Get up-to-date information at: https://luma.com/jeua3y5o

Address: Ate-Oh-Ate Portland, Oregon United States

Hosted by Erin M Miles Rasmussen

Join us for a casual year-end accessibility social! Chat about your favorite accessibility topics, meet new people, and discuss what you'd like to learn at events in the new year.

Location: The Zipper

The Zipper is a food court with multiple vendors providing different cuisines, including vegan and gluten-free options. Alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages are available. See individual vendors for menus. This event is no-host (each participant pays for their own food/drinks), but there's no obligation to buy something to attend.

Accessibility + COVID Safety

The location is wheelchair accessible, near public transit, and has street parking for bikes and cars. This event will be held outside in the covered patio space with outdoor ventilation and heaters.

Event Agenda:

There will be a main talk between 30 minutes to 1 hour followed by optional lighting talks.

Main Talk by Michelle Bird:

Surviving the Snake Pit: How to Spot Threats, Read the Room, and Keep Your Job

A workplace survival guide for smart people who’ve been burned before. Ever worked somewhere that felt more like politics than teamwork? This talk is for professionals who’ve been punished for being too honest, too capable, or simply too observant. You’ll learn how to recognize dysfunctional power dynamics, decode unspoken cues in meetings, and protect your reputation without losing your integrity.

Through humor, real-world examples, and “Snake Pit Bingo,” you’ll walk away with practical tools to read the room like a strategist, speak up without self-sabotage, and thrive even in ego-driven environments. Because you’re not paranoid — you’re perceptive.

Lightning Talks:

Lightning talks are talks up to 5 minutes in length on any topic that might interest other Python people. See PyCon’s Lightning Talks description for more details.

How safe is the web for all users and where does design cross the line into deception? From misleading prompts to confusing layouts, deceptive patterns can quietly compromise both user trust and accessibility.

Join Todd Libby, a seasoned web developer and accessibility advocate with 25 years of experience, as he examines how deceptive design practices affect digital safety and inclusion. Drawing from his extensive background in accessibility, Todd sheds light on how small design choices can create big barriers for people with disabilities.

In this session, Todd will explore real examples of deceptive design, discuss their ethical and accessibility implications, and offer practical guidance for building safer, more transparent online experiences.

Join us for this live Tech Talk on Friday, November 14 at 1 PM PST | 3 PM CST | 4 PM EST.

Whether you’re a designer, developer, or simply curious about ethical tech, this talk will encourage you to think critically about the balance between persuasion, safety, and accessibility in digital spaces.

Reserve your spot today and be part of the movement toward a more honest and inclusive web.

RSVP here: https://www.meetup.com/techacademy/events/

RSVP: https://www.meetup.com/cloud-native-pdx/events/311422780/

OpenSearch - Your Friendly Neighborhood Vector Database by Nathan Boot @ AWS

OpenSearch, aside from being a search, analytics, and observability solution, often gets overlooked as a fully functioning open source vector database. I’d very much like the opportunity to showcase the progress we’ve made here at the OpenSearch project implementing vector database operations and making them accessible to developers of all skill levels.

Let’s learn how to create and query vector embeddings, the basis for semantic search and RAG. You’ll get introduced to embeddings, vectors and semantic search in this “OpenSearch Vector Operations for Dummies” presentation. Hopefully it will bring a user-friendly path on a battle tested, fully open source platform.

Edge Orchestration: Challenges and Solutions by Scott Baker @ Intel

The edge differs from the cloud – rather than consisting of a handful of centralized infinitely-elastic Kubernetes clusters, the edge consists of thousands of geographically distributed edge nodes, often with constrained resources. The talk will begin with a discussion of the edge, how it differs from the cloud, and the unique challenges that this presents. After the overview of the edge, we will discuss Intel’s Open Edge Platform and its Edge Manageability Framework (EMF) that was built to demonstrate orchestration of edge nodes, Kubernetes Clusters, and applications to those clusters. The software is fully open source, actively developed, and readily available on GitHub.

