Product at Heart Stockholm Meetup
How do product leaders create the conditions for good collaboration — in their teams, and now with their AI?
Collaboration lives or dies on trust and shared context. Teams can’t work well around things they don’t see the same way, and much of what would help stays in a leader’s head, assumed to be shared. AI didn’t create that gap. It just made it visible — and started charging for it.
On Tuesday, November 24, we open the doors at netlight (Regeringsgatan 25) for an evening about exactly that. It’s an evening for product leaders — Heads of Product, Directors, VPs, CPOs, anyone responsible for how a product organisation actually works. If you’re not in that seat yet but the questions are already yours, you’re very welcome too.
What’s planned
- Two talks by Francesca Cortesi (CPO at Vend) and Arne Kittler (Hey Clarity)
- A panel on collaboration, trust and clarity w/ Erik Almenberg, Petra Wille & Markus Waltré
- A quick hello from Product at Heart and from our host netlight
- Lots of time to talk with your peers, over food and drinks
See below for more details on what to expect!
Doors open at 17:30, so there’s time to arrive and say hello. The programme starts at 18:00.
Seats are limited, so please register.
Good to know
Registration is needed to get in. To get you checked into the building we will pass your registration data on to our host netlight.
Photos will be taken during the evening. Product at Heart and netlight may use them to share impressions of the event. If you prefer not to be in the pictures, tell the photographer or one of us on the night.
Details about the program:
Francesca Cortesi: Together, how? On collaboration, trust, and the mess in between
Product is a team sport. But even with talent, practice, and great knowledge of the game, you sometimes lose.
In this talk, Francesca Cortesi reflects on 15+ years of product leadership across startups, scale-ups, and enterprise to explore why effective collaboration remains one of the hardest things to get right, even when you know exactly what it takes.
Across wins, losses, and everything in between, she has come to the same conclusion every time: collaboration lives or dies on trust and aligned goals. Not as a framework, but as living, messy, deeply human dynamics that no blueprint can fully capture.
This is not a talk about theory. It's an honest exploration of what collaboration actually looks like in the real world — when it works, when it doesn't, and what you can do when it falls apart. Because it is in overcoming the friction that we find the greatest impact.
Arne Kittler: Clarity needs Context
Teams are only as clear as the context their product leaders give them, and so are their AI tools. That isn’t a new problem. Product leaders hold the why behind decisions, who we build for, and where we are heading, and much of it stays in their heads, assumed to be shared. Teams fill the gaps with guesses, and people can’t collaborate well around things they don’t see the same way. AI doesn’t create that gap. It makes it visible, and it charges you for it.
In this talk, Arne Kittler explores what product leaders can do about it. Drawing on his framework for clarity in product development, he looks at what “context-driven clarity” looks like in practice: what to make explicit, when, and how. Clarity is the outcome; context is the part you can work on. Providing that context deliberately is the core of what he calls contextual product leadership. The practices that follow aren’t just good for AI. They help teams collaborate better, make better decisions, align faster, and build the right things.
Panel on Collaboration, Trust and Clarity
Three product leaders, one stage, no slides. Erik Almenberg, Petra Wille and Markus Waltré get honest about what builds trust in product teams, what quietly breaks it, and why unspoken context is getting more expensive now that AI is part of the team. Expect real stories, straight answers and practical takeaways you can use on Monday morning.
On the panel
Erik Almenberg
Erik is an executive product leader with 20+ years experience in SaaS, AI and hardware in Stockholm, San Francisco, Chicago and London. He has extensive expereince within the topic of collaboration, clarity & context for the product craftmanship as CPO at Blocket, Kognity and now CEO/CPO at Learnster.
Petra Wille
Petra is an independent product leadership coach, speaker, and author who’s passionately dedicated to helping product people get better at what they do. Since 2013, she has been supporting product managers and product leaders in growing their confidence, navigating complexity, and developing strong, outcome-oriented product organizations. She recently created the Product Leadership Wheel, a powerful self-assessment for product leaders.
Markus Waltré
Markus is a seasoned product leader with a real passion for the craft. He is the person you want when the stakes are high and someone needs to take ownership. With experience from industries and organisations of every size, he builds well-functioning teams that deliver value with speed.
About Product at Heart, and why we're coming
Product at Heart stands for high-quality, thoughtfully curated events for product people. We choose every talk and every format ourselves, with one question in mind: what will challenge curious product people and give them something to think about?
We would rather be small and intimate than big and large-scale. What matters most to us is that the people in the room get to talk to each other.
We have been running product events in Hamburg since 2017. Today that means a conference, a day of workshops and a Leadership Event, and 2027 will be our tenth year.
The Leadership Event is the smallest of the three. This April, around 60 product leaders spent a day and a half with us at the netlight office in Hamburg. The first morning was for talks from people doing the job. In the afternoon we left the building for a harbor boat trip, a visit to an organic farm and an improvisation workshop in an old school gym. The second day was for working sessions in small groups.
People from the Stockholm product community have told us there is appetite for something similar here, for a senior audience. We'd love to hear more about that, and we want to continue these conversations in person. So we're coming to town.
See you in November!
Arne, Petra and the Product at Heart team