On Saturday I attended—and presented at—the Product Weekend. I had never been to this kind of event and it felt refreshing, compared to the usual conferences. Here, the number of participants is limited, the conversations are meaningful, the presentations are super targeted and the whole experience doesn’t feel exhausting.

Presenting at the Product Weekend. This is me giving a talk about building API—and other technical—products. In the slide you can see the cover of my book “Building an API Product.” This talk happened on March 2, 2024 in Barcelona.

Two presentations were about Product Management leadership roles. The presenters were a Head of Product and a CPO. One thing I confirmed from those presentations and subsequent conversations was that most people end up being Product Managers by accident.

Yes, I was surprised to hear someone in a leadership position say it. I could even extrapolate that most people end up in management positions by accident. This includes Product Managers and also Engineering Managers.