#PAC26 programme

11 sessions

1. 7:30 am–8:00 am NZDT

   30 min · Ops

   Staff Arriving

2. 8:00 am–9:00 am NZDT

   60 min · Check-in

   Open Check-In

3. 9:00 am–1:00 pm NZDT

   240 min · Workshop

   The Product Leader's Reality Check: Benchmarks, AI, and What's Actually Working

   Vidya Dinamani

   Product Rebels

   Mātiu

   Session & facilitator details: The Product Leader's Reality Check: Benchmarks, AI, and What's Actually Working

   A two-part session for product leaders (anyone who manages people in product) built around real data from over 100 product organisations.

   Part one is the Pulse Check. Take it live, work through your results in small groups, and see exactly where your organisation stands - including how NZ benchmarks compare to the US. You'll get a clear, current read on what's genuinely working across the industry, and where the quiet gaps are that most teams haven't named yet.

   Part two is the roundtables, and this is where we go deep on AI. We'll share the latest experiences from product organisations actually bringing AI into how they work - what's landing, what's not, and the pitfalls leaders are hitting that don't make it into the case studies. Expect the top 10 learnings on AI adoption in product teams, followed by an open discussion bringing it all back to what it means for leaders here in Aotearoa.

   Come with your own experience. Leave with a sharper read on your team, and a clearer view of how AI is actually playing out for your peers.

   About Vidya Dinamani

   Vidya Dinamani is the co-founder of Product Rebels, where she works with product leaders and founders around the world to uncover what it takes to build products customers love and drive strong business results. She speaks internationally on product leadership and has trained hundreds of product managers and leaders. She brings clarity, focus, and rigor to every team she works with. Before founding Product Rebels, she spent years as an executive product leader across B2B, B2C, and SaaS environments. She's currently focused on how AI is reshaping product craft, helping teams navigate the latest technology through the same lens that's always separated good products from great ones. She co-authored Groundwork, distilling decades of hard-won experiences into a practical operating standard for product excellence, and holds 9 US patents for software technology.

4. 9:00 am–1:00 pm NZDT

   240 min · Workshop

   Idea to Prototype in a Morning: Hands-On AI Prototyping for PMs

   John Bowker & Adam Davis

   Colab

   Mākaro

   Session & facilitator details: Idea to Prototype in a Morning: Hands-On AI Prototyping for PMs

   Why This Matters

   You'll be able to develop a prototype using your organisation's design patterns and commit your code to git. Going from IDEA to PRD to Prototype in a Morning.

   Overview

   This is a hands-on session for a team that already knows how to ship; we're not teaching product craft from scratch, we're adding a new tool to it. We take the fear out of the IDE and show PMs that an AI code agent is just another contractor on the team: one that needs a clear brief, not a computer science degree.

   By the end, every PM in the room will have gone from a real idea to a working prototype, built inside your own design patterns and committed to git, using the same lean thinking they already apply to discovery.

   Learning Outcomes

   By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

   ● Approach a code agent (Claude Code, Cursor, or similar) with confidence, treating it as an engineering contractor they direct rather than a black box they fear

   ● Turn a hypothesis into a structured PRD that an AI agent can actually build from

   ● Build and run a lightweight "prototype harness"; steering docs and context that keep an agent working inside your org's real design patterns

   ● Apply their existing Claude skills inside that harness to speed up the idea-to-prototype loop

   ● Commit a working prototype to git, with a clear view of what's safe to promote toward production and what still needs an engineer

   The group leaves knowing that the muscle here isn't code syntax — it's the same lean, hypothesis-driven judgment they already use in discovery, now pointed at a keyboard instead of a whiteboard.

   Key Topics

   ● Taking the fear out of the IDE and adopting the architect mindset

   ● Lean product thinking applied to code: from idea to hypothesis to PRD

   ● AI code agents as contract developers: writing prompts they can actually build from

   ● Building a prototype harness: steering docs, context stacks, and your existing Claude skills

   ● Committing a prototype to git inside your organisation's design patterns

   About John Bowker & Adam Davis

   John Bowker is a hands-on developer turned product leader who builds cloud-based tools and apps end to end, from modern frontend frameworks through backend services to relational and document data stores, and works daily with AI-assisted product workflows.

   He is Partner and Facilitator at Colab Cohorts and Director of Product at Auror, with 20+ years across gaming and SaaS spanning product leadership roles at Xero, ezyVet/IDEXX, and Auror.

   Through Colab, John coaches product managers at companies like Visa and Wood Mackenzie, focused on building healthy, practical product habits.

   About Adam Davis

   Adam started his career at Trade Me, then spent a decade in the trenches figuring out how to build things that work — launching and monetising new products at Hootsuite and Rightmove, driving enterprise growth and strategy at Productboard.

   Passion for building world class products is what led him to found Colab Cohorts, now trusted by product teams at Visa, Xero, and the BBC. Today he leads all AI Product Transformation programmes, still just as comfortable deep in the trenches with a product team as he is in the room with senior leaders.