We will discuss how we onboard and lifecycle the nodes, how we bring up Kubernetes clusters with our CAPI-based cluster management layer, and how we deploy and manage applications to those clusters. We will introduce technologies that enable the edge, such as Intel’s vPRO and Edge Microvisor Toolkit (EMT). We will talk about the architecture and design of this open-source project, and if time and connectivity permits, we will do a short demo to get a feel of the user interface.

Agenda

5:30–6:00 — Check-in, snacks, networking 6:00–6:30 — OpenSearch - Your Friendly Neighborhood Vector Database 6:30 - 7:00 — Edge Orchestration: Challenges and Solutions 7:00–8:00 — Networking (and games if anyone wants to bring some!)

Who Should Attend

Platform engineers, SREs, DevOps, app/platform teams, OSS maintainers, and anyone curious about Kubernetes, supply chain security, observability, eBPF/WASM, finops, or AI for infra/devex.

Portland Java User Group meeting

RSVP: https://www.meetup.com/pdxjug/events/311627978/

this month's topic: Dependency Management for Java applications

Details

Modern Java systems utilize hundreds (or thousands) of dependencies. Each additional dependency adds complexity to the application development process. Java developers need to think about how to manage internal libraries and external libraries. In this talk, we will share our experiences with dependency management in large Java systems.

We'll cover technical challenges that Java developers face when maintaining legacy applications. We will also examine best practices for managing dependencies in greenfield projects. We will discuss standard build tools such as Maven and Gradle. We'll share mistakes that we made and bugs that we encountered.

Speaker: Sean Sullivan

Topic

Accessibility at your org doesn’t need another pitch deck. It needs a brand. In this session, you'll learn how to market accessibility like a movement: using storytelling, emotional resonance, and brand-building techniques to influence culture, elevating far above compliance. Whether you're a developer, designer, or advocate, you'll walk away with practical ways to boost visibility, build momentum, and reframe accessibility as something people want to rally around accessibility as a movement, not check boxes. (Spoiler alert: you’re the one who can make it happen!)

Agenda

The event begins at 6 pm; join early, starting at 5:45 pm for networking.

• 5:45–6:00pm Networking
• 6:00–6:15pm Introductions and announcements
• 6:15–6:45pm Presentation
• 6:45–7:15pm Q&A and discussion

About the presenter

Dr. Angela Young, CPACC (they/them) is a renowned Senior Accessibility Consultant and advocate for workplace wellbeing, specializing in empowering queer, neurodiverse, and disabled professionals. Based in the Washington DC-Baltimore area, they have dedicated nearly two decades to promoting diversity and inclusion. Dr. Young holds a Doctor of Education from the University of Maryland and has worked extensively in education, learning & development, and digital accessibility. As an international speaker, they have addressed audiences globally, advocating for accessibility and inclusion in various sectors. Dr. Young is also known for their work in personal branding and has founded "A11y With Angela," a platform focused on accessibility and inclusion.

Follow and connect with Dr. Young at https://linktr.ee/a11ywithangela.

Accommodation requests

If you have any accommodation requests, don't hesitate to get in touch with us before the event to discuss.

The Portland Fabric User Group (formerly Portland Power BI User Group) is a community of people excited about the business analytics and AI stack, Microsoft Fabric. We believe the platform offers rich possibilities, and we keep pace by sharing our learning and doing deep-dive explorations of topics. We run the gamut from new to experienced users and welcome anyone who shares an interest in data analytics and AI.

Some great perks to joining our monthly meetups are networking, knowledge transfer, and community building. We aim to foster a vibrant community that shares success in implementing best practices for Fabric and Power BI.

Visit us on our Meetup page to get details on the presentation topic and speaker. We hope to see you!

[Free] ​Master the art and science of building the right thing by using market, customer & user discovery techniques used at Meta, AWS, Booz Allen, Disney, New Relic, and more, from the team at ProductTheory.io.

​Product discovery is where great products are born - it's the systematic process of understanding what your market truly needs before you commit resources to building it. We'll explore research methodologies, customer interview techniques, and validation frameworks that reveal genuine insights. Companies with strong discovery programs see nearly 2x ROI. You'll gain practical skills for conducting meaningful customer conversations, interpreting feedback accurately, and translating insights into confident product decisions.

