# Designing Awe: Product Strategies for High-Impact Events

**Podcast:** All Things Product with Teresa and Petra
**Published:** 2026-06-23

## Transcript

Hi, folks.
This is All Things Product with Petra Wille.
And Teresa Kortz.
And we're so happy you're here.
Petra, I read a LinkedIn post by someone who attended your Product at Heart leadership event last week.
By the time this goes live, it will be a couple months ago.
But for recording, it's last week.
And one of the things they really highlighted was how you and Arna do such a good job of of creating not just an event with speakers and which a lot of people do, but really creating an experience and paying attention to all the little details and really thinking about what an attendee's experience might be.
And I thought it would be fun to just explore how you think about how you and Arna think about that, how you decide what's important.
Because I think this is really analogous to just creating product experiences.
You're just doing it in a real world event.
Yeah, that's actually a great question.
Oh, and so many things to unpack.
So maybe I briefly share what we've done with the leadership event.
because for the first time it stretched across one and a half days.
In the past, it was only like a five hours event.
And now we had like more time to design an experience.
And we started with a speakers dinner on Sunday night in a greenhouse on a farm, all candle lit.
And the whole greenhouse was just covered in rosemary.
So that was actually quite interesting.
Nice smells.
And then Monday, we did four amazing keynote talks to kick off the day.
And that was really the learning and inspiration part.
And we had three real practitioners, so product leaders on stage sharing how they go about their product leadership practices, different flavors of it.
and one futurist talking about the futures that basically all leaders are designing.
And then the afternoon was reserved for excursions.
So a few people went on a boat trip through the Hamburg Harbor and there was it.
So there was no bigger...
yeah curation going on with that particular event so we just wanted to create the space for people to be outside experience hamburg weather um it was a bit windy that day um and just having a lot of time at hand to have conversations with peers because we really have product leaders in a room with product leaders.
And that is a rare thing.
So we just wanted them to have enough time to have conversation.
And a similar thing was the farm excursion.
So we visited the same farm from the speakers dinner again.
But during the day, the owner explained the tomato life cycle to us, for example.
So that was quite interesting.
And how she is running the farm.
with the support of digital tools, obviously.
But there was like, there was one hour and the other two hours was us snacking on some radishes and having, again, peer conversations with fellow product leads.
And the last was a leadership.
improvisation workshop where it was all about taking space and having a stance and all these kind of things.
So that was a more embodied experience, I would say.
So people were kicking their shoes off and running around in a very big room somewhere on the famous St.
Pauli Repubahn here in Hamburg.
Quite interesting as well.
Then we had a bit of a party.
evening dinner thing flying dinner more time to mingle and have conversations and we even brought in the bigger hamburg product leadership community so even more people to talk to and the next day was mini workshops so six mini workshops every attendee got to pick two they could attend and that again was really practical conversations around product leadership challenges and What we learned again is how much humans are craving connection these days because so much of our learning is happening online and in cubicles and in, I don't know, air conditioned rooms and stuff like that.
Everybody was so happy about us escaping the building, breathing some fresh air, taking a walk.
But still, even the talks and the keynotes were well appreciated.
So I think it's all about the mix.
And we've really made sure to design it in a way that there were different things to pick for people so that they can curate their own experience to some extent.
Because you cannot with every event.
You cannot curate for everybody to be happy.
Otherwise, it's not a good curation, right?
So...
We know we curate for pretty edgy topics sometimes.
And if we do so, we always try to make sure there is an alternative because in pro theater, not a thing for everybody, but some people love it and some people needed it that day.
So this is really something that we try with all our events.
For the big conference, for example, we just invented the hard problem clubs.
Because we figured that, for example, hardware product management is a good example.
We cannot do a talk on hardware product management in front of 800 people because 750 of them would not be interested in the topic maybe.
But we found a way with smaller, facilitated, 25-people group conversations where we can cater for this more special, special interest topics.
And this is a big part of how we build events and curate.
And I was wondering maybe to add that nuance, how organizations these days, because offsites were such a big thing.
I don't know, 10 years back, every company was basically putting it in their job descriptions.
What amazing offsites they do, company offsites and team offsites and people were going.
to Majorca here in Europe, nice islands somewhere and having nice offsides.
And these days it's a bit out of fashion to some extent.
And I think we should bring it back.
Yeah.
Okay.
You just shared a lot.
One of the things that I heard that I really liked is this idea of you can't curate an experience that everybody's going to be happy with.
So there's a few things you could do.
You could choose to make an experience for specific types of people.
You could say product art is not for product managers in the hardware space.
But you also can do this mix and match where you look at there's events that are meant to appeal to the broad community.
And then there's sort of choose your own path events that allow people to kind of self-select into the things that are most relevant to them.
It sounds like you did this at your leadership event with Sort of choose your afternoon adventure.
You're doing this at Product at Heart with the Hard Problems Club.
I think no matter how, like you can't offer infinite paths.
So no matter what, you're still curating.
You're still deciding.
These are the types of people we're going to focus on.
Yeah.
You're just giving a little more choice.
Like let's make this more broadly appealing.
So that seems like one key decision that is really applicable for any product is like, Who are we choosing to serve?
How many different segments?
How are we letting them pick?
Like self-select.
I like how you're bringing it back to the product.
Yeah.
From the experience to the product.
The other thing I heard, which you didn't really, I heard this more in your description, but I also saw one of your attendees call this out on LinkedIn, which is you're not just planning events.
You really are creating these.
Like, I want to say like full sensory experiences.
So you described this dinner and you mentioned the rosemary, right?
Like, I want to hear a little bit about how you think about, like, I could imagine you could run this exact same event just in a regular room with people and a present as a presenter and just run the event.