5. 9:00 am–1:00 pm NZDT

   240 min · Workshop

   Metrics That Matter in the AI Era

   Tasneem (Tas) Gould & Ashley Bass

   Caterpillar Trimble Control Technologies / Phocus

   Mokopuna

   Session & facilitator details: Metrics That Matter in the AI Era

   As AI speeds up core development, the product role is evolving into a barbell shape. Writing code faster doesn't automatically mean generating more revenue — it just means we can build the wrong thing 10x faster if we aren't careful. To thrive on either side of the AI barbell, PMs need to move beyond vanity build metrics and learn how to use hard data to validate big bets upfront and prove true economic value at launch.

   Who it's for

   Mid-to-senior Product Managers, Product Leaders, and Product Owners who want to level up their commercial acumen, steer clear of the AI feature-factory slop trap, and confidently show stakeholders the bottom-line impact of their work.

   What it covers

   In this fast paced, interactive workshop, we'll dive into the two crucial ends of the new product barbell:

   ● The Fuzzy Front End (Discovery & Strategy): Defining metrics to validate high-risk ideas before touching code, sizing revenue bets, and avoiding wasted effort on low-value backlogs.

   ● Go-To-Market & Adoption (Impact & Traction): Building robust "money stories", tracking real customer adoption, and measuring economic return rather than just feature output.

   What you'll learn

   ● How to set clear quantitative success criteria for open-ended product discovery.

   ● Frameworks to build crisp economic value cases and ROI models that Sales and Leadership actually care about.

   ● Practical techniques to filter out backlog noise, get stakeholders on board, and focus team energy on high-impact revenue levers.

   ● How to construct a balanced metrics dashboard that measures real-world outcomes over delivery speed.

   About Tasneem (Tas) Gould & Ashley Bass

   Tas is an experienced product practitioner, strategist, and trainer with over 15 years of experience in B2B Product Strategy, Product Marketing, and Software Delivery.

   Currently Product Director at Caterpillar Trimble Control Technologies, she has spent her career helping some of New Zealand's top software and engineering companies — including Xero, Orion Health, and MYOB — build empowered product practices and deliver high-value customer outcomes.

   Based in Christchurch, New Zealand, Tas is deeply committed to growing the local tech ecosystem and is active in multiple local communities including ProductTank, KiwiSaas and Product Aotearoa. Additionally, she collaborates with the University of Canterbury's Executive Education Programme to deliver their Product Management Bootcamp, and serves as a mentor for local startup programs.

   About Ashley Bass

   Ashley is a dynamic product and marketing professional who leads with passion, pragmatism, and a commitment to delivering customer and business value with a bit of fun and flair.

   She has deep experience across the product life cycle and has delivered on execution and strategy for a variety of software businesses in various stages of scale and growth over the last 15 years in the US and NZ. She specialises in collaborative Go to Market, building teams and customer community, product led growth, product operations, remote distributed team dynamics, customer empathy, and B2B SaaS software. Her super power is getting stuff done (and she's really good at celebrating after).

   Passionate about furthering the product management and product marketing disciplines, she regularly hosts and speaks at PM community and start up events and is an advisor, coach and trainer for product teams of all shapes and sizes. Her current day job is Head of Product Marketing for Phocus.

6. 11:00 am–11:30 am NZDT

   30 min · Break

   Morning Tea

7. 1:00 pm–1:30 pm NZDT

   30 min · Break

   Lunch

8. 1:30 pm–5:30 pm NZDT

   240 min · Workshop

   The Steering Wheel & The Engine: Reclaiming Product Craft in the Age of AI

   Vidya Dinamani

   Product Rebels

   Mātiu

   Session & facilitator details: The Steering Wheel & The Engine: Reclaiming Product Craft in the Age of AI

   AI let us build at warp speed - and tech companies across the US are learning the hard way that speed isn't the point. Shipping fast means nothing if nobody wants what you shipped. Product-market fit was never about a clever prompt. It's built on grit, sharp product sense, and a relentless obsession with the human problem underneath the feature request.

   This is a zero-fluff, hands-on workshop. No slides full of theory - we get our hands dirty. Drawing directly from what's working right now with my US clients, we'll pressure-test your real strategy, live with prompts and frameworks that are proven to work. You'll use AI not as a shortcut but as a stress test: simulating skeptical, authentic customer behavior to surface the hidden assumptions quietly threatening to sink your roadmap.

   You'll walk out with a clear plan that gets you off the feature-building treadmill and back to solving the human pain that actually converts into paying customers.

   About Vidya Dinamani

   Vidya Dinamani is the co-founder of Product Rebels, where she works with product leaders and founders around the world to uncover what it takes to build products customers love and drive strong business results. She speaks internationally on product leadership and has trained hundreds of product managers and leaders. She brings clarity, focus, and rigor to every team she works with. Before founding Product Rebels, she spent years as an executive product leader across B2B, B2C, and SaaS environments. She's currently focused on how AI is reshaping product craft, helping teams navigate the latest technology through the same lens that's always separated good products from great ones. She co-authored Groundwork, distilling decades of hard-won experiences into a practical operating standard for product excellence, and holds 9 US patents for software technology.

