I arrived at the Workish co-working and event space in Berlin at the 2nd Audio Product Jam, an industrial red brick building, not knowing what to expect. 

Only later did I learn about this location. A remarkable piece of Berlin history, where film was processed and brought to life. Taking me back nine years ago, arriving at the city to another historic red brick building at my first startup, a building that has evolved to serve startups in the digital sphere from a book binding and printing industrial complex. 

Back in the day I arrived in this city bright eyed and looking to scoop up all the freedoms this city had to offer me. This city fueled me in so many ways, both through individual expression, and by finding creativity and expression through shared experiences and community. 

Community, a word that invokes in me a feeling of warmth, with a tingle of excitement, this is what I find here throughout this evening, people leaving the comfort of what’s familiar, their routine, coming together to bask in this feeling, connecting over their creative drives. 

I am always honored when I am welcomed in the tech sphere, when the unstoppable force of Wojtek Ozimek invited me to join and speak in 2nd iteration of the Audio Product Jam in Berlin I was hesitant, after all these years I still doubt if I belong in tech, and without a background in music I question further my place in this gathering. 

The welcoming nature of this community, as I slowly discovered, has given me the sense of belonging I needed to bring myself out in this setting.  

I think I will take a chance here and say that I wasn’t the only one to experience this space as a safe space to bring themselves out, the overarching feeling in this event was connection, humility and trust. 

Stefan Mauer sparked our interest with his extensive knowledge, ranging from product branding to retail strategies and supply chain management, I resonated with his lessons on how your peers, as well as your customers, are important in every step of your journey as your product evolves, and the importance of including them in every stage of the product’s development, not only at launch. 

Stefan Mauer (pic @goestagraph)

I love to find humility in senior product people such as Stefan that have been in the industry for decades that can demonstrate very well and acknowledge their knowledge, but also admit that their success comes with a reliance on their peers, sales people, and customers. 

The talks flowed smoothly and naturally. Alex Stamm with his marketing and entrepreneur experience, was direct and engaged us with his content, we became part of his talk as he delivered the idea of why the product development starts from your first pitch, he gauged how the narrative delivered resonated with us, playing with the concepts of pitch and resonance in creating your product story. 

Alex encouraged us to untangle from the web that we might get caught in as we work on our product marketing, and ask the origin assumption that sets us off on our path to developing that idea, why would people connect with your product? 

Alex Stamm (pic @goestagraph) 

You take that assumption and in the spirit of lean product development, you start delivering your assumption as a narrative and gauge your audience’s reaction, how is it sounding to your colleagues? How does it sound to you saying it out loud? As you work on the narrative you get a clearer idea for the product you want to develop that would serve a real need. 

This connected harmoniously with Stefan’s message, it is crucial for us to be early to involve our stakeholders in our product release. Utilizing the power of your team and your relationships. 

Taking us back to the day this building was the space for shaping stories, my co-speakers Stefan’s and Alex’s messages highlighted the power of the product story, and how important it is the evolution of it in all stages of your product release. 

 In between Stefan’s and Alex’s talk, my talk provided the audience with that pause in the midst of the invigorating product release related topics to take a break, a breath and feel out how you are doing, how can you care for yourself during a release. I opened up acknowledging the stress that is an inseparable part of me speaking on a stage, and through my personal experience guided the audience with tools to recognize and work with stress and stressors that rise in both work and everyday life. As a person with a mission to allow for a holistic way of experiencing ourselves in the tech world this was a personal success, giving space to mental health amidst the rush for doing and performing. 

 I love this idea of spending your energies more on helping things go right, rather than spending most of your energies during the release addressing things going wrong. 

 We were able to do so as we brought our hive mind together as a community and engaged in a workshop led by Sascha Naji where we brainstormed on the biggest challenges you face during product launch and the ways to mitigate them. This has given us as a community the chance to engage with the discussed topics and everyone the opportunity to share their knowledge. I loved how this gave us an opportunity to view each other in the pursuit of a shared mission, as we teamed up to discuss our challenges and our solutions to them and agree on what are the most impactful challenges and most holistic and sustainable solutions.

Sascha Naji (pic @goestagraph) 

As my words come to an end recapping that inspiring and memorable night, I will admit this, I ponder if the city can still fuel the freedom and creativity that originally led me here, or has it become too populated to sustain the dreams of many, but that night is a flame of lingering hope in the belief that that dream is still alive and goes on.