In this episode, Ben Maynard sits down with Andre Marquet, the visionary CEO and organiser behind the Productized Conference. As we introduce our second partnership with Productized, Andre shares the exciting journey of how the conference has evolved from a small 300-person gathering in Lisbon to a highly anticipated annual event attracting over 500 attendees.
Discover the unique elements that make Productized feel more like a festival than a traditional conference, from its diverse lineup of international speakers to its engaging workshops and panels. Andre reveals what's in store for the 2024 edition, including the new leadership forum, hands-on workshops, and insightful talks designed to foster innovation and collaboration within the product community.
Plus, we're thrilled to announce that we'll be recording plenty of TalksInTen episodes at this year's Productized, bringing you real-time insights and conversations with industry leaders.
Key Highlights:
🔍 02:39 - The Story of Productized
🔍 08:18 - Last-Minute Workshop Choice Frustration
🔍 15:42 - The Power of Speaker Interaction
🔍 24:13 - Accessible Conference Pricing
Join us as Andre Marquet provides a behind-the-scenes look at the Productized Conference, highlighting how it has become a must-attend event for product professionals seeking to stay ahead of industry trends and connect with like-minded peers.
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and network. Subscribe to the Product Agility Podcast for more insightful conversations with industry experts.
Stay tuned for more exciting episodes from the Product Agility Podcast as we continue to bring you the latest insights and trends from leading conferences and events!
Host Bio
Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.
In this episode, Ben Maynard sits down with Andre Marquet, the visionary CEO and organiser behind the Productized Conference. As we introduce our second partnership with Productized, Andre shares the exciting journey of how the conference has evolved from a small 300-person gathering in Lisbon to a highly anticipated annual event attracting over 500 attendees.
Discover the unique elements that make Productized feel more like a festival than a traditional conference, from its diverse lineup of international speakers to its engaging workshops and panels. Andre reveals what's in store for the 2024 edition, including the new leadership forum, hands-on workshops, and insightful talks designed to foster innovation and collaboration within the product community.
Plus, we're thrilled to announce that we'll be recording plenty of TalksInTen episodes at this year's Productized, bringing you real-time insights and conversations with industry leaders.
Key Highlights:
🔍 02:39 - The Story of Productized
🔍 08:18 - Last-Minute Workshop Choice Frustration
🔍 15:42 - The Power of Speaker Interaction
🔍 24:13 - Accessible Conference Pricing
Join us as Andre Marquet provides a behind-the-scenes look at the Productized Conference, highlighting how it has become a must-attend event for product professionals seeking to stay ahead of industry trends and connect with like-minded peers.
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and network. Subscribe to the Product Agility Podcast for more insightful conversations with industry experts.
Stay tuned for more exciting episodes from the Product Agility Podcast as we continue to bring you the latest insights and trends from leading conferences and events!
Host Bio
Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.
And yeah, it started in Lisbon. It started has a rather small 300 people gathering and has evolved towards 1000 people conference in 2019, just before the pandemic hit. During the pandemic years, like everybody else, I think we hibernated and we had to mostly stop IRL activities. And then when we came back, we decided to do a smaller 500 ish people event and that's where we're staying at the moment to enter 24 edition is going to be an event for 405 hundred people. It's three days. It's starting on October 2nd, then we have workshops on October 3rd, and then we have the the conference day mostly talks and panels on October 4th. Excellent. Yeah. And what I love about the conference is that, well, one, I mean the venue and the location was fantastic. And two, I thought that when I went to it for the first time last year, the way that I've been describing it to people was that it, it kind of felt almost like a festival it. Welcome to the Product Agility Podcast, the missing link between Agile and product. The purpose of this podcast is to share practical tips, strategies and stories from world class thought leaders and practitioners. Why I hear you ask? Well, I want to increase your knowledge and your motivation to experiment so that together we can create ever more successful products. My name is Ben Maynard and I'm your host. What has driven me for the last decade to bridge the gap between agility and product is a deep rooted belief that people and products evolving together can achieve mutual excellence. Welcome. It's the product agility podcast. I'm your host, Ben Maynard, and we've got a little teaser episode for you today, coming in the midst of a flurry of episodes from Scrum Day London 2024. We want to begin to make you aware of another awesome conference. This conference though is a is slightly different to some of the other ones I go to. This one is in foreign climes in, in Portugal, in Lisbon no less. And it was a conference that we partnered with for the first time last year. That conference is productised and I am joined by Andre, Andre Mark, the CEO and organiser and General Megamind of I invited onto the show because I I wanted to learn more about the line up of speakers and workshops and also relay some of that information to you that if you're wondering what to do in October, then hopefully this episode will convince you to come to Portugal and come to the amazing productized conference. Anyway, thank you so much for joining me on this episode. It's great to be here as well then. Lovely. I