9. 1:30 pm–5:30 pm NZDT

   240 min · Workshop

   Principles even over Strategy

   Martin Eriksson

   Martin Eriksson

   Mākaro

   Session & facilitator details: Principles even over Strategy

   Strategy is hard. Principles aren't. We'll spend a little time on what strategy actually is, then dig deep into the how: creating principles that let you make sharper trade-offs without waiting for the next leadership offsite. You'll see how real companies like Monster, Google, Shopify, and Supercell use them, then get hands-on building your own - this is a highly interactive session where you'll work on principles for your actual product, share them with the room, and vote on the sharpest. Whether you're an IC or a leader, you'll walk out with better language to talk about strategy and a set of principles you can put to work Monday.

   About Martin Eriksson

   Martin Eriksson is a board member, strategic advisor, and author of The Decision Stack. With over 30 years building businesses, products, and teams, he's advised over 150 companies on aligning from vision to execution, and previously served as Product Partner at EQT, one of the world's largest private investors. As founder of ProductTank, co-founder of Mind the Product, and co-author of Product Leadership (O'Reilly, 2017), he helped define the product management discipline.

10. 1:30 pm–5:30 pm NZDT

    240 min · Workshop

    From Build to Bought — Get your products into the hands of customers

    Tasneem (Tas) Gould & Ashley Bass

    Caterpillar Trimble Control Technologies / Phocus

    Mokopuna

    Session & facilitator details: From Build to Bought — Get your products into the hands of customers

    Building a brilliant product is only half the battle. If your customers don't immediately see the value, trust your brand, or understand why they should ditch their current setup, even the best tech will end up sitting on the shelf.

    Too often, great discovery stops the moment a product is built. But if your Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy is running on pure guesswork and market assumptions, you're leaving growth on the table. To truly scale, you need to uncover the real commercial drivers and friction points that dictate whether a customer actually clicks "buy" or just stays put.

    What it covers

    This session bridges the gap between product development and commercial success. We'll skip the theory, replace assumptions with hard evidence, and map your product's value directly to real customer demand. Using practical tools like the GTM Insights Canvas, we'll dig into:

    ● The GTM Discovery Shift: Why discovery is just as vital for your marketing and sales messaging as it is for your product roadmap.

    ● Uncovering True Demand: How to spot what really drives value and motivates your audience.

    ● Real-World Positioning: How to turn raw customer insights into sharp messaging that cuts through the noise.

    Who it's for

    This workshop is for Product Leaders, Sr PMs, and Product Marketing Managers (PMMs) who want to team up closely with marketing and revenue squads. If you're keen to accelerate growth, cut out costly rework, and move your offering from simply "built" to actively "bought," you'll fit right in.

    What you'll learn

    ● Generative vs. Evaluative Discovery: How to listen for and use the language your customers use to describe their own problems to truly connect with their needs.

    ● Jobs, Pains, & Gains: How to look past shiny product features to master the emotional and functional drivers behind a purchase.

    ● The Four Forces of Demand: How to leverage Push and Pull, while breaking down customer Anxiety and Inertia.

    ● Nailing Your True Competition: How to position your product against what you're actually fighting (yes, even that Excel spreadsheet your customers refuse to give up, or the AI chatbot that they use to research everything they do).

    About Tasneem (Tas) Gould & Ashley Bass

    Tas is an experienced product practitioner, strategist, and trainer with over 15 years of experience in B2B Product Strategy, Product Marketing, and Software Delivery.

    Currently Product Director at Caterpillar Trimble Control Technologies, she has spent her career helping some of New Zealand's top software and engineering companies — including Xero, Orion Health, and MYOB — build empowered product practices and deliver high-value customer outcomes.

    Based in Christchurch, New Zealand, Tas is deeply committed to growing the local tech ecosystem and is active in multiple local communities including ProductTank, KiwiSaas and Product Aotearoa. Additionally, she collaborates with the University of Canterbury's Executive Education Programme to deliver their Product Management Bootcamp, and serves as a mentor for local startup programs.

    About Ashley Bass

    Ashley is a dynamic product and marketing professional who leads with passion, pragmatism, and a commitment to delivering customer and business value with a bit of fun and flair.

    She has deep experience across the product life cycle and has delivered on execution and strategy for a variety of software businesses in various stages of scale and growth over the last 15 years in the US and NZ. She specialises in collaborative Go to Market, building teams and customer community, product led growth, product operations, remote distributed team dynamics, customer empathy, and B2B SaaS software. Her super power is getting stuff done (and she's really good at celebrating after).

    Passionate about furthering the product management and product marketing disciplines, she regularly hosts and speaks at PM community and start up events and is an advisor, coach and trainer for product teams of all shapes and sizes. Her current day job is Head of Product Marketing for Phocus.

11. 3:30 pm–4:00 pm NZDT

    30 min · Break

    Afternoon Tea