ProductTank Manchester — November 2025

We're be back on Wednesday 12th November for the next ProductTank Manchester at The Street Group (11-13 Spear Street, Manchester, M1 1JU) with great product speakers and great networking!

Speakers

Speaker: Caroline Clark
Caroline a leadership consultant and coach specialising in performance psychology for leaders in tech and space. As an ex-Product Director with more than 12 years in Product, she understands the unique pressures facing product teams. Her work equips product leaders with evidence-based tools to transform leadership potential into performance - and achieve the impossible.
Talk title: It's not you, it's the system: exploring imposter feelings in Product people (with novel research and fresh insights).

Speaker: Alan Ogilvie
In 2013, Alan Ogilvie was a Product Manager in the engine room during the Microsoft acquisition – building what should have been its future. He'll share the "Integration Trap" that killed it, from the impossible technical challenges (P2P vs. Cloud) to the strategic blunders that forgot the user. In the space of that year, its fate was sealed … limping along until eventually put out of its misery.

Talk title: "Losing the Heart: A Product Post-Mortem on the Fall of Skype"
Skype had 600m+ users and a brand everyone loved. Years later, it was a ghost. What really happened? Don't miss this PM-to-PM war story.
WARNING: This presentation may potentially trigger anti-hype feelings about AI. Viewer discretion is advised.

Speaker: Andy Birds
Andy is Product & Innovation Director at Sputnik Digital and a former Product & Design Leader at Thoughtworks. He has spent over 20 years in digital helping organisations modernise their product operating models and deliver customer-focused products. His work blends strategy, systems thinking, and hands-on delivery to help teams unlock value faster.

Talk title: “20 things I wish I had known about product management”
Most product organisations aren’t slow because they lack talent or tools — they’re slow because their ways of working create friction, waste, and poor decisions. In this talk, Andy distils years of real-world experience into 20 practical lessons that help teams deliver value faster, make better decisions, connect strategy to execution, and focus on outcomes that truly matter. Attendees will leave with actionable principles they can apply immediately.

Why you should come?
Networking with fellow product people 👋

• Great talks from local and national speakers 🎤
• Food 🍕and drink 🍺
• We welcome people from all backgrounds!

We're a friendly bunch, our typical crowd includes:

• senior product leaders
• startup founders
• mid-level PMs
• new PMs
• people looking to get into Product
• engineers/developers
• designers
• people who work with product teams - and just want to learn more.

Whatever your situation, come along and say hello.

Event timings
6:00pm start - Networking (drinks and food)
6:30pm - Talks and Q&A start
8:00pm - Talks finish - more networking - drinks and food
8:30pm - Close