You'll also learn the art of product storytelling for your pitch deck, positioning, sales, marketing and stakeholder alignment.

​ProductTheory.io workshop series at Kiln: ​There’s one challenge all founders have in common, especially in 2025. It’s achieving product market fit.

​This free workshop series at Kiln is based on ProductTheory’s celebrated Product-Market Fit Canvas: a framework for ensuring smart, data-driven product development and market strategy.

​Open to both Kiln members and the broader entrepreneurial community. Non-members get a free day pass to Kiln with their participation.

​Why This Series Matters: Dr. Ali Maaxa brings 20 years of experience from Big Tech innovation teams to zero-to-one product launches. Her frameworks have supported successful launches for AWS, Recreation.gov, and numerous startups navigating the path from concept to revenue. These sessions offer practical, field-tested approaches to the challenges every founder faces.

​Open to both Kiln members and the broader entrepreneurial community. Your success strengthens the entire ecosystem.

The Portland Azure User Group is a community of people excited about the endless possibilities of cloud computing, data analytics, and security on Microsoft Azure. We believe the Azure platform offers rich possibilities. We keep pace by sharing our learning and doing deep-dive explorations of topics as a community of learners. We run the gamut from new to experienced users and welcome anyone who shares an interest in cloud scalable infrastructure, applications, tools, analytics, identity management, and security.

Some great perks to joining our monthly meetups are networking, knowledge transfer, and community building. We aim to foster a vibrant community that shares success in implementing best practices for Microsoft Azure.

The Portland Power Platform User Group is a community of people excited about the Power Platform tools: Power Apps, Automate, BI, and Copilot Studio. We believe the platform offers rich possibilities, and we keep pace by sharing our learning and doing deep-dive explorations of topics. We run the gamut from new to experienced users and welcome anyone who shares an interest in custom apps and process automation for your business needs.

Some great perks to joining our monthly meetups are networking, knowledge transfer, and community building. We aim to foster a vibrant community that shares success in implementing best practices for the Power Platform.

Visit us on our Meetup page to get details on the presentation topic and speaker. We hope to see you!

The 43rd Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference will be held October 13-15, 2025. The conference theme is "QI: Increase your Quality Intelligence" - many aspects of quality go beyond testing. Quality is relevant to design, manufacturing, code, applications, user experience, writing/prose, and many other areas that may not be obvious. We invite everyone to submit talks on a broad range of subjects and issue this challenge along with it: "What can I do to increase the overall quality intelligence of myself, my team, and the greater community?"

PNSQC 2025 is both an in-person and online event, even offering a FREE virtual track to watch our keynotes and invited speakers. Early bird pricing for our full conference lasts until September 15th!

Register online at: https://pnsqc.org/register

Tracks Include - Quality Engineering (Process & Methods, Tools & Technologies) - Management, Leadership, People & Enterprise IT Quality - AI and Emerging Technologies

Our industry learns from working with education, healthcare, manufacturing, government sectors, and more. What can those other industries learn from us? Come and find out at PNSQC 2025.

Join us for an in-person deep-dive into Microsoft's AI ecosystem with expert speakers covering the gamut of Fabric, Azure, and Power Platform!

Get hands-on insights, practical skills, and insider knowledge to build production-ready AI solutions while networking with peers tackling real-world challenges. Don't miss your shot at this comprehensive event to close out the year.

Dinner and drinks will be served.

Doors open at 4:30 PM PT

Presentations will start promptly at 5:15 PM PT

Agenda:

Prasad Kethana (Co-Founder and CTO @ Key AI) - Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio and MCP Attacks and Countermeasures

Jeromie Webster (AI & Analytics Engineer @ Columbia Sportswear) - Intro to Azure Databricks Agent Bricks

Tobias Eld (General Manager, Analytics @ Fresche Consulting) - Building Agentic AI Solutions Using AI Foundry and Fabric

Sandeep Pawar (Principal Program Manager @ Microsoft Fabric CAT) - Getting Started with AI on Microsoft Fabric

Summary:

ROCm is a software stack, composed primarily of open-source software, that provides the tools for programming AMD Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), from low-level kernels to high-level end-user applications.

