift of AI isn't more output. It's getting back the time to actually marinate in hard problems the slow, wandering, unstructured thinking that produces your best ideas. "It's called thinking. It's called actually having space in your day to sort of marinate in these problems." Not in the one-hour innovation workshop, but on a walk, over a long lunch Those moments where your brain shifts from fast reactions to slow, deep thinking. Barry, Founder of Nobody Studios and author of Artificial Organizations, joined Lily Smith and Randy Silver on The Product Experience to talk about his new book, and covered why 85% of AI transformations fail, and what the ones that succeed actually do differently. 🎥 🎧 You can now listen/ watch the full episode 👉 https://bit.ly/4vaE6fn

I'm working on a piece for Mind the Product to provide some clarity on which roles and industries have been hit hardest by layoffs, what product people have learned from going through one, and the advice they'd pass on to anyone going through it right now. If you've been impacted by redundancies, recently or years ago, I'd love to hear from you. Anonymous if you'd prefer. Please DM on here or email me on louron.pratt@mindtheproduct.com if you'd like to get in touch.

#mtpcon London speaker spotlight 👉 Jonathan Evens 🎤 Building AI products at early stages vs global scale In his keynote, Jonathan will be sharing the similarities, the differences, the challenges, drawing on two examples from his own experience: 🔹 Launching AI mode personalisation in Google Search at Google DeepMind 🔹 Developing a civic sandbox at the Evens Foundation that uses a digital citizenry to mimic the cultural richness of human voters and strengthen democracy. Another talk not to be missed at #mtpcon London this June 👇 📍 mtpcon London | Barbican | June 16 Less than 3 weeks to go, save your seat today 👉 https://bit.ly/3XNd5Qv #mtpcon #productmanagement

"When the structure of the product does not reflect the structure of the domain, alignment breaks down — between teams, stakeholders, and ultimately, users." Andrii Z., Founding Product Designer at Kinertic, shares how he approached the design of a trade flow modelling system for carbon-intelligent supply chains, and why a canvas-based interface became a product decision, not just a design choice. Read the full article 👉 https://bit.ly/42YvXig

Our new podcast episode Why your AI strategy is failing with Barry O'Reilly drops tomorrow, don't miss it. "If you start with tools you are gonna fail. It's that simple. They don't tell you if their research is any good. They don't tell you if their emails are any good. They are just like, you need to use this tool or you're falling behind. It's designed to agree with you. 85% of gen AI projects fail, 83% of transformations fail because people make it about tools. What's really about is behaviour change." Lily Smith, Randy Silver

#mtpcon London speaker spotlight 👉 Charity Ibhadon 🎤 Product is hard. It should still be fun. 💡 Burnout in product is real, and it's more common than we admit. Charity's keynote is all about resilience: not the "just be stronger" kind, but building a truly sustainable way to work through the ambiguity, the pressure, the conflicting opinions and the constant change, without losing yourself along the way. Only 3 weeks to go till #mtpcon London | Barbican | June 16 Save your seat today 👉 https://bit.ly/3XNd5Qv #mtpconLondon #productmanagement