ProductTank Manchester — September 2026

We're be back on Wednesday 30th September after a summer break with the usual format...drinks, food and 3 great speakers!

Location: Grayce, 1st Floor Hilton House, Hilton Street, Manchester M1 2EH
Big thanks to Grayce for hosting us again!

Speakers: Julian Bass, Nire Adetimehin and Bevan Broadbent...

Julian Bass: Julian Bass is an author researcher and consultant who has studied product ownership in large-scale offshore software development projects for over a decade. His research findings show how large-enterprise practitioners use a team-based product ownership model in multi-national projects. Julian’s book “Agile Software Engineering Skills” argues that early career software development practitioners need a combination of technical, collaboration and process skills. He is Professor of Software Engineering at University of Salford and Founder of Red Ocelot Ltd. Julian has a PhD in systems engineering from University of Sheffield, is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.

Talk title: Managing Technical Debt: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Talk description: Technical debt is a metaphor for the unwanted complexity that accrues in software as new features and changes are repeatedly added to a system. Following current best practice, teams regularly set aside a proportion of their development effort to mitigate technical debt. Yet technical debt is not accrued uniformly and does not create impact equally in different parts of the software landscape. So, how can you find out how much technical debt that you have? How do you know where is it? Are you overspending? Or are you building-up problems? We’ll explore the good, the bad and the ugly or managing technical debt.
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Nire Adetimehin: Nire Adetimehin is a Product Marketing Manager who works at the intersection of strategy, storytelling and execution. She has experience across B2B and B2C SaaS, helping teams stay aligned around customer needs and bring products to market with clarity.

Talk title: Are Customers Still Kings? How SaaS Products Can Remain Customer-Centric in a Fiercely Competitive Market

Talk description: Every SaaS company claims to be customer-centric, but are their product decisions proving it? This talk explores practical ways teams can stay close to customers, avoid reactive feature-chasing and build around the outcomes users actually value.
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Bevan Broadbent: Bevan is a Leadership Coach. After 20+ years in Product Leadership with JLR, Kingfisher, Boohoo, Portswigger, Gamma and many more, he now helps others (those that will let him) grow into leadership more powerfully than they believed possible.

Talk title: Why I left Product, and why you should stay

Talk description: After 20+ years I chose to leave my first love - Product, and immersed myself in a new love - Coaching.
How a career founded on ruthless prioritisation can lead to life changing pivots.

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Why you should come?
Networking with fellow product people 👋

• Great talks from local and national speakers 🎤
• Food 🍕and drink 🍺
• We welcome people from all backgrounds!

We're a friendly bunch, our typical crowd includes:

• senior product leaders
• startup founders
• mid-level PMs
• new PMs
• people looking to get into Product
• engineers/developers
• designers
• people who work with product teams - and just want to learn more.

Whatever your situation, come along and say hello.

Event timings
6:00pm start - Networking (drinks and food)
6:30pm - Talks (3x 20-min talks + 5-min Q&A)
8:00pm - Talks finish - more networking - drinks and food
8:30pm - Close
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Please note:

• Speakers and venue are be subject to change.
• We sometimes take photos at our events for community and promotional use. By attending, you’re happy for any photos you appear in to be used in this way.
• Your name will be used for registration and check-in purposes only.
• Tickets are free but limited — please update your RSVP if you can’t make it so someone else can grab the spot.