AMD recently released ROCm-7.0.0 with all the libraries and runtimes needed to run compute applications on Linux. As an open source system there are a lot of options for building and deploying ROCm on Linux for users to choose from. In this talk I will give an overview of how ROCm is structured, the options available, and requirements for users with older AMD hardware that may no longer be officially supported. I will also demonstrate an OpenCL application running on the GPU.

NOTE: I am not affiliated with AMD. The purpose of this talk is to give an overview of the challenges associated with running OpenCL applications on AMD hardware using various Linux distributions.

Topic

Our coaching practice blends the sharp eye of an engineer with the steady guidance of a mentor. We work directly with development teams to level up their accessibility maturity—teaching not just the how of accessible code, but the why of inclusive design. Coaches serve as half engineer, half strategist: diving into code reviews, walking through practical fixes, and helping teams adopt sustainable practices. The goal isn’t just compliance—it’s building teams that confidently deliver accessible products, sprint after sprint, until accessibility becomes as natural as writing a div.

Agenda

The event begins at 6 pm; join early, starting at 5:45 pm for networking.

• 5:45–6:00pm Networking
• 6:00–6:15pm Introductions & announcements
• 6:15–7:00pm Presentation
• 7:00–7:30pm Q&A and discussion
• 7:30–7:45pm Wrap up

About the presenter

Jaunita Flessas is senior digital accessibility leader with 8+ years of experience combining training, development, and accessibility expertise to expand accessibility standards and practices across the industry. She's a leader in digital accessibility, defining the future of the web and accessibility standards with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Internet Society (ISOC), and the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP). Jaunita is passionate about creating a web that's free, fair, and accessible to everyone.

Accommodation requests

If you have any accommodation requests, don't hesitate to get in touch with us before the event to discuss.

The Portland Fabric User Group (formerly Portland Power BI User Group) is a community of people excited about the business analytics and AI stack, Microsoft Fabric. We believe the platform offers rich possibilities, and we keep pace by sharing our learning and doing deep-dive explorations of topics. We run the gamut from new to experienced users and welcome anyone who shares an interest in data analytics and AI.

Some great perks to joining our monthly meetups are networking, knowledge transfer, and community building. We aim to foster a vibrant community that shares success in implementing best practices for Fabric and Power BI.

Visit us on our Meetup page to get details on the presentation topic and speaker. We hope to see you!

Nailing Product-Market Fit Workshop Series Session 1: Building & Testing your MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

​ProductTheory.io workshop series at Kiln: ​There’s one challenge all founders have in common, especially in 2025. It’s achieving product market fit.

​This free workshop series at Kiln is based on ProductTheory’s celebrated Product-Market Fit Canvas: a framework for ensuring smart, data-driven product development and market strategy.

​Open to both Kiln members and the broader entrepreneurial community. Non-members get a free day pass to Kiln with their participation.

​Why This Series Matters: Dr. Ali Maaxa has spent 20 years in the trenches - from Big Tech innovation teams to zero-to-one product launches. She's seen what works and what wastes time. These aren't theoretical workshops; they're based on frameworks that have powered successful launches for AWS, Recreation.gov, and dozens of startups who went from idea to revenue.

​Free for both Kiln members and the broader community because great products make everyone's ecosystem stronger. Just show up ready to work.

​Session 1: Early Stages - Building Your First Customer-Facing Version (MVP) ​Build smart from day one.

​You're at one of the most exciting and challenging stages of your journey - turning your vision into something real. The decisions you make now about what to build first will shape everything that follows. In this session, we'll walk through how to create your MVP (Minimum Viable Product - your first testable version) strategically. Whether you're technical or business-focused, you'll gain clarity on prioritizing features, validating assumptions early, and building momentum with real user feedback. This is about setting yourself up for sustainable growth from the start.

​The Upcoming Product-Market Fit Series at KILN PDX

​A Free Workshop for All Founders, Product People & Innovators ​This free workshop series at Kiln is based on ProductTheory’s celebrated Product-Market Fit Canvas: a framework for ensuring smart, data-driven product development and market strategy. Open to both Kiln members and the broader entrepreneurial community.

