TEI 283: 2020 Summit Lessons Learned – with Chad McAllister

Lessons Learned from launching The Everyday Innovator™ Virtual Summit

After hosting the 2020 virtual summit for product managers and product VPs, I’ve been asked many times for my lessons learned: what made it great, what would I do differently, what advice I have, what I learned about launching a product, etc.

Consequently, after answering several of these questions individually, I realized others would find value in the lessons learned as well.

That is what this podcast episode is about. It’s not my usual discussion format. Instead, I review the lessons learned from myself and my team that created and launched the summit.

By the way, if you still want to benefit from the incredible strategies and tips the summit speakers shared, along with the exclusive materials my team created, click here for 24+ expert masterclasses from top-of-their-field experts.

Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers

[1:38] Summit Lessons Learned Meeting

Just like after a product launch, I conducted a lessons-learned meeting with the Summit team to discuss:

* What worked (best practices)

* What to do differently (mistakes and insights)

* Building trust and empowerment in the team

[2:30] Context of the Summit

[2:36] Objectives:

* Build awareness for The Everyday Innovator™ podcast

* Grow my email list in order to reach more people

* Prepare for a membership group for product managers and VPs

[3:11] Target Market: product managers and product leaders

[3:59] Why a virtual summit? I know people who have done virtual summits with similar objectives, and I already knew how to do interviews. It also provided learning experiences for me to prepare for a membership offering including video interviews and written materials.

[4:53] Preparation

* Followed the programs of mentors Navid Moazzez at Virtual Summit Mastery and Matt DeMeritt at Digital Summit Pros

* Assembled a team

* Developed a schedule

[5:58] Basic Flow of the Summit

* 25 sessions over 3 days

* Motivational keynote on first day

* New session published every hour

* Two tracks: product managers and product VPs

* Live chat-based discussion with me and many speakers all three days

[6:36] What worked?

[6:41] Vision: Anytime we’re thinking about a product, vision is a very important aspect of planning to get the team on the same page. After a lot of thought and interaction with others, I wrote a vision for the Summit that focused on professional development and learning for product managers and leaders.

[8:16] High quality speakers: Our speakers are experts in:

* Business innovation

* Lean

* Customer research

* Communication

* Product leadership

* And more

[9:30] Logo: We updated The Everyday Innovator™ logo for the Summit and created an animated version.

[9:51] Key Features

* Playbook: PDF of each speaker session including speaker bio, personal insight, innovation quote, and links to additional resources

* Written Speed Summaries of each session

* Action Guides for each session including discussion questions and actions to take

* Transcripts

* MP3 files

* Interactive discussion for participants during the live Summit

* Speaker sessions: some presentations, some interviews

[11:24] Business model: When you’re developing a new product, you need to explore the business model, which is how you’re going to generate revenue.

* Free Summit: playbook, speaker sessions during the Summit, interactive discussion

* All-Access Pass: generated revenue; includes lifetime access to recordings...