mean, for the listeners that haven't been productized before, I don't suppose you could just give us a bit of a insight into the history of the conference. I know this wasn't a question we prepared for, but I thought actually it could be quite nice to people to understand more about the conference and how it came to the point it's at today. Absolutely so well, first and foremost, thanks for for having me on on Agility podcast productize conference started back in 2020. Sorry, what is that 2015? So that was nine years ago and yeah, it started in Lisbon. It started has a rather small 300 people gathering and has evolved towards 1000 people conference in 2019, just before the pandemic hit. During the pandemic years, like everybody else, I think we hibernated and we had to mostly stop IRL activities. And then when we came back, we decided to do. A smaller 500 ish people event and that's where we're staying at the moment. 2024 edition is going to be an event for 405 hundred people. It's three days. It's starting on October 2nd, then we have workshops on October 3rd, and then we have the the conference day, mostly talks and panels on October 4th. Excellent. Yeah. And what I love about the conference is that, well, one, I mean, the venue and the location was fantastic. And two, I thought that when I went to it for the first time last year, the way that I've been describing it to people was that it kind of felt almost like a festival. It didn't feel like a normal conference. I don't know if that's because of the people or the way you organised it, but something just just really worked. What there was great feedback on was the structure of having the workshops on the first day and then kind of talks and the more traditional conference elements and following on the the the other days. But this year we're adding a day before the workshops. Yeah, exactly. It's actually half day, so it's starting just after lunch and with a welcome coffee and then it's more of an end conference for leaders that are coming together. So it's a much smaller event. It's, you know, it's more of a pre event maybe. And after this welcome coffee we're having, we're having masterminds with with mentors, industry pioneers like Denise Teals. She's the co-author of the product operations book with Melissa Perry, You know, Brittany cadets and others to come up with this, you know, discussions that for people in leadership positions makes sense. And this is a little bit up for the grabs because we want this to be a lot of impromptu on that day, a lot of unconference style of what to be discussed and we don't want to give it a very scripted conversation and we want this conversation to go and flow. Has they should with people that are very mature to the industry towards their challenges and what the future holds for the product community for 2025 and onwards. Amazing yeah. I can't wait to come along and and and meet some new people that the friends that I made last year. Yeah, I've I've carried on through to this very day. That's good to know in Ivy. I've made a lot of new for new friends and lots of people that yeah have been featured on the podcast since then. Now you've got this half leadership day, which is an unconference style. Sounds great sounds very organic and looking at some of the future challenges that are going to be facing the the product world over the coming year. Then you've got a workshop day and then we have other six workshops in the afternoon. So this are half day workshops and they're mostly included in the all access ticket. So people cannot really buy a specific workshop or they cannot just attend the workshop. So if you want to come also to your point, because we want to you want this to feel more of has a festival and they stay for the actual talks and they don't just come for the one workshop and then they run away because they have to go back to the office. We really tried to make people to relax for at least two days and. Enjoy the peers that they meet, some of some of them probably people that are going to meet at the conference, new friendships, but also if some of them want to, to bring their, you know, colleagues, that's also great. The the 6th morning workshops this this year, I think are also really, really great. We're going to have Chris Compston on enabling a product sinking mindset. He's coming from from the UK. He's actually someone we met also last year after at the conference Agelo's Musakitis from Greece on value based pricing and packaging for subscription businesses. We're going to have Janet Bumpers from Welsh's from the US, which is actually based in Amsterdam, Sebastian Priories from Okiyar's and Road Map. Also a very interesting workshop by Sergio Lazar on five pillars of psychologically safe teams and another one in the morning on product strategy with Okie Rs. So that's by Victoria Scheer. She is currently based in in Germany. And then in the afternoon we have other six workshops and they will be, I mean, we don't think there's like a logical continuation. So you can take a specific workshop in the morning, then you can have like the second part of like Okie Rs in the afternoon if you want to. But people are free to choose and pick the whatever track they want to to follow really. So, but yeah, but one thing that I understand. People get a little bit pissed off with our conference is the fact that they don't get to choose the specific workshop when they buy the ticket. They get to buy all access ticket and then, oh, when do I get to, to, you know, to choose the workshop. And we only allow people to choose the workshop very close to the conference date. And the reason for that is we want to sell out. And then whenever that all the tickets are sold out, then we allow people, all people to choose at the same time. And they choose on a first come first, Yeah, first serve basis. So if if you you have to hurry up, you have about 24 hours to pick and choose whatever workshops you want to go to. If they are already all the all the seats are taken, you might want to go to that other