PM Awards Series: ALPHA Camp Director of Tech & Data on Building Community-Focused Products

How can product leaders build community-focused products? In this episode of the PM Awards Series with Ticketmaster Fmr VP of Product Andrew Zavattero, ALPHA Camp Director of Tech & Data Karen Hsieh, winner of the Data Literacy and Community Builder PM Award, speaks on how community building can drive product success. Karen shares how she started her company’s data team from scratch and aligned metrics across functions. She discusses the value communities provide for long-term learning, accountability, and collaboration. Karen also offers insights into her journey learning product management on the job and from experts. Discover practical tips for using data to impact business priorities quickly, as well as Karen’s perspective on the role of curiosity, sharing knowledge, and community in becoming a great product leader.

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Show Notes

1. Karen started ALPHA Camp’s data team from scratch to drive data-informed decisions.
2. Normalizing definitions across teams is important to align metrics like “revenue.”
3. Communities provide long-term accountability and collaboration for career transitions.
4. Senior engineers can mentor and share soft skills advice through communities.
5. AI has limitations in providing clear answers and debugging.
6. Product discovery courses teach problem-solving mindsets and team collaboration.
7. Sharing knowledge reinforces one’s learning and improves skills over time.
8. Data literacy training raised data use maturity at ALPHA Camp.
9. Focusing the data team on priorities often shows quick business impact.
10. Transparency through Notion involves functions beyond just engineering.
11. Karen is passionate about using data and communities to influence others.
12. Aligning business logic definitions is challenging but important for data work.
13. Community provides perspectives that individual learning cannot replace.
14. Notion allows work to be organized and accessible across different roles.
15. Curiosity is an important mindset to deeply understand problems.
16. Willingness to share knowledge is crucial when building community-focused products.
17. Most of Karen’s learning came from experience rather than formal education.
18. Reaching out to experts like Marty Cagan was pivotal in Karen’s career development.
19. Testing AI capabilities revealed its current limitations compared to humans.
20. Highlighting quick wins from data helps gain leadership support.