AB #006: Product Squad: join our 1st Meetup and/or the crew
AB #006: Product Squad: join our 1st Meetup and/or the crew
This edition of Axel's Bento 🍱 is dedicated to Product Squad: until recently, the most listened to product management podcast for French speakers.
Product Squad is coming back soon with new episodes, incredible guests and an IRL Meetup in Paris on Wednesday, Oct. 4th.
📣 I’m looking for sponsors for the podcast.
Drop me a note if you want to know more!
In today’s bento…
🍕 Come to the very 1st Product Squad Meetup in Paris!
🥩 A friendly recommendation from a chef friend
🍦 The Product Squad Crew is growing, join the fun!
🤓 GenAI nuggets so you can look cool at the next dinner party
🩺 My (free-for-now) Product+Career Clinic is open!
🍕 Inaugural Product Squad Meetup - 04/10 🗼
It’s happening…
I’ve wanted to do something like this for a very long time, and I’m happy to share this with you here, particularly the French-speaking readers.
On October 4th, I’ll be hosting the very first Product Squad Meetup in Paris.
The team (see below in Humans of Product section) has been busy putting this together with help from our special hosting partner for this inaugural event.
For this very first edition, we wanted to focus on a particular topic which can be very tricky for product folks who have to federate others and bring team members on a journey with them.
We all know how this experience can be daunting. And there isn’t a playbook for this. So why is it so hard? How can we get better at it? What pitfalls to avoid? What can we learn from others who have done it before?
Join us in Paris for an open discussion about it, followed by drinks.
It’s free.
It’ll be full of good vibes.
There’ll be food and drinks.
No excuse. Register for free below.
🏞️ Worthy Eateries
My friend Florence recommended this place a few years back.
Florence and I met at culinary school in London.
We were both top of our class.
She now works at Astrance (Pascal Barbot) in Paris, and I went back to tech.
Not sure who got the short end of the stick here.
I went there with another fellow aspiring chef from Leith’s (Mike) and we opted for the lunch tasting menu (5 plates).
One thing I love in general is restaurants with young chefs and young staff. I want to support people starting off in this line of work, as it’s extremely difficult.
Service was warm and friendly, and the food was incredibly well executed.
⭐️ Check out Quinsou here.
🍷 Notable wine: Vino di Anna, Palmentino Rosso (Castiglione di Sicilia)
This new wine from “Vino di Anna” is a blend of several micro-vinifications made during the 2016 harvest. Organically and biodynamically grown grapes were hand harvested from numerous old bush vine vineyards located on the north face of Mt Etna.
Each wine was a field blend; Nerello Mascalese (95%), Nerello Cappuccio, Alicante (Grenache) and a small percentage of white grapes (Grecanico, Minella, Catarratto).
The wine is a bit darker than a “rosé de saigné” and was a perfect match for the menu (decent structure, elegant, rich but well-balanced).
If you’ve enjoyed this newsletter so far, please consider leaving a comment. It helps others find and subscribe to this publication. Thank you!
🍦 Humans of Product
Each bento features a human I came to know.
I want to build a community where product people can really connect and help each other. ✨
ICYMI, I’m building a team of volunteers to help me with activities across Product Squad. As I progressively bring more people in to help, I wanted to share the team who’s helping put together the first few meetups (brainstorm topics, develop format, source venues, partners and speakers).
Here are the first 3 additions to the Product Squad Crew from left to right
Marion, Product Coach
Capucine, Head of Product at Lunii
Shannon, Product & Engineering Leader
The enthusiasm around what I’m trying to build has been overwhelmingly positive, with partners interested in the next 3 Meetups already.
I know there are still many of you who want to join the crew and help across our initiatives, please bear with me while I figure out the best way for us to move forward.
Do you want to join the crew?
Drop me a note on LinkedIn.
Thanks 🙏🏽
🩺 (Free for now) Product Clinic
I’m opening weekly 30-minute slots for people who need help with a specific situation they’re faced with.
Fill in this short form and I’ll get back to you.
Depending on how this goes, I might not have time for everyone straight away, but will get back to you in any case.
That’s how I grow, too. 💫
🤓 AI jargon-buster
September means back to work and your busy schedule of afterwork drinks and dinner parties. Here’s your cheat sheet to look smarter next time someone brings up GenAI or ChatGPT.
Self-supervised learning
Imagine teaching yourself to cook by experimenting and tasting rather than following a recipe. The model learns without manual labelling of data.
Example for PMs: Use self-supervised learning for sentiment analysis in customer feedback, requiring less manual labelling and thus saving time.Reinforcement Learning (Multi-Armed Bandit)
t's like playing multiple slot machines to figure out which one gives the best payout. The model learns to choose the best 'action' based on previous rounds.
Example for PMs: Apply Multi-Armed Bandits to dynamically optimise the content displayed to different user segments to maximise engagement or conversion.Zero-shot Learning
It's like being able to play a new sport effectively just because you've played other sports. The algorithm can make good guesses on unfamiliar data.
Example for PMs: In customer service bots, zero-shot learning can enable the system to understand and resolve customer queries it has never seen before, improving the customer experience.
🍄 Congrats, you’re all levelled-up now!
P.S. Wagyan? I had completely forgotten about the last series of Top Boy… 🍿
Peace out! ✌🏽