​Session 2: : Understanding Your Ideal Customer Profile https://luma.com/7zmulrns 10/1/25, Noon, Kiln

​Session 3: Go-to-Market Strategy: New Approaches for the 2025 Landscape https://lu.ma/xstcod52 10/8/25, 11:00 a.m., Kiln:

​Session 4: Product-Market Discovery: A Deep-Dive for Learning, Testing & Earning with Customers & Users https://luma.com/dx4xeeji 10/20/25, 1-3 p.m., Kiln

​Open to both Kiln members and the broader entrepreneurial community. Non-members get a free day pass to Kiln with their participation.

Location Kiln 1120 SE Madison St, Portland, OR 97214, USA

This month's topic: Java 25 Features Deep Dive

Java 25 is set to release on September 16, and it's packed with exciting new features that take the platform to the next level. Join us for a focused deep dive into what’s new, what’s changed, and what it means for Java developers.

At our last meetup, Tyler Van Gorder gave us a high-level overview of what’s coming. This time, we’re going deeper—examining the key features, practical use cases, and the rationale behind some of the biggest updates in this release.

Speakers:

Tyler Van Gorder Biju Kunjummen

The Portland Azure User Group is a community of people excited about the endless possibilities of cloud computing, data analytics, and security on Microsoft Azure. We believe the Azure platform offers rich possibilities. We keep pace by sharing our learning and doing deep-dive explorations of topics as a community of learners. We run the gamut from new to experienced users and welcome anyone who shares an interest in cloud scalable infrastructure, applications, tools, analytics, identity management, and security.

Some great perks to joining our monthly meetups are networking, knowledge transfer, and community building. We aim to foster a vibrant community that shares success in implementing best practices for Microsoft Azure.

The Portland Power Platform User Group is a community of people excited about the Power Platform tools: Power Apps, Automate, BI, and Copilot Studio. We believe the platform offers rich possibilities, and we keep pace by sharing our learning and doing deep-dive explorations of topics. We run the gamut from new to experienced users and welcome anyone who shares an interest in custom apps and process automation for your business needs.

Some great perks to joining our monthly meetups are networking, knowledge transfer, and community building. We aim to foster a vibrant community that shares success in implementing best practices for the Power Platform.

Visit us on our Meetup page to get details on the presentation topic and speaker. We hope to see you!

Cheap, Fast, Scalable: Introducing Analytics with Open Source ClickHouse®

Real-time analytic databases are indispensable tools for quick insights on large datasets, and ClickHouse currently leads the pack in speed and usage. This talk shows the major features that make ClickHouse popular for real-time analytics and provides a jumping off point to build your own apps. We’ll explain internals of ClickHouse and provide explicit guidance on when to reach for it. (And when not to.;) We will also demo new work from Altinity that adds separable compute and storage using shared Apache Iceberg tables. We’ll include thoughts on design patterns for using PostgreSQL and ClickHouse productively together.

Clickhouse is a horizontally scaling columnar database that absolutely rips. Huge datasets, JSON, partitioning, sharding, aggregations, JOINs: Clickhouse handles massive queries in milliseconds. We are so excited to host Robert and have him introduce another open source database Clickhouse. Robert has been working on databases since 1982, from pre-relational systems through modern analytic DBMS, with a focus on distributed systems and transaction processing He has worked principally with open source databases since 2006 and Kubernetes since 2018. His day job is running Altinity, a ClickHouse vendor.

Looking forward to seeing you all there.

Join us for an in-person deep-dive into Microsoft's AI ecosystem with expert speakers covering the gamut of Fabric, Azure, and Power Platform!

Get hands-on insights, practical skills, and insider knowledge to build production-ready AI solutions while networking with peers tackling real-world challenges. Don't miss your shot at this comprehensive event to close out the year.

Dinner and drinks will be served.

