ProductTank Birmingham

On 23rd September, join us at ProductTank Birmingham for an evening of product conversations with an experienced Product Management career coach.
In this session, "Managing Your Career Like a Product," you'll discover how to apply product thinking to your own career whether you're breaking into Product, aiming for leadership, navigating a career transition, or looking to create greater impact. Learn practical frameworks to continuously discover, build, measure, and grow your career with the same mindset you use to build great products.

We’ll be joined by:

SPEAKER
James Gunaca

The Talk: Managing your career like "Product"

Talk Description:
In this session, you'll discover how to apply product management principles to your own career:

• Think of your career as a product, not a CV.
• Build your personal value proposition and positioning.
• Prioritize career opportunities like a product roadmap.
• Validate assumptions before making career decisions.
• Prepare for interviews using a hiring manager's perspective.
• Create a repeatable system for long-term career growth.

Whether you're actively looking for your next opportunity or simply want to future-proof your career, you'll leave with practical frameworks you can apply immediately.

SPEAKER BIO

James Gunaca
With over 12 years of Product Management experience, our speaker has worked on products used by millions, including Amazon Echo, Alexa, AppleCare+ Subscriptions, and Xbox All Access. As a former hiring manager and Amazon Bar Raiser, he has screened more than 2,500 Product candidates, conducted 300+ interviews, and hired Product Managers at every level - from PM to Senior PM and Manager.
Today, he dedicates his time to helping Product Managers accelerate their careers, combining real hiring insights with practical coaching that has helped professionals around the world secure roles with greater impact, purpose, and compensation.

👥 Agenda

• 6:30 PM - Arrival, Networking & Food
• 7:00 PM - Welcome
• 7:10 PM - Talk - James Gunaca
• 8:00 PM - Q&A
• 8:15 PM - Networking
• 9:00 PM - Event Ends

🍕 Food & Drinks
Thanks to our sponsor AND Digital, we’ll have pizza and drinks available, and we'll be ready to connect!

🤝 Thanks to our Sponsors

Welcome to the Software Renaissance. Everyone is asking how to use AI to do what they already do, faster and cheaper. But when anyone can build anything, the advantage is in knowing exactly what to build, and why.
On 21st October, as a fringe event on the Wednesday of Birmingham Tech Week, ProductTank is bringing you an unmissable double bill exploring the intersection of high-level AI strategy and ground-level execution at scale.

### What You’ll Take Away

• The New Bottleneck: Why clarity is now more important than execution.
• Real AI Scale: Practical lessons from deploying AI features to millions of active users.
• Product Craft: How AI is actively changing the day-to-day work of product teams.
• Community: Drinks, networking, and debates with Birmingham’s top product minds.
• Book Giveaway: A chance to take home a free copy of Martin's latest book The Decision Stack

SPEAKER
Martin Ericksson

The Talk: Welcome to the Software Renaissance. Your Strategy Isn't Ready.

Talk Description:
When anyone can build anything, the advantage isn't in building. It's in knowing what to build, and why. Everyone's asking how to use AI to do what they already do, faster and cheaper. It's the wrong question and it's quietly shrinking your ambition at the exact moment it should be exploding. Because when the cost of development drops, the bottleneck doesn't disappear. It moves. From execution to clarity. From "can we?" to "should we?” Most teams aren't ready for that shift. This talk is about the bigger question, the one that turns AI from your biggest threat into your biggest opportunity.

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SPEAKER
Max Borodin

The Talk: What AI Innovation Actually Did for a 20M-User Health App

Talk Description:
Everyone is talking about AI strategy — this is a story about putting one into practice. In this talk, Max will show how innovating with AI helped Simple, a US weight-loss app with over 20 million users (part of Palta, the group behind Flo), grow user engagement by over 50%. He'll cover Coach Avo, an AI health coach used by millions; Blinky, an animated mascot with a personality, built with generative AI; and how AI reshaped not just the product, but the craft of building it and the way teams work day to day.

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SPEAKER BIOS

Martin Ericksson
Martin Eriksson has spent three decades helping organisations figure out why they're stuck and what to do about it.
He's been building digital products since 1994, built SaaS before anyone called it SaaS, and worked his way through companies of every size and stage: The Financial Times, Monster, Huddle, Covestor, Cazoo, and most recently as Product Partner at EQT, one of the world's largest private investors. Along the way he's advised over 150 companies on the thing most of them were missing: not better tools, but the connective tissue between their strategy and the people doing the work.
Today Martin works as a board member, strategic advisor, and leadership coach, helping founders, CEOs, and product leaders build the clarity their organisations need to move at pace. His most recent book, The Decision Stack: How Strategic Alignment Unlocks Organizational Momentum, distils everything he's learned about aligning an organisation from vision to execution.
As founder of ProductTank, co-founder of Mind the Product (together the world's largest product community, active in over 200 cities), and co-author of Product Leadership (O'Reilly, 2017), he has helped define the product management discipline and shaped the practices of a generation of product leaders