And it will be cheaper.
And it would be cheaper.
So.
I think these like little elements you're talking about, about the dinner in the greenhouse with surrounded by rosemary, going to the farm and learning about the life cycle of a tomato.
Like what, to me, these are analogous to like when designers talk about designing for delight.
So I would love to hear like, how do you decide what to add when it's worth spending on that?
Because I know running events is hard.
Like it's not like you have infinite budget.
Do you want to share a little bit about how you make those decisions?
So Arne and I have both been attending events in the past that have cared about that before we did.
And just to name two, the House of Beautiful Business has had a big impact on us.
And the.
conference in Malmö was the other event that we both experienced these more sensory experiences plus they always make sure to bring in the arts and What we've realized and all the arts from spoken word poetry and Derek Sivers to musicians to I was rock weaving in Morocco in one of the sessions, which is like more artisan than arts.
But still, we were having artisanly made tea in a Moroccan tea house and all these kind of things.
Right.
So these events are a big inspiration to us.
And then it is actually Arne who does it more often than I, coming back to this.
Hey, I have this idea.
There is this one friend of mine.
He does music when he connects some, I don't know, amplifiers with fruits.
Maybe we can do something in the greenhouse.
And then we invite this person to do a bit of music with us.
And we will add.
Pictures to the show note where you can see how we played music with the vegetables this time.
I was really good on playing the zucchini.
But we learned that this really is connecting people with something bigger than themselves, something bigger than the organization that they're working for, something bigger than the problems that they're currently having back in their office.
And that this...
distance or this different angle to look at the same problems that they're obviously having is sometimes unblocking something in them.
They come back deeply inspired, fresh of new energy sometimes.
So whatever it does to people, it does something to people and it makes it.
Sometimes if you know me, sometimes I'm good for the goofy dance battle on stage and stuff like that.
So even some goofy moments are helping a lot that people are feeling to be in a safe space where they can open up.
And that is, for example, in a bigger group, it's impossible.
So we need to create a smaller group spaces where it's easier for people to mingle and to open up.
a very diverse lineup.
So we are very cautious about who to put on, whom to put on stage.
And that is, does represent at least product management in this entity.
Because that helps people to connect as well.
You can't be what you, what you can't see.
That's, I think, a saying that one could use here.
Yeah.
And then it's.
It's not our main business to run these events.
That's another thing that is definitely helpful.
So Arne and I do a lot of it because we love it.
And sometimes we just spend money on things because we think it's beautiful.
The first year we did product at heart, we hired a three meter disco ball just for a 20 second appearance because we thought it's beautiful.
It was massively expensive, but people loved it.
And it was really wow effect in the first minute.
And that's what they're taking home with them.
So we definitely took them out of their virtual cubicles and put them into a different reality where they could then learn how or be inspired and all these kinds of things.
And for that, you need to touch all their senses.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think a few thoughts went through my head as you described that.
So I used to go to this event called World Domination Summit.
Yeah.
It's got kind of a terrible name.
It was started by Chris Guillebeau.
He visited every country in the world.
That's where the name came from.
If you know Chris and see Chris in person, it's really clear he's not about dominating anything.
The tagline of the conference is how to live a remarkable life in a...
I forget.
I'm not going to get it right.
Wow.
It's been a few years since this happened.
How to live a remarkable life in a conventional world.
And it's just, and when he says remarkable, he doesn't mean it in this like achiever mindset.
He means it in the way that is meaningful for you.
Like what's remarkable for you.
So how do you live a remarkable life in a conventional world?
And, um, one of the things they did exceptionally well was these little delighter moments and these like over the top magical moments.
And I think.
Wasn't there a dinosaur dress-up thing at some point?
One of the things they did each year was they did a Guinness World Record attempt.
So one of them was a dinosaur dance party.
I've now been part of, I think, four different world record attempts.
Breakfast in bed, dinosaur dance party, largest number of people doing yoga.
I forget what the fourth one was.
Oh, I love it.
I love it.
It's fun, right?
But I think there's this feeling of awe that when, like, we feel this sense of awe, which, by the way, is, like, a way overused term.
But, like, if you think about, like, seeing a really beautiful sunrise or, like, if you can just, like, take a minute to put yourself back in that moment.
I think when we curate these moments, whether it's through like a magical moment at a conference, whether it's through something we're doing in our product, some of it is novelty, but I think novelty doesn't quite capture it.
I really do think it's awe.
I think there's this thing that happens to you where in that moment you realize, and sunset's coming to mind because we literally could see a sunset every day, but we don't.
Most of us do not see the sunset or the sunrise every day.
I feel like there's this, when we can inspire awe, we take people out of their normal experience, the mundane experience, and we help people see what's possible beyond the mundane, beyond the pedestrian.
And I think like as creators, whether you're creating an event, whether you're creating a product, like just reminding yourself, like having a way to have regular reminders.
That like most of our life experience is in this lane, but we can expand the lane.
Yeah, that's really a nice metaphor.
Yeah.
And I really like this words delight and awe.
And what we always have a bit of as a metaphor is the serendipity moments.
So we want to create the space where these people.
could meet out of nowhere their next best product leadership buddy, for example, and really fall in platonic love, basically, with somebody at the event, for example, for facing the same challenges or for just sharing the same hobby, whatever it is.
So we don't care.
But all of us are wearing this corporate armor to some extent, and we have our business reflexes.
And if we can get through that armor and can, yeah, shut off this reflexes, this business reflexes, then inspiration is more likely to hit.
So this is basically what we try to create with the events.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We have a lot to put in these show notes, Teresa, a lot to put in the show notes.
We do have a lot to put in the show notes, including dinosaur dance party photos, which I'm pretty sure exactly.
Thanks for bringing the topic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thanks for sharing your experience.