Does your city have a DPM meetup?
Does your city have a DPM meetup?
An open call for IRL community-building + offer to help out with it
Since May 2023, Caroline Zimmerman and I have been running London's Data Product Management meetup with great success. What started as a gathering of ~15 folks has now turned into a community of over 250 data and AI product folks meeting regularly every few months.
I really love these events. Working as a PM can be very lonely. We rarely work closely with other PMs, and almost never the way that e.g. data scientists might work together. There's little to no equivalent to pair programming, peer reviews, joint problem-solving etc. Plus, being in a leadership role, you often need to be careful with what you say to others.
And you just can't beat the in-person experience. On the one hand, you have the Zoom fatigue that comes with spending so many hours a day in meetings, user interviews, customer calls, and technical working sessions. On the other, LLMs are having the unfortunate side-effect of making me question half the stuff I come across on social media. Lastly, especially with asynchronous communities on places like Circle and Slack, you look away for one second (or one week, or one month...) and suddenly there's more unread messages than you'll ever have hope to keep up with.
There’s some brilliant online communities out there for folks working in data, product, and even the intersection of the two (shout out to the DPLC), and they clearly work great for lots of people. Maybe I’m more Zoom- and Slack-fatigued than the average PM, but I have struggled to be consistent in participating and getting value out of these over the past ~7-8 years. I have, however, gotten tons of value out of tech-enabled IRL communities (shout out to London Rock Climbers)
Side note: My prediction about how LLMs will impact society outside of job automation is that we'll see a return and re-emphasis on local, IRL communities. That's partly because LLMs are resulting in a lot more disinformation (or just garbage) content, but also partly because of the direction social media has been on for a few years now. We crave authenticity, but also to escape the pernicious trap of push notifications, red dots, and doomscrolling.
Anyway, back to data product management meetups. Since the London DPM meetup started in May of '23, two more have launched, and another is in the works:
Montréal, Canada: Last year, Arielle Rolland and I got chatting about her starting a DPM meetup in Montréal after hearing about the London one on my Experiencing Data podcast episode. After a quick call together, Arielle set up the Montréal DPM meetup with great success, and they recently held their 3rd meetup. Next one happening on Oct 16!
Barcelona, Spain: When I've moved from London to Barcelona earlier this year, I knew I had to do the same thing here - and I'm pleased to report that we had 30+ folks attend Barcelona's first Data & AI PM meetup!
Dublin, Ireland: Most recently, my colleague Sagar Nikam has started preparing for the launch of Dublin's DPM meetup! Fill in this form if you’re in Dublin and interested 😊
Open offer to all
Open offer: If you're thinking of starting a meetup for Data & AI PMs, I'd love to help out.
Besides the DPM meetups I've organised over the past couple years, I've been organising events for over a decade ranging from debate tournaments with hundreds of participants to bouldering social meetups
Here's how I can help:
Help garner interest: Share my google form template that I've used for Barcelona (currently being used to gauge interest in Dublin 👀)
Help with setting up the first event: I've made image templates on Canva for the 4 different formats I use (Luma banner, Luma logo, Luma social preview, LinkedIn post)
Connect you to folks in my network who'd be good to attend your event, either as audience or as speakers (if you want to organise talks/panels, not just networking/roundtables)
Advice around meetup formats based on size and audience profile
Let’s create a free, virtual community to supplement the IRL meetups: What I love about the meetups is that they're face to face. Personally I'm very online-community-fatigued (doesn't help that I'm part of so many...), and the only ones I'm currently active on right now are the ones that are there to supplement the two IRL communities I'm part of. I want to try the same for the London, Barcelona, Montreal, and Dublin meetups, where we can have a combination of location-specific channels for folks to connect in between meetups, as well as topic-specific channels like "#data-mesh" or "#mlops" or "#job-ads"
"Alright, what's in it for you?" I hear you wonder. It's a good question. To an extent you can ask the same question for the two meetups I run, or the DPM podcast I've started co-hosting, or this newsletter 😆
In truth, I really enjoy this stuff. I think product thinking is sorely needed in data teams, and I'm excited to spend my free time reading, writing, and chatting about how we can do it best. I remember how much it sucked to be a Data PM ~6-7 years ago and feeling like an impostor when comparing myself to all the B2C app and B2B SaaS PMs I was meeting or learning from in courses, meetups, and books.
On the more selfish side, it's a way for me to reach more people. For example, I'd ask meetup hosts to help 'scout' for great guests to invite to the DPMiA podcast, or to refer anyone who'd benefit from my writing or teaching. I'm considering doing more freelance work in the future (not yet), which would also benefit from being connected to more folks around the globe 😊 But I very much see all that as a win-win, rather than something extractive.
DPM meetup FAQs
I worry that it's a lot of effort
Thankfully it can be quite lightweight, especially if you can partner with companies willing to host. In London, we've rotated across a few different offices from companies willing to offer up their space and pay for a few drinks and snacks. If your company is willing and able to host the first meetup, that may make things simpler. Other times, there might be someone else who's even more willing and able.Will enough people show up?
Quality > quantity. Some of our best meetups were <15 people in attendance. Even when we get more folks to join, I usually split us into small groups to get the benefits of a small gathering: Everyone gets to contribute, and folks feel more like they're part of a conversation rather than presenting to an audience.What's the right format?
There's no one-size-fits all here. It will depend a lot on three dimensions:How many people are in attendance
What roles those people have (e.g. are they all Data PMs or similar? or lots of technical folks too?)
How experienced everyone is. An event with lots of early career or student attendees may be better as a presentation or panel event, while an event with more senior folks would be better as a roundtable, for example
In London and Barcelona, we’ve so far focused on creating small roundtables (/group therapy) discussions, instead of the more traditional format of presentations or panels. At first it was one group of 10-15 people, then we split into two groups, and most recently we had 5 or 6 groups of 4-8 people each. But we may mix things up and add some presentations at some point as well!
We’ve also played around with time of day: Usually the meetup in after work, but we’ve also had a breakfast meetup (and to be honest, I’d love to have more of those - lots of folks can’t make the evening due to childcare duties, but can commute 1h earlier than usual more easily).Who's the right target audience?
Here's the mix of profiles that's made for brilliant discussions in my London and Barcelona meetups:Data & ML product managers (duh)
Folks in other roles implicitly doing the work of a DPM (e.g. business analyst, data science manager, analytics manager, head of data)
Non-data product or engineering folks who often work with data teams (e.g. engineering manager, software PM)
I want to start a meetup, but my company can't / won't sponsor it
You can look to other members of your local community who could host (i.e. provide a venue and some drinks or snacks), or meet at a coffee shop, bar, or restaurant. Especially if you start off as a small group, you don't necessarily need a private venue, though personally I prefer them as they're more quiet - but so are some cafes, for example.How can I get more advice?
Together with Arielle, we’ll start putting together more resources to help others host their own DPM meetups. I’m also happy to jump on a call with you and chat about it 😃
Hit me up if you're thinking of setting one up and wondering about the effort, logistics, or anything else. I'd love to see more local DPM meetups pop up, and hopefully I can come visit too 😊
Off topic: I’ll be launching my course in the coming days!
The tl;dr syllabus is:
Value Mapping: Strategies and tactics for quantifying the commercial, operational, reputational, and environmental benefits of data and AI initiatives
Opportunity Discovery: How to quickly identify & pitch the highest value opportunities for data and AI initiatives that can move the needle
If you’re interested and would like to know more, I’d love to get your input on this quick 1-minute survey.