workshop that you were not so excited about. My general feeling is that most people don't really regret because all the workshops tend to be really, really great. And even if it's a topic that you were not so eager at at first, then. You, you tend to be surprised by how much you end up learning in, in something that you were not expecting to. I mean, to learn in the 1st place. Yeah, I I look at the list of workshops and I think the the thing I would be pissed off about. If I had the opportunity to go to another workshops, because unfortunately I will be probably be interviewing people, it's actually it isn't so much that I wouldn't get them what I wanted. It's just being able to choose which one I actually wanted to go and actually wanted to go and be involved in. Because they're all really high quality and there's such an interesting range of great people talking about really interesting topics. And in that respect, to carry on the festival idea, it is like a festival because you're going to miss the band. You want to see what want to see because you're going to see another one. Remember years ago he made a software tool called a clash Finder, which is a website and it allowed you to kind of plan your festival. It's since kind of carried on, other people have carried on that, carried the torch on that. But you know, it is a big thing I think with the workshops as being able to decide. And I, you know, anyone here that's in the product space will look through those workshops and be like, yes, OK, that's super interesting. And I think some of the people who are more in the agile, be our agile coaching space may look at be thinking, well, are these product workshops for me? And I say absolutely, the types of things you will learn in this workshop will set you apart from the crowd because I think this is some amazingly experienced product experts here talking about things that are really super relevant in the product space. And I think if it's not, if you listen to this as an agile person, they say about inverted commas, like do go to the productized website and check out some of those workshops because they can almost guarantee you there'll be something there which will really elevate your knowledge and your desire to, you know, really want to kind of embrace some of the more modern product thinking techniques coming out there. Now, Andre, when we took talk about the workshops again, I remember a friend of the podcast, David Pereira, his pod, his workshop last year was massively oversubscribed, I seem to remember, or at least it could. He had a lot of more people attending that he was initially anticipating. Yeah. I mean, that's that's one of the the problems you have as a conference organizer because not all rooms are exactly the same size. So we have to anticipate demand to a certain extent. Or or then you have to shift, you know, workshops into different zooms according to whatever demand was from the subscription to specific workshops, if that makes sense. But yeah, sometimes they tend to be oversubscribed. But we cap all workshops to a specific size limit. So I I believe David Paris was capped to 25 people or so. Yes. And probably it should have gotten a, a bigger room. So that's the reason I think I did offer to help him out and then realise that again, I was busy recording so I couldn't go and help him out. But yeah. And honestly that to some some fantastic workshops even for yourself. I mean, we have, we have booked the room for your podcast last year and it ended up not being exactly the, the best room or the the most suited room that you would want for your podcast. So you had to move a couple of times from room to room to set up to set up to until you actually found, you know, some kind of setup that actually worked for for your team. Yeah. And we found the perfect place, I think, which was quite close to the, to the venues, absolutely perfect lovely view over the all the people milling around on the thoroughfare to the speaker's room where people could go and kind of prepare for their talks and have a quiet moment. And so it was just, it was just wonderful. A big long runway walking up to it when me and Tammy Reese walked up it like a catwalk with the wind blowing through our hair. I hope Tammy can come again this year because I do. I appreciate Tammy's energy. You know, it's super energetic and she has a good, great relationship with Rich. Rich Mirror off is one of the new speakers. We also have Becky Flint's from Dragon boats. All these people are coming from the US, Freddie Cadet. And then we have Martin Feltman. He's the head of product that product boards is going to be in one of the panels along with Fabrice the the misery also Diana Steppner and Francesca Cortezi from Sweden. And then we have people coming from Berlin and many other places. And of course, I hope actually we haven't really confirmed any speaker from Portugal this year, but there might be some surprise coming up in the next few weeks. I don't know there are there still more speakers to announce yes, we still have three or four speakers to announce and wish we're going to close. So one of the things that. Happened this year is I went to Protocon in London in February, if I'm not mistaken. And I mean, it's London in February. So obviously you know, it's, it's cold and it's great very, very soon in the day. So you don't want to, you know, end the conference very late in the evening because it will be too late.
But they were closing really early like 3:
00 or so.
And then at 3:
00 they start the, the after party. We're going to do this in October. So in October in Lisbon, still very sunny and still very warm weather. So it doesn't really make sense to close the conference at early. So we're close, but still we're closing a little, a little bit earlier than we did last year. So last year, if you remember, we closed it at six. And then there was an after party, which was super, I mean, super far away. Not that Lisbon is a huge city, but still people had to go into the subway and ghost and go to the party.
