Continuing in the series of how to keep a community of practice engaging, for our PM Club, we’ve had a number of ‘special guests’ that have led to interesting conversations.

We were lucky enough to have Rich Mironov present to us one time, which led into an interesting conversation. We followed up that conversation by reading another one of his blog articles that related to that conversation, and continuing the conversation on our own.

Examples of other special guests have included:

• Our CPO and the head of our reporting and analytics team talked about their goals and direction for reporting, and how we could start working together more closely.
• Our regulatory team presented on what they’ve been working on and how they do their job.
  • They also took some time to share a new template they’ve been working on to collaborate with PMs, and the PMs had a great opportunity to give input as a group.
• A senior engineer came to our meeting to help explain a critical complex technical concept that all of our product managers needed to fully comprehend.
• The director of product engineering led a session to ensure everyone was aligned on what we meant by “scrum”.
• One of our product managers led two meetings where she shared what she had learned from a PM class she had taken online.
• Another product manager led a meeting sharing her take-aways as our first beta user of a new tool we were considering adopting across the team.

Whether it’s someone from outside the company, in the company, or on our own team, having a ‘special guest’ at our meeting has led to some great knowledge-sharing and learning opportunities.