Stories From the ProductTank Community – Hong Kong [Mind the Product]
Organiser Amanda Lam tells us about her ProductTank in Hong Kong, where, despite Product Management still being in its infancy, the community is vibrant and keen to connect – in fact, on occasion, events have to be extended to allow for all the conversations!
What motivates you to run ProductTank meetups?
For me, ProductTank provides an opportunity to advocate product management in local communities, and get to know people with a similar background.
Who plays an important part in Hong Kong’s ProductTanks?
Aby Kwan, Rioma Kam, Melanie Chan and Cecily Yam are our core organiser team members.
Aby is resourceful in terms of finding venues and sponsors while Rioma contributes a lot in terms of topic suggestions, venue alignment and hosting events. Melanie and Cecily have rich industry connections and help us out in sourcing speakers from time to time.
We also have active volunteers like Leonardo Lee and Robby Emmert who have helped out on various event logistics.
How many members does your ProductTank have?
We have 1250 members and have held 17 meetups. Currently, we don’t have fixed venues. Historically, we hosted our events in co-working spaces, sponsors’ offices, hotel, and NGOs’ conference rooms. Occasionally we also organized casual social events in restaurants.
What can you tell us about Hong Kong’s Product Community?
Product Management is still in its infancy in most of Hong Kong, where “Product Managers” can be interpreted as many different roles in different companies.
However, we do have a small but vibrant product community, mostly comprising by startup founders, UX and Agile practitioners, digital product and digital marketing team members of big conglomerates and local firms etc.
At our events, we observe that there are 10-20 core members who come more than once; while the rest are mostly newcomers who are attracted by the topic. Depending on the topic, we do have a wide spectrum of product experience, ranging from novice designers and product analysts; to product leaders with decade(s) of experience.
Most people prefer face-to-face interactions here, online conversations and social engagement aren’t too prominent. This means we often have to extend the events a bit to facilitate all the conversations!
Which talks have been a hit?
Below are a few popular ones, based on the number of attendees. These were popular mainly because they resonate the curiosity or daily needs of our local product community.
- The Art of Influencing without Authority by Rebecca Morgan
- Driving product success and better decisions through experiments by Sharon Anne Kean and Anthea Chan at SEEK Asia and Vincent Chan at GogoVan
- Lessons Learned from Scaling A New App Business to $2M ARR by Pavlo Pedenko, Product Manager at Setapp.com
- Make meaningful products by Daniel Szuc Design Researcher at Apogee & Organiser of UX Hong Kong
- What is product management? by Rebecca Watkin, Senior Product Manager at World First
How does ProductTank help product people?
Prior to the first ProductTank meetup back in 2017, there had only been meetups for UX, Agile, Startup, Tech and other related disciplines, but no specific one for product management. From the responses we receive, our community members appreciate the chances to network and learn from each other – not only from presentation-style meetups but also the few open space meetups we organised.
Can you share any fun facts about Hong Kong?
Mongkok area in Hong Kong is the most densely populated place on planet Earth, with ~130,000 people per square kilometre.
In order to run such a populous city effectively, efficiency is deeply ingrained in Hong Kongers’ culture, and most of the time efficiency tends to override politeness and quality – you can definitely feel this in local restaurants!
The post Stories From the ProductTank Community – Hong Kong appeared first on Mind the Product.
Source: Mind the Product https://www.mindtheproduct.com/stories-from-the-producttank-community-hong-kong/
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