Doors open at 4:30 PM PT

Presentations will start promptly at 5:15 PM PT

Agenda:

Prasad Kethana (Co-Founder and CTO @ Key AI) - Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio and MCP Attacks and Countermeasures

Jeromie Webster (AI & Analytics Engineer @ Columbia Sportswear) - Intro to Azure Databricks Agent Bricks

Tobias Eld (General Manager, Analytics @ Fresche Consulting) - Building Agentic AI Solutions Using AI Foundry and Fabric

Sandeep Pawar (Principal Program Manager @ Microsoft Fabric CAT) - Getting Started with AI on Microsoft Fabric

The Portland Fabric User Group (formerly Portland Power BI User Group) is a community of people excited about the business analytics and AI stack, Microsoft Fabric. We believe the platform offers rich possibilities, and we keep pace by sharing our learning and doing deep-dive explorations of topics. We run the gamut from new to experienced users and welcome anyone who shares an interest in data analytics and AI.

Some great perks to joining our monthly meetups are networking, knowledge transfer, and community building. We aim to foster a vibrant community that shares success in implementing best practices for Fabric and Power BI.

Visit us on our Meetup page to get details on the presentation topic and speaker. We hope to see you!

Details Join the Portland AWS User Group for an evening of technical learning with other cloud and security professionals!

🕒 New Time: Starting networking at 5:30 PM, Presentation at 6:00 PM 📍 Location: ProFocus Headquarters 📍 Address: 10200 Eastridge St, Ste 100, Portland, OR 97225 🥂 Food & Drinks: Enjoy drinks provided by ProFocus, Food is NOT provided this time. Sponsors are welcome to inquire!

Agenda

Kickoff @ 5:30 PM: Networking & introductions Tech Talk @ 6:00 PM: Event-Driven Data Pipelines : Real-Time Orchestration on AWS Andrew!

Agenda

Come together for an evening of accessibility sharing and learning! We'd like to hear from you, whether you consider yourself a novice or an expert. Bring your questions, projects, or ideas to discuss as a group. Or, just bring yourself to connect with other accessibility-minded folks! We'll break into small groups if needed to cover different topics. Drop in or leave at any time.

Backup date in the event of heat wave etc: Tue Aug 26th

Accommodation requests

If you have any accommodation requests, don't hesitate to get in touch with us before the event to discuss.

The Portland Azure User Group is a community of people excited about the endless possibilities of cloud computing, data analytics, and security on Microsoft Azure. We believe the Azure platform offers rich possibilities. We keep pace by sharing our learning and doing deep-dive explorations of topics as a community of learners. We run the gamut from new to experienced users and welcome anyone who shares an interest in cloud scalable infrastructure, applications, tools, analytics, identity management, and security.

Some great perks to joining our monthly meetups are networking, knowledge transfer, and community building. We aim to foster a vibrant community that shares success in implementing best practices for Microsoft Azure.

The Portland Power Platform User Group is a community of people excited about the Power Platform tools: Power Apps, Automate, BI, and Copilot Studio. We believe the platform offers rich possibilities, and we keep pace by sharing our learning and doing deep-dive explorations of topics. We run the gamut from new to experienced users and welcome anyone who shares an interest in custom apps and process automation for your business needs.

Some great perks to joining our monthly meetups are networking, knowledge transfer, and community building. We aim to foster a vibrant community that shares success in implementing best practices for the Power Platform.

Visit us on our Meetup page to get details on the presentation topic and speaker. We hope to see you!

Note: Rescheduled to Tuesday, July 29th, due to a heat advisory on the original date.

What to Expect

Bring yourself and your curiosity about accessibility to The Zipper, located at NE 27th and Sandy Boulevard. The Zipper features a vibrant food court with bars, restaurants, indoor and outdoor seating, and nearby fire pits. The food options vary, from fried chicken to tacos. Our summer social is an opportunity to informally connect with like-minded individuals who share a passion for digital accessibility. We can't wait to meet you!

What to Bring

Feel free to bring some cash or a card to purchase food and/or drinks. Please note that it is not necessary to buy food or beverages to attend our meetup.

How to Find Us

Look for our Portland Accessibility and User Experience Meetup sign and table toppers.

Accessibility + COVID Safety

The location is wheelchair accessible, is conveniently located near public transit, and offers street parking for both bikes and cars. This event will be held outside in the covered patio space, which has outdoor ventilation.

