NebraskaProduct 2018 | Building a Local Product Community
Product Management is a hard job. That’s no secret. If you find a good product manager, they’ll often make the role look natural and even effortless. But behind the scenes, it can be high stress and even isolating at times. PMs are working with a team of real humans with different (and often competing) interests. They have to keep an ear to the ground for changes in their market. They deal with leadership pressures and expectations. Through all that, they have to understand customer problems to drive key outcomes. Not to mention the 10 other unspoken expectations that I didn’t even mention.
Yet, most folks I know who do Product Management love it. They’re not looking to leave the craft any time soon. PMs that thrive often have one key advantage — a strong community and support system. A diverse community is critical in helping individuals to grow, conquer challenges, and enjoy their career.
There is a myriad of resources for connection in our day and age. Slack communities, Twitter, and product conferences are a few that come to mind. Yet, there’s something special about a consistent face-to-face community. If you live on a coast or in a major city, odds are you can find a product-focused community that meets in person often. But, when I started to search for that in Lincoln, Nebraska — I didn’t find anything that quenched that thirst. So I decided to do something about it.
Enter NebraskaProduct. For 2018, we spent the year creating a meetup-driven product community in our very own Good Life state. We are one year into this experiment and have over 300 members making up a growing community. The rest of this post will about two things:
- What I learned helping create and grow this community in 2018. I hope this can help others in non-traditional tech hubs spark their own communities.
- What’s coming next for NebraskaProduct in 2019. If you’re in the area, we’d love for you to get excited and get involved!
What we learned in 2018
Treat the community as a product.
You’re not going to knock it out of the park on day one. You’ll have to experiment, learn, and iterate to build a healthy and valuable community.
The most valuable thing early on was doing the right amount of discovery and research. That took the form of talking to other community organizers for tech-focused meetups. I reached out to communities like NebraskaUX.to learn how they got started. I wanted to know what they would have done differently in the beginning. I checked out other local groups that related to what we wanted to build but didn’t quite check all the same boxes. I wanted to make sure what we were going to build was unique and valuable for our area.
After that, I started reaching out to product people in the Nebraska area. I scoured LinkedIn to create a database of local PMs. I sent out a survey to see if folks would find value in the community and what they would want out of it. All this up-front effort was critical to our success in 2018. It helped us line up speakers, validate the need for the community, and find co-organizers.
Find yourself some partners.
This is the most critical piece of advice I can offer you if you’re trying to start anything. But this is especially true when building a community. Odds are that community management won’t be your full-time job. With that in mind, find at least one co-organizer as early as possible to help grow the community with you.
I was lucky enough to find Andrew and Matan early on. They were critical to a successful first year. There are so many details that go into making valuable experiences for a large community. It’s not easy to do alone. Life and work are full of seasons. Sometimes you’ll have a surplus of energy. Other times you’ll be drowning in deadlines for a challenging project. Co-organizers help each other keep the momentum rolling throughout those seasons. A diverse leadership team will bring diverse ideas and energy to the community.
Drive excitement for your first meetup.
You’ve validated interest, found some co-organizers, and are getting ready for the first event. This is the coming out party for the community. It’s important to drive lots of excitement and awareness for your first few events. It will take time, but there are a few levers you can pull early on. Find a hot new office that recently opened in your area to be a host. Or maybe there’s an exciting speaker you can pull for one of your first events. It could be as simple as getting a popular restaurant to cater for your first event. Luckily, Hudl had opened their new headquarters in Lincoln at the beginning of 2018. Local folks wanted to see the new office so we hosted our first event there which led to a great turnout.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with the format.
Our first couple of meetups were presentation heavy. We always had time to mingle before the event. But then everyone quietly settled down for a long presentation with slides. We’d wrap up with a Q&A session which always ended up being the most valuable part.
But one of the best experiences we had was a joint panel of designers and PMs from various local companies. They answered questions from a moderator and the crowd. It was interactive, genuine, and insightful.
This type of content leads to lots of post-meetup conversation and engagement. Encourage the attendees to build relationships while they’re there. Those relationships will last much longer than the hour-long presentation.
A few last tips.
Here are a few very tangible things I learned in the past year:
- If meetups are in the evening, food and drink are a must. Don’t make your attendees worry about grabbing a bite to eat if they’re coming straight from a long day at work. Beer and wine are great for the mingling time before the presentations start. But if you do provide alcohol, make sure there are non-alcoholic drinks available. It’s important to inclusive, even with food and drink choices.
- Use local companies and organizations as hosts and sponsors. If a company hosts, provides drinks, etc — they can use the night as a recruiting opportunity as well. This has worked well for us and makes the load of providing a good experience much lighter.
- When you’re looking for speakers, start with your own community. There’s going to be folks who have already created content they’re passionate about sharing. But, don’t be afraid to recruit well-known people to come out to a meetup or even give a talk through video chat.
- Make sure to vet the speakers and presentations that you’re scheduling beforehand. You want to ensure you’re giving the community quality content to come back to time after time. Coach your speakers to share genuine, personal insights from real-life examples. Avoid having the presentations be something you could find in a bunch of different Medium articles.
- Foster an inclusive community. We’ve seen is that people from all walks of their career join NebraskaProduct. Everyone from a PM who’s been doing it for a decade to new graduates who want to learn more about the craft. It’s our hope that everyone always feels welcome and walks away what they need for where they’re at in the journey.
Where our community is headed in 2019
We had a great first year and want to keep our momentum rolling in the new year. Here are a few ways we’re going to do that:
- We’re going to keep it fresh with new formats. We’ll experiment with book clubs, smaller pockets of community, and tactical workshops. We want these to foster relationships and opportunities for doing deeper learning together.
- We’re going to keep the momentum going with our larger meetups. These traditional events with a presentation, mingling, and Q&A have been a hit so far. In 2019, we’re going to keep lining up great speakers, experimenting with panels, and more.
- We’re going to keep learning and iterating in 2019. With all that said, there are lots of things we can do better. Have any tips for community building? Have an idea for a workshop we could run with the community? We’re all ears.
If you’re in the Lincoln or Omaha area and are interested in joining this growing family, please take a moment to fill this survey out: https://goo.gl/forms/Voqj3vGmt9Oj7t7Z2. We’d love to hear from you and have you join us in 2019: https://www.meetup.com/NebraskaProduct/
To wrap up, here are a few of my favorite moments from the year
