Product at Heart 2026
Episode
20 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Productivity, Leadership, Design & UX
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Single-Track Conference Curation: Product at Heart 2026 runs a single-track format for 800 attendees due to venue renovations, requiring more careful speaker selection than previous dual-track events. This eliminates audience choice between parallel sessions, making content curation more challenging as organizers must predict relevant product management topics six months ahead in a rapidly evolving AI landscape.
- ✓AI Integration Philosophy: The conference avoids creating a separate AI track, instead embedding AI discussions throughout all sessions. This approach treats AI as a standard tool in the product toolkit rather than a specialty topic, reflecting the belief that AI capabilities should be integrated into every product manager's core competencies rather than siloed as an optional specialization.
- ✓Roundtable Alternative Programming: Theme-based roundtables accommodate 12-20 people and serve as alternative programming to main stage talks. Two formats run simultaneously: speaker-led Q&A sessions immediately following talks, and topic-based discussions hosted by product coaches and consultants. This addresses the missing second track and provides intimate learning opportunities for attendees seeking deeper engagement.
- ✓Maker Studio Workshop Format: Theresa Schwartz's full-day workshop requires pre-conference homework setting up Claude or Codex, then guides participants through identifying AI-augmentable work tasks, designing workflows using discovery habits and story mapping, and building a functional personal AI workflow deployable immediately after the conference. The hands-on hackathon approach delivers practical implementation skills rather than theoretical knowledge.
- ✓Extended Leadership Retreat Model: The product leadership event expands from half-day to one-and-a-half days in April, limited to 60 attendees. The format includes speaker sessions, Hamburg harbor excursions, improv workshops, networking dinners, and six ninety-minute mini-workshops offered twice so attendees can select two topics. This addresses the isolation product leaders experience as solo practitioners in their organizations.
What It Covers
Petra Villa and Theresa Schwartz preview Product at Heart 2026 in Hamburg, Germany. They detail the ninth annual conference format changes, including a single-track program, AI integration across sessions rather than dedicated tracks, roundtable discussions, hands-on workshops, and a new extended product leadership retreat in April.
Key Questions Answered
- •Single-Track Conference Curation: Product at Heart 2026 runs a single-track format for 800 attendees due to venue renovations, requiring more careful speaker selection than previous dual-track events. This eliminates audience choice between parallel sessions, making content curation more challenging as organizers must predict relevant product management topics six months ahead in a rapidly evolving AI landscape.
- •AI Integration Philosophy: The conference avoids creating a separate AI track, instead embedding AI discussions throughout all sessions. This approach treats AI as a standard tool in the product toolkit rather than a specialty topic, reflecting the belief that AI capabilities should be integrated into every product manager's core competencies rather than siloed as an optional specialization.
- •Roundtable Alternative Programming: Theme-based roundtables accommodate 12-20 people and serve as alternative programming to main stage talks. Two formats run simultaneously: speaker-led Q&A sessions immediately following talks, and topic-based discussions hosted by product coaches and consultants. This addresses the missing second track and provides intimate learning opportunities for attendees seeking deeper engagement.
- •Maker Studio Workshop Format: Theresa Schwartz's full-day workshop requires pre-conference homework setting up Claude or Codex, then guides participants through identifying AI-augmentable work tasks, designing workflows using discovery habits and story mapping, and building a functional personal AI workflow deployable immediately after the conference. The hands-on hackathon approach delivers practical implementation skills rather than theoretical knowledge.
- •Extended Leadership Retreat Model: The product leadership event expands from half-day to one-and-a-half days in April, limited to 60 attendees. The format includes speaker sessions, Hamburg harbor excursions, improv workshops, networking dinners, and six ninety-minute mini-workshops offered twice so attendees can select two topics. This addresses the isolation product leaders experience as solo practitioners in their organizations.
Notable Moment
Petra describes meeting cyber psychologist Elaine Caskett at an airport after a conference in Morocco, leading to a two-hour conversation about digital afterlife research. Caskett's work examines how chatbots mimicking deceased people gradually dilute the original personality with each conversation, as the AI learns from new interactions and waters down the initial personality model.
Episode Transcript
Hi, folks. This is All Things Product with Petra Villa And Theresa Schwartz. And we're so happy you're here. Hi, Petra. Theresa, hello. I am super excited to come to product at heart this year. I feel like I came the first year, and I had so much fun. I was like, I'm gonna come every year this this conference exists. And then I forget what happened the second year. I think maybe Rick had some going on. And then the third year was this past year. Right? Yeah. And I had a broken ankle and was barely walking. And I cannot believe I have not been back. So I am so happy to be back, and I'm not just coming as a participant, which is super exciting. I'm gonna teach a workshop and give a keynote, which is super fun. Move on to. I think you should tell me what to look forward to at product at heart. Oh, that is, if we would know that already, Theresa. So it really Arne and I are doing this. So it's our ninth conference episode next year because we were doing Mind the Product Engage before we run product at heart. Right? So it's, the ninth year of us curating a conference experience. And it never has been harder, I have to admit, because this entire product slash AI realm is moving so fast that it is super hard to decide on what will be important voices in our industry by June. Right? And what will be the topics the product people are interested in. And most and yeah. Foremost, we don't want to have the AI track because Arne and I are really convinced that AI is just like a tool in all our toolkit by hopefully. Right? Yeah. So no AI track. And we're running so maybe just for those who have been at the event, we usually run dual track event. In the beginning was a German track and a track hold in English. Then at some point, we decided, ah, ditched the German. We only do English tracks and two of them. But next year, the venue is undergoing renovation, and so we were limited in what we can do in the venue and finding a new venue. Hamburg is big, but not that big that they have another venue for 800,000 people, so that's not happening. So we run a single track event, which makes it even harder because then people cannot pick if they're interested in track a or track b. So curation needs to be way better. Yeah. But, of course, there will be talks AI related. That's that's that's a given, I'd say. You are hopefully delivering one of them. And then Christian Idioti is coming. I don't know. So he's working for Silicon Valley product group. He's one of their partners, and he's an amazing storyteller. That's basically why we asked him. Nice. He's on our list for quite some time. We've …
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“Theresa Schwartz's full-day workshop requires pre-conference homework setting up Claude or Codex, then guides participants through identifying AI-augmentable work tasks.”
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