And this year what we're doing is we're getting the conference to close at 5:
00 and then the, the after parties on the venue, this Riverside venue itself. And, and this way people really don't have to take any public transportation or get on an Uber to go to the venue of the party. And we do the after party there. We'll have some local craft beers and food and snacks. And I think this this will allow people to close the event with a nice and just cool and chill after party. And yeah, then they're free to go anywhere they want. If they, they, they really want to continue that the conversations. Ah, well, yeah. Not that I need to be sold on the idea, but I'm sold on the idea. I, I really can't wait. And I think they're great thing about the after party last year was just getting to meet some of the speakers. I didn't get to meet Joe talk to during the conference properly. I mean other than the kind of interview type setup, it was just fantastic to get me people yes, in a more relaxed setting. One of the things that I'm really proud of prioritize is that we tend to make. The speakers to embrace the audience not just on stage but also during the coffee breaks, during the social moments. So they're very relatable, they're very accessible and they're not hidden in this, you know, somewhere in this locked room where they don't get to, you know, talk with, with, with people and, and, and, and that makes the, the event very cozy and, and, and familiar in, in many aspects. And that's something people over the years have been telling me is that unlike so many events where they go and then, you know, they hear the, the talk and then that's it. They, they get the chance to actually, you know, interact with speaker and have side conversations that otherwise they wouldn't really have the opportunity to do. But I think it's a testament to your speakers as well, because there's not every conference, you know, but the speakers want to hang around and do that. And I think you make it. It was made so easy. And yeah, and I've been to a lot of conferences in my time, but there was definitely something that was quite felt quite unique. I think I'm, I think some of us did do the speaker selection as well. So when we think of the speaker selection, Andre, is there a particular speaker and topic that you're looking forward to this year? So I, I'm really curious. So we have this part ongoing podcasts and that's obviously called productized podcast, right, If you want to check it out. And we get to do interviews with the speakers along the way. And I think we've had interviews with most of the speakers at this point. And one of, so I'm a big fan of Fabrice. I think he's always a super smart person. So I'm really curious to see what his talk is going to be. His talk, by the way, in London was super smart, super witty and super fun. It tries to make a mix of talk and you know, I'm not, I wouldn't say impromptu stage dynamics, but it is, it is quite funny. I'm always looking forward to Radhika. I think she's one of the the smartest and most interesting product sinkers out there. And Rich, so Rich actually has been the first speaker we announced this year, you know, has been in the Valley since the the heli 1980s or so. So it has been, you know, a person that has been through lots of transformational shifts. And I think having stock from people that have been around for several decades makes a lot of sense has the product community is into this semi crisis of. The role of the product person inside the company and you know, product tops versus X versus Y and AI product enabled people and so on. And, and having hindsight and having retrospect of what has happened over the the years. It's super important so that you know, after times, times come and having someone that have been through this and have been through this, you know, the highs and downs of the 90s and the collapse and the and the early 2000s and and has been through it all and give you this long term perspective is super important so that we face the years ahead with more confidence, which is something that I think is super, super strong. That product person has is, is confidence, right? Confidence in the future, confidence in the product, confidence in herself or himself. Without wanting to go too deep into that, because, you know, this was because I guess in turn to be a short episode, because you know, the little snippet for someone will maybe we'll get you back on for a full length episode, Andre, where we can talk about something other than the conference, because we haven't done that yet. No, I haven't, which is ridiculous. Let me make a note. I have, I usually tell my team, look, we have like a very simple product to sell, which is a conference and, and, and you know being in Lisbon, what you're selling is also a location, right? You're selling an experience which is back to where you're going to which I guess it's always valid for wherever you're going to. But if you're going to to a place where you can have a break. Over the weekend and just enjoy yourself before you go back home, back to the office. I think that's what that's what we're doing here. And I'm, you know, we're heading towards our tense edition. So this is our 9th edition. 