World Product Day 2026 - How do we really AI?

We're celebrating World Product Day 2026 by getting beyond the hype to hear 4 product people tell us how they are really using AI in their day to day work!

• Rahul: Discovery, Rewired: From Transcripts to Production with AI - the story of how Global Dairy Trade took an idea from interviews to the real world
• Peony: A product team of one - how a solo PM uses AI to operate in the goldilocks zone, just enough process, just enough output, moving fast enough to learn and find PMF
• Darren: Product discovery with agents - from strategy to roadmaps
• Emilie: AI in product design - allowing the designer to focus on the human tasks

The event will start with networking at 5.30pm, followed by the talk from 6pm!

About our speakers:
Rahul Singh https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulsinghnz/
Product Manager at GDT (Global Dairy Trade), building a modular SaaS platform across a global auction ecosystem. Before GDT he spent a decade shipping digital products at IAG and Roam Digital, working across insurance and enterprise SaaS. Outside the day job, Rahul runs AI PM Briefing, a weekly briefing for product managers on what's actually shipping in AI (tools, patterns, case studies), and is the author of ‘Don't Think, Change‘- a field guide to behaviour change for product teams.

Peony Pangputt https://www.linkedin.com/in/peonypangputt/
Product Manager at FileInvite, a B2B SaaS platform helping US commercial lenders automate the collection of loan information faster. Peony joined at Series A and has been navigating a triple challenge: a new product, a new geography, and a new customer segment all at once. Before making the jump into the startup world, she spent her early career in rebuilding legacy replacements products at Stuff and Auckland Transport.

Darren Neo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-neo/
Product Manager at Xplor Technologies, leading payment onboarding strategy and delivery. Darren started his career as a developer before moving into project delivery and product management, focused on building high-impact solutions that improve business growth, operational efficiency, and customer experience. His technical foundation drives his passion for bringing AI into modern product practices and delivery. He is also the Auckland Community Lead for AI Collective New Zealand.

Emilie Park: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emiliepark/
Senior Product Designer at Actionstep, working on enterprise legal SaaS products across practice management and legal accounting. Before joining Actionstep, she worked across enterprise platforms, operational tools and large-scale service ecosystems, contributing to products and design systems used at global enterprise and SOE (State-Owned Enterprise) scale. Formerly a front-end engineer, and before that an advertising creative working on corporate campaigns for Samsung Electronics, Samsung Electric and Samsung Mobile Display HR. Outside of her day job, Emilie leads the Friends of Figma Auckland design community group.

Huge thanks to Auckland Transport for hosting and Pendo for sponsoring this event!

Livestream details are TBC - watch here for updates! As always the livestream will kick off from just before 6pm.

This event is part of the global Mind the Product World Product Day celebrations. We're a little early as World Product Day is actually on 20 May, but, y'know, timezones...