Best Product Events for 2020

Is your 2020 off to a busy start? For SaaS product teams all over the world, it’s about to be. Get ready to mark your calendars. There are plenty of events dedicated just to the advancement of SaaS products. Each month, global meet ups of top product teams and experts keep SaaS teams up to date on what the latest trends, best practices, and marketing and sales tactics. Not only are product events a great education opportunity but also a chance to connect with others in the industry to explore synergies as well as potential investors.  

As we are working on our own travel plans for conferences this year, we can share with you a few of the top product events for 2020:

ProductCon.

London, February 11th

Product School’s ProductCon is an easy, quick yet impactful event that’s easy to fit into your team’s schedule and one you don’t want to miss. Aside from the first date in London, from April to November, there’s other single-day events in San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Los Angeles. Plenty of options to choose from depending on where you are and your schedule! The speaker line up is excellent across the board for all five events with top product leaders from Google, Slack, Facebook, Airbnb, Netflix, Amazon, and more teaching 1,000+ product teams their best practices. Topics covered include best practices from the most successful product teams and trends for products around AI, VR, IoT, and Blockchain. It’s the perfect opportunity to not only network but sharpen your team’s skills as designers, marketers, managers, etc. as a product-centered company. Again, the best part is it’s just a one day commitment with a huge amount of value packed in.

ProductWorld.

San Francisco, February 12-14

ProductWorld’s claim to fame is being the world’s largest Product Manager and Product Developer conference. This event is hyper-focused on that role and strengthening your capacity in that position with expert knowledge, important connections, and endless inspiration from other top teams. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s in the heart of the tech world. ProductWorld is co-located with DeveloperWeek so your team can attend both. Your team can attend product-focused sessions with speakers from top companies like Google, Atlassian, Facebook, IBM, Square, LinkedIn and other leaders in the SaaS space. The conference covers areas from hands-on product design like new software and interface design to the soft skills as well like product team management, training, and hiring. This is a great conference for founders and product teams alike to build a better business around an excellent product.

Product Marketing World.

13 cities, February - December

Product Marketing World is really special because it’s not necessarily focused on the product technology or design but rather the intersection of product, sales, and marketing. This is particularly important because your product and its evolution is central to a new form of marketing and sales called Product Marketing used to best reach, speak to, and serve your customers. Product Marketing World is a series of two day conferences in Austin, Sydney, New York, Denver, Toronto, Seattle, Amsterdam, Dublin, San Francisco, Boston, Vancouver, Chicago, and London between February all the way through December. There are plenty of dates and locations for your team to choose from. Over the course of the conferences, there are over 550 speakers from top companies like Google, Uber, Salesforce, Twitter, Facebook, and more. It’s an incredibly rich educational event with cutting edge practices and insights your team can benefit from with topics ranging from team creation, go-to-market strategy, engaging and retaining users, defining your audience, and more. It’s really about covering the nitty gritty details and tactics that make these products successful. It’s the perfect two-day opportunity to reset, re-inspire, and refocus your product team.

Industry: The Product Conference.

Dublin (March 9, 10, 11) and Cleveland (September 21-23)

Product Collective offers a series of product-focused conferences in two very different cities: Cleveland and Dublin for both United States and European companies. The Cleveland conference is a global conference and the Dublin conference is a European-focused conference. Both are great options for SaaS product teams to learn how to build, launch, and scale SaaS products in an effective way. Over the course of three days, there are 16 different talks from experts and 4 hours of in-depth workshops on product management. It’s a very focused educational event that is great for the hands-on teams of SaaS products to learn from experts and other successful teams. Speakers from the product teams at Netflix, Calendly, Hubspot, and Pendo present in an intimate setting specifically for teams like yours. Of course, in addition to the serious stuff, there’s plenty of fun networking events and dinners throughout the three days where you can make important connections to kick off 2020.

Mind The Product.

Manchester, Singapore, Hamburg, San Francisco, London (February-October)

Mind The Product community of product managers consists of 150,000 members that engage in meetups in 175+ cities. Throughout the year, there are larger conferences for product managers and product teams in Hamburg, London, Manchester, San Francisco, and Singapore throughout the year. Mind The Product is really focused on cutting edge technological and management training as well as sharing expertise across the entire industry to further the community as a whole. Each conference is two days full of training sessions, expert speakers from top companies, and huge networking opportunities with companies from all over the world. This is a perfect conference for both your technical and marketing and sales teams to brush up on best practices, learn from others’ success stories and challenges, and better align your business around your product. Outside of the conferences, there are virtual training options available year round and other meetups and smaller events to join through the Mind The Product community.

Product-Led World.

New York, Amsterdam, Singapore, San Francisco, London (March - December)

No matter where your team is and when you’re available, there’s a Product-Led World conference for you. With five conferences in five cities around the world spanning the whole calendar year starting in March, you’re bound to find one that fits your schedule and what you’re looking for. Product-led combines top SaaS product influencers and leaders from top companies with some of the most interesting and new startup success stories for a full look at the world of product-centered business. It’s about sharing cutting edge technologies and practices, success stories, challenges, and inspiration to further companies of all stages. There are over 100 speakers sharing their insights from companies like Zendesk, Pipedrive, Hubspot, Shopify, and more. Sessions range from very technical to sales and marketing focused. With top players showing their cards, it’s a great opportunity to gather inspiration and new perspective with your team and go into the rest of 2020 ready to reach a new level. Additionally, over 450 companies attend with 85% of attendees representing top management. It’s a good chance to meet others in your space and explore partnerships.  

Front.

Salt Lake City, May 28-29 and November 7-8th

Front is a really interesting conference for product teams because it’s focused on training and inspiration for product designers and managers together. The focus is the intersection of product design and product management and how to best integrate and streamline those areas for a better, more successful product and company. The conference takes place in Salt Lake City for two two-day series in May and November. May 28-29th in a two-day immersive experience focused on in-depth case studies presented for product managers and UX designers from top companies’ teams. The November 7-8th session is focused on creating amazing products by improving how your team works together with the guidance of the world’s top teams. Experts who speak come from Airbnb, Headspace, Facebook, and more. Additionally, there is virtual, on-demand training available online from the conference for your team’s reference all the time. Still, nothing beats the opportunity to hear the stories of top product designers and managers and interact with them and thousands of other teams in an invigorating two-day session.

Sometimes teams need to get out of the routine and be re-inspired to come back stronger with a new perspective. It can be easy to fall into the same routines and stop thinking as creatively and intuitively as you can. It’s also easy to become blind to all the constant changes in the industry. There are so many insights and perspectives to share that other teams can grow from as well. Luckily, there are plenty of product-focused conferences for SaaS teams that provide all of that throughout 2020. The Beamer team is making our plans now to attend a few to keep up and stay inspired this year!