Morfternight #36: WordCamp Europe is back!
We talk about the value of meetings, mistakes Product Leads should avoid, and the Mother of all Demos.
Work — More Photos
👋 Hello Friend, and welcome to Morfternight.
I am greeting you today from Ericeira, Portugal, on the western coast of continental Europe.
I am here for 24 hours on my way to Porto, where I’ll be attending WordCamp Europe 2022.
After two years without an in-person WordCamp, going back to this one is very special for me as I participated in its organization for the first five editions from 2013 in Leiden to 2017 in Paris.
I look forward to this event, and if you are there, dear Morfternighter, please say hi at the Jetpack booth; I will be there!
⚡️ A word on meetings
1-1 and small team meetings represent relatively small investments, with good returns due to the ease of communication. Their return on investment (ROI) is positive. I set the bar for small teams to 7/8 people.
Townhall meetings are when a person (often the CEO or a business unit General Manager) broadcasts to a large audience. Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions also qualify. Even though these are costly meetings (hundreds or thousands of hours), I believe their net ROI is positive.
Large meetings, on the other end, are a mess. They can be improved with a robust agenda, ensuring the right people are in the room and that actionable next steps come out of them. Still, the reality is that all that can be done in writing and is never worth the significant investment required to hold such meetings.
👉 Ten good tips for Product Leaders
Aakash Gupta tweets excellent content for new and experienced Product Leads; here’s a thread about some mistakes that are important to avoid:
📺 It all existed before I was born
I recently stumbled upon the “Mother of All Demos.”
The Mother of All Demos is a name given retrospectively to Douglas Engelbart's December 9, 1968, demonstration of experimental computer technologies that are now commonplace. The live demonstration featured the introduction of the computer mouse, video conferencing, teleconferencing, hypertext, word processing, hypermedia, object addressing and dynamic file linking, bootstrapping, and a collaborative real-time editor.