Reforge

Media and creator-driven channels like YouTube and podcasting are a tough arena for brands to play in. The reason? It's all about personality, not just delivering information. Kieran Flanagan sums it up well: "Even when it's education, people care about the personality behind the education." In today's AI-driven marketing landscape, we're seeing a shift in consumer trust towards individuals rather than brands. This trend highlights the growing importance of the creator skillset for brands looking to elevate their media presence. But as Kieran points out, it's a lot more challenging than it seems. Discover more from Brian Balfour and Kieran Flanagan in their ref:AI session, "The AI Marketing Playbook." Watch the full recording and check out the recap here: https://lnkd.in/eEw2rSnc

Have you watched Ethan Smith and Gregory Druck's ref:AI presentation on The Future of Search yet? Key points covered: - The differences between search features powered by LLM or a combination of LLM + RAG. - We're moving from keyword research to question research. - Great content in the modern era will answer many variations of the same question. - "Citation Optimization" (getting pulled in as a source for an AI-generated answer) is the closest beneficiary of a traditional SEO strategy. - We're moving from SERP tracking to AI answer tracking. Check out Ethan's fantastic recap below, and then you can watch the full recording for a deeper dive here: https://lnkd.in/e2iFNCU5

We’re excited to partner with Metabase and welcome Tanya Aulachynskaya, Product Manager at Metabase and former VP of Product at PandaDoc, for an in-depth exploration of the essential metrics that drive product strategy. Here’s what you’ll gain: 🔹 Activation Metrics: Learn how to define and measure activation for SaaS startups to enhance your understanding of the funnel and make actionable decisions. 🔹 Product & Revenue Metrics: Discover techniques to optimize your product funnel for revenue growth, focusing on strategic drivers like Net Dollar Retention and Expansion MRR. 🔹 Real Dashboards in Metabase: Get hands-on with practical examples of Metabase dashboards that track crucial metrics. Watch Tanya demonstrate how to create and customize dashboards that align with your product strategy. This free event is designed for mid-senior level product managers and product directors. 🔗 Register here: https://lnkd.in/e3_DfUgd

Kyle Block, Head of Research at Gradient, is hosting a free talk with us next week that is designed to help you answer a deceivingly simple question: What do your customers want you to build? Many roadmapping and prioritization frameworks for product managers are qualitative and relatively subjective. For example, the popular RICE (reach, impact, confidence, effort) framework only gives the illusion of being scientific - picking the numbers assigned to each category is usually rife with assumptions and guesses. So how do you put a little bit more science behind the art of roadmapping? In this talk, Kyle will teach you how to identify in-demand product features, understand consumer trade-offs, and quantitatively validate feature ideas for your roadmap. He'll also leave time for Q&A. See you next week!

🤖✨ Mark your calendar for our upcoming event: 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘼𝙄 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙙𝙪𝙘𝙩 𝙁𝙡𝙮𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙚𝙡: 𝙎𝙮𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙀𝙫𝙖𝙡𝙪𝙖𝙩𝙚 & 𝙄𝙢𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝘼𝙄 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙙𝙪𝙘𝙩𝙨 📅 Building on the immense success of our recent one-day AI conference, we're excited to welcome Haroon Choudery, Co-Founder & CEO of Autoblocks AI, for a talk in which he'll guide you through optimizing your LLM application's performance with the right evaluation techniques at each development stage. Event Highlights: - 𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻���� 𝗘𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: Grasp the crucial role of evaluations in ensuring the effectiveness and reliability of LLM applications. - 𝗖𝗵𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗘𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱: Learn how to select the most suitable evaluation techniques for your specific use case. - 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗘𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆: Discover methods like fine-tuning and expert alignment to enhance evaluation consistency and accuracy. - 𝗘𝗻𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗕𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝗻 𝗘𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀: Explore how to refine and improve your LLM applications by leveraging evaluation outcomes. This talk is ideal for product managers and engineers on AI product teams eager to elevate their understanding of LLM evaluation techniques. Excited to see you there!

