ProductCamp LA

I had the great opportunity to attend Productcamp.la (un-confernece for product managers in LA) today, where we had some strong speakers -- Rich Mironov gave a really spectacular talk (I have a lot to learn).  It was good networking with so many other product managers in the LA area.  Kudos to the organizers to making it happen.

A couple of things that I picked up while at the conference:

• Many, if not most, product managers are "INTJ" on Meyers-Briggs, which is pretty profound.  INTJs make up 1-2% of the entire population.  Cross that by the common requirements for a PM -- eng undergrad, masters degree, experience -- and they're pretty rare.
• Product management can be done well enough, be done really well, and be done brilliantly -- and I need to step up and be brilliant rather than "ok".   And brilliance is earned through experience.
• There are a lot more product managers in west LA than I thought.  There were 200+ of us!
• It's really weird to be around hundreds of product managers.  It's like being in a convention of unicorns.
• Agile.  Scrum.  XP.  Waterfall.  Wagile.   It was a constant drumbeat of "well-established development methodologies" that eventually grated on my soul.   Does all this shit really matter?  Whatever happened to "getting it done fast" and iterating?

Anyways, it was a great experience, and I got to see how so many other PMs do their work.