25 will be the tense edition. It's also a time for us to be a little bit more reflexive. Reflexive in the sense of being mindful and thoughtful of what should be next next for 2025, of course. And we really try to tweak the event every year and to, you know, to respond to new needs and to new challenges that we we see people facing inside the community. But also Next has in, you know, what makes sense for the the community for the next decade or so or for the next five years. And that is something that we should definitely maybe do together on an episode or something like that. I'd love to do that. Yeah, I'd love to. We'll make it happen. Let's make it. I've been looking at the schedule of upcoming speakers and we've got some awesome people that have been recorded. At the moment and then there's yeah, so but I think this would be a lovely thing to do perhaps after the conference. Let's see if we get scheduled in. Hey Andre, I think it's important that we let people know first of all when the conference is which is the 2nd to the 4th of October. Yes. So the leadership forum is on the workshops take place on October 3rd and the talks on October 4th. There's basically three tickets available. So if you want to go the full experience, you go full, full access. So that's October 2nd, certain 4th. If you want to go all access, that's October 3rd. And if for some reason you just want to go for the talks, then that's the talks ticket at just October 4th talks and it gives you access to what we call the conference. I think people should take advantage of at least the workshops and the talks because and like you say, turn it into a vacation. I mean, spend some time there In Portugal was a wonderful place in Lisbon is an amazing city. I spend some time there. Do not sell it that way to your boss each year. He might be a little bit envy or bring bring them with you. Bring the boss with you. Hey boss, you deserve a vacation. I've got a brilliant idea. I have a brilliant idea. I have heard about prioritizing Lisbon. Yes, yes, I would. I would try and sell it to my boss. Unfortunately, I am my boss and I'm already sold. Just doesn't make any difference. But I'm going to be taking the Product Agility podcast crew. So I think I'll be there and I believe Steph Ashmore will be there. I think that one of my other partners in crime, Saloni, who came along last year, yes, she'll also be there and no doubt wanted to talk about something that she's not talk about. Talk to people about some of the things that she's been working on. She's got some fantastically interesting things around product operating and engagement models, which she'll be on the podcast soon talking about. But now I really urge everyone go to and let me get the URL corrected. Yeah, productise.co. So it's a productised with az.co. The link will be in the show notes. So do check out the show notes. We'll put it at the top to make sure that you've got something to click. Go on there and grab yourself that early bird ticket because the early bird offer expires when Andre, it expires on June 28th. So pretty much at the end of the months. Yeah. And then we have. Regular tickets coming in on sale until the end of September and yeah, actually the end of August and then in September we have full price. So yeah, 30% off until June 28th and it is an absolute steal if I do say so. I think you're probably not charging enough if I'm honest with you Andre, because for €560 which is it is on the early bird price for two days or 890 for the full access. I just think that is in Euros as well. So for yeah, people in the UK, yeah. You know, that's, it's just a just a still lots of the plus VAT you have to, you do have to, we also charge, you know, VAT. So it gets a full price. If you actually being charged VAT, it gets just a little bit over that. Yeah, even still it's a still and I think when I think how much some other conferences cost not gonna name any names and you're hitting like 4 figures for something where you are one of too many people lost in a sea of mediocrity. I would say something really large conferences, I think VA, you're coming in. Well, I mean, I've always had this this prize since pretty much the beginning. We've never really tried to push prices. No, I mean not. Not even when this was much much larger event. Back in 20, I mean, pre pandemic, because we always felt that we should have a price, which is, you know, reasonable to to cover costs and to run the event in a way that most people in the product community that want to take and want to take part of this experience can can take it fantastic. So we'll draw this to a close, but I will say Andre in person, I'll say about a comic to make some new friends and hopefully see some of you there listeners at product 24 because it'd be lovely to meet some of you in the fresh. So if you are there, if you do go well, how about this when you buy a ticket, share it on social media, say bought a ticket or just drop me a direct message on LinkedIn to let me know you bought a ticket. So we can arrange some time to meet up and we can say hi. We can have a coffee talk, product talk, proximity talk, whatever you want really. I'm a pretty easygoing kind of guy, but it'd be great to see some of you all there. Andre, is there anything you'd like to share with our listeners before we wrap up today? Yes. So I think when people are trying to buy a ticket for a conference, for an event, for, you know, a boot camp, whatever it is, I think there's a question in their mind, which is, is this for me, right? Should I go to this event? Should I spend time here? Is the and it's not like they're not interested in in the event. Maybe they are and they find it cool. And but I think people are always asking, is this for me? Am I the right persona to, you know, take take advantage of this. And if you get to the productized page and you are someone in the in the product space, you are innovating products, you are doing transformation, you are interested about products management or design or service design or product operations, really whatever it is, I think the question begs to be answered with it is for you and I think you have a a great time. Then of course, if you want more of a leader or senior position, you might want to consider the full axis. But if you really what you really want is to have a good time and and learn and get to know new people than all axis or conference day is probably what you might want to consider in terms of tickets. Perfect. Thank you, Andre, and thank you everyone for lending us your ears once again. We will be back pretty soon with more episodes from Scrum Day London of a normal service will resume in a week or so's time. So thank you very much for your time. Listeners. Andre, thank you so much for coming on. Can't wait to see you in person. Octavia, as always, this is a project opportunity podcast and we all hear from us again soon. Thank you.