Our first virtual conference, ref:AI, is TOMORROW 🎉 It starts at 9 AM PT, and registrants will get to hear from experts building and growing AI products, using AI in their workflow, or thinking about how AI impacts the future of their profession or area of expertise. 🎟 Register for free and join over 8,000 folks looking to hear from this lineup: https://events.reforge.com See you there?

🔦 ref:AI session spotlight number 6: Unsolicited Feedback Live: Strategies to Beat the AI S-Curve with special guest, Andrew Chen, and our host of Unsolicited Feedback, Fareed Mosavat! Startups at the forefront of an S-curve, like the current AI wave, face a challenging product creation process. However, the potential growth is substantial. Early S-curve products are propelled by the allure of novelty. This fascination guarantees that significant new features or improvements to underlying AI models attract new users with minimal marketing efforts. Despite the high growth driven by this novelty, it's important to note that the early phase of an S-curve is characterized by high growth and high churn. As AI approaches initial saturation points, the S-curve begins to shrink, and early churn rates become more profound. Andrew and Fareed will explore the essential aspects of developing enduring AI products that have significant impacts and address the challenges of the flattening S-Curve. They will spotlight companies that have successfully stayed ahead of the curve and offer Unsolicited Feedback to those that have fallen behind. Andrew and Fareed will also review their well-known Product Strategy frameworks, discussing those that have stood the test of time and those that have not. Join them on June 25th for their session in ref:AI. Register directly here: https://lnkd.in/gsC96sSS

🔦 ref:AI session spotlight number 5: The Future of Search with Ethan Smith and Gregory Druck of Graphite 🔦 SEO has been an essential growth channel for some time, but it's undergoing a major transformation. Kyle Byers said, "We’ll all have a new competitor in the SERPs: Google’s Search Generative Experience, which displays AI answers for many search queries." We're moving towards an answer-first world with AI-generated responses dominating search results, leading to more "zero-click searches." On top of that, Gartner predicts search engine volume will drop 25% by 2026, due to increased competition from social apps, integrated AI experiences, and chatbots. These shifts are intimidating, but Ethan Smith and Gregory Druck are not sitting around just watching this happen. They are adapting and have some advice on how you can, too. Join them on June 25th for their session in ref:AI. Register directly here: https://lnkd.in/ehkPM7CA

🔦 ref:ai event spotlight number 4 - The AI Feature Development Blueprint with Justin Farris at GitLab 🔦 After years and years of building technology products with a relatively consistent tech stack, product people refined the craft into processes that were easy, repeatable, and fairly predictable. But the cracks in the old ways are starting to show. Justin Farris, VP of Product Management at GitLab, feels that "AI has required us to rethink everything we do and how we do it". In this talk, Justin will dissect the old way of developing products and features, and then explain how you can rework your product development process to keep up with the technological changes. 🎥 Register for Justin's talk here: https://lnkd.in/ePGTbFd8 📅 See the rest of the ref:ai agenda here: https://events.reforge.com

🔦 ref:AI event spotlight number 3 - What Does an AI PM Do? 🔦 There is no role that has felt the rise of AI more than product managers. Many PMs who had never worked on an AI-focused feature or product before are now at the whim of internal and external pressure to dream up and ship these at a breakneck pace. Hence the rise of a new role - the AI PM. Liat Ben-Zur writes, "Product managers have always championed the customer’s needs. But with AI, the job requires new technical and ethical skills. To create responsible AI products that provide real value, PMs need to be part engineer, ethicist, and translator." For ref:AI, we've assembled an outstanding panel of product professionals from top companies to explore this new dimension of product management. 1️⃣ Ailian Gan, AI Product Lead at Zoom 2️⃣ Dylan Sellberg, Director of Product - AI at HubSpot 3️⃣ Kumaresh Pattabiraman, Sr. Director of Product at LinkedIn And it's moderated by the fantastic Polly M Allen, who is helping product professionals break into AI. Explore the full ref:ai agenda here: https://events.reforge.com