Inclement Weather Plan

If high temperatures occur, we have set Tuesday, July 29th, as a backup date. Update: A heat advisory has been issued for Tue July 15th so this event has been moved to Tue July 29th.

Join us for a special ProductTank PDX this July!

We’re excited to welcome two incredible speakers, Deanna Mustain (Sr. Product Manager @ Duolingo) and Dave Ruel (VP of Product @ Hanzo), for an evening all about unlocking innovation and elevating your product narrative. As always, we’ll also have plenty of time to meet other product folks over drinks and tasty snacks.

📅 Thursday, July 24, 2025 🕕 6:00 – 8:00pm 📍 Kiln

Unlocking Innovation: The Power of Systems Thinking in Product Management

In this talk, Deanna Mustain shares how systems thinking can unlock innovation, clarity, and speed in fast-moving product environments. Drawing from her work at Duolingo, where she launched 0-1 features for the Music product, led multiple roadmaps to drive growth, and transformed the company’s Product Review process, Deanna will unpack the frameworks behind high-quality decision-making, creative alignment, and scalable product development. Through concrete examples and practical tools, she’ll show how systems thinkers build teams, products, and processes that deliver long-term impact—even in the most ambiguous spaces.

About Deanna: Deanna Mustain is a product leader with a decade of experience at the intersection of creativity and technology. At Duolingo, she co-led development of the company’s Music product, launched features like Popular Songs with Sony Music, and previously ran Product Operations, building programs that transformed company-wide product excellence. Before moving into tech, Deanna performed as a classical violist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. She holds degrees from Stanford, the San Francisco Conservatory, and the New England Conservatory.

Beyond User Stories: The Power of a Compelling Product Narrative

Dave Ruel will explore why product narratives are more than just a marketing tool—they’re a core driver of product success. In this session, Dave will break down how to craft and leverage compelling narratives that align teams, influence stakeholders, and resonate with customers. He’ll also dive into how modern AI tools can help elevate your storytelling and turn data into stories that drive action.

About Dave: Dave Ruel is passionate about empowering product teams to go beyond the typical backlog and sprint cycles to build products that matter. His work focuses on helping teams understand the deeper narrative behind their products, so they can unlock meaningful differentiation and impact.

🎉 Don’t miss it!

Come connect with fellow product managers, designers, engineers, and enthusiasts over drinks and snacks. See you there!

We’re excited to welcome two incredible speakers, Deanna Mustain (Sr. Product Manager @ Duolingo) and Dave Ruel (VP of Product @ Hanzo), for an evening all about unlocking innovation and elevating your product narrative. As always, we’ll also have plenty of time to meet other product folks over drinks and tasty snacks.

Unlocking Innovation: The Power of Systems Thinking in Product Management

In this talk, Deanna Mustain shares how systems thinking can unlock innovation, clarity, and speed in fast-moving product environments. Drawing from her work at Duolingo, where she launched 0-1 features for the Music product, led multiple roadmaps to drive growth, and transformed the company’s Product Review process, Deanna will unpack the frameworks behind high-quality decision-making, creative alignment, and scalable product development. Through concrete examples and practical tools, she’ll show how systems thinkers build teams, products, and processes that deliver long-term impact—even in the most ambiguous spaces.

About Deanna: Deanna Mustain is a product leader with a decade of experience at the intersection of creativity and technology. At Duolingo, she co-led development of the company’s Music product, launched features like Popular Songs with Sony Music, and previously ran Product Operations, building programs that transformed company-wide product excellence. Before moving into tech, Deanna performed as a classical violist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. She holds degrees from Stanford, the San Francisco Conservatory, and the New England Conservatory.

Beyond User Stories: The Power of a Compelling Product Narrative

Dave Ruel will explore why product narratives are more than just a marketing tool—they’re a core driver of product success. In this session, Dave will break down how to craft and leverage compelling narratives that align teams, influence stakeholders, and resonate with customers. He’ll also dive into how modern AI tools can help elevate your storytelling and turn data into stories that drive action.

About Dave: Dave Ruel is passionate about empowering product teams to go beyond the typical backlog and sprint cycles to build products that matter. His work focuses on helping teams understand the deeper narrative behind their products, so they can unlock meaningful differentiation and impact.