Product Brew

Brandon Dewitt has a counterintuitive approach to product management and leadership. After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, a rare type with only 36 diagnosed in the United States, he and his team set out to create a roadmap to save his life. From that, he learned several invaluable lessons, one of which is to publicly recognize and compensate people at his company who have tried to do something seemingly impossible (even if that comes with big failure). His company MX now serves more than 2,000 financial institutions with over 30 million customers.  Brandon presented at MKE Product Brew, a community for product managers in the Milwaukee area who live in the intersection of business, technology and design.  

John Zeratsky is the co-creator of Google Ventures' renowned design sprint. He has helped hundreds of teams solve important problems by changing how they work. Building on the success of these sprints and his experience designing ubiquitous tech products like YouTube, he spent years experimenting with his own habits and routines, looking for ways to help individuals optimize their energy, focus, and time. At MKE Product Brew, John shares how he has combined the most effective tactics into a four-step daily framework—like a design sprint for your everyday life—that anyone can use to systematically design their days. In this talk, John will introduce Make Time, co-authored with Jake Knapp, which covers how product managers, entrepreneurs and leaders can help their teams (and themselves!) make time for what really matters at the office and at home. Visit our website for more information about MKE Product Brew. 

Glenn Reid was one of Adobe’s first 40 employees and was handpicked by Steve Jobs to work at Apple on the first version of iMovie and iPhoto. Now, he’s moved from Palo Alto back to Milwaukee to launch Marathon Machines, which he describes as “Laundry in the Internet Age.” In this chat at MKE Product Brew, Glenn shares how he tests product ideas before investing in them to ensure customer interest, his philosophy of building products that "don't suck"—and, of course, a few stories about what it was like to work with Steve Jobs.  Glenn is the primary inventor on 12 patents and has founded 7 startups. He is passionate about launching new companies and consulting corporations on how to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset.  If you would like to get more information about MKE Product Brew and our 2020 Product Management conference, sign up for our newsletter at https://www.mkeproductbrew.com.  Music from https://filmmusic.io "Acid Trumpet" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Would you gamble your yearly salary on a coin flip? Oftentimes we bet larger sums of our companies’ money without even knowing we have such slim odds. On this episode, agile coaches Jeff Maleski and Jeff Bubolz cover how to lower the stakes when gambling on a product with your company’s money, forecasting tools to increase your odds of success, and implementing a feedback loop to measure the value of your product.