PMM Jam Two: Electric Boogaloo

The second Product Marketing Manager Jam (pmmjam.com) ideated by and produced by Eve Horne (LinkedIn) begins tomorrow, November 9th, 2026.

What is PMM Jam?

It’s an anti-conference conference for new, aspiring, seasoned, and senior Product Marketing (and allied area) professionals.  The format is simple:  A short live expert conversation / presentation by a mentor every day over 10 days, followed by an unrecorded candid conversation, and then further follow-ups on a participant-only Slack instance.

Participant missions, feedback, and awards

Each participant is eligible to join a “mission.”  This is a set of Product Marketing work you (or a team you join) completes. AND gets expert feedback from a panel of industry leading Product Marketing leaders. 

• Are you a beginner with no portfolio?   Well dagnabbit, you can start one with this project.
• Are you employed, but not provided the ability to publicly shine as you know you can? Well, daggummit, you can create a project from your PMM mission that shows the world what you can REALLY do, and not use your employer’s IP.
• Are you a senior player, a leader, or seasoned IC?  Do you want to show the durn hobnobibbty world, “I am not just a manager of other people doing stuff, I can ideate, collaborate, create, AND lead with the best of ’em!”
• Are you between gigs or jobs (aka “underemployed”)?  De-diddly-dammit, you can sharpen your axe with a project that shows current skills and how you keep up with them.

What everyone gets!

Every participant gets a new (or revisited) set of networking contacts. From the mentors, from the other participants, and from folks in the business social ecosystem who you’ll meet, who will meet you, who you will become aware of, and who will become aware of you.

Really, there is very little downside.

What is this PMM Jam’s Theme?

This time around, per Eve’s own words, the theme is:

“AI tools change every day. New ones launch, others consolidate or disappear. Chasing the latest tool keeps you on the back foot.

This edition charts a different course: the underlying PMM skills that hold their value no matter which tools come and go, and the adaptability to keep steering as the landscape shifts.”

Gary’s Analogy for this theme

The best interpretation I can provide for this theme comes from antecedent professional occurrences I observe from my career. From the frustration I see (or that is created) on LinkedIn, in job postings, in general press, and in business press.

My (over)simplification of the current “head spinning challenge” for AI in Product Marketing and aligned roles

AI *is* and *will* change the way we work. Period. Full stop. But anyone who knows exactly how is selling you a bridge.

These AI tools should foster human creativity, output, engagement, and welfare. They are tools.  Sophisticated ones. Sometimes maddening ones. Sometimes crap ones. My analogies as to why at some level of abstraction AI tools are no different than past tools are provided here as questions.  (Please add your own questions to the comments if you want.)

• Did the advent of the GUI make programmers UX and UI experts?
• Is the cascading style sheet and/or CMS (outside of modern execution approaches) really much different in concept (not execution) than the abstraction between content and design, and embedding the most current content chunks from databases that was performed 25 or even 35 years ago? More pointed, do AI-powered CMS and CSS expertise create good marketing writers, illustrators, designers, and business acumen?
• Did early desktop publishing create designers? Does Canva create good designers, enable mediocre designers to be better ones, or make a subset of leadership place less value on “real” designers and presenters?
• Do video creation AI tools create storytellers from whole cloth?
• Do song creation tools make you a musician?
• Do LLM writing tools make you a messaging mogul?
• Did pre-AI workflow automation tools make projects and products work better when the people using them weren’t already excellent managers of people and process?

Me trying to connect these, and related, questions to the PMM Jam

I know there is subtlety in each of these questions. (And I am writing them, fast, on a Sunday night!) I am pressing people’s buttons on purpose, as I use many of the tools I mention. But the underlying point of questions like these goes to the heart of the PMM Jam theme this time around, I think: 

What underlying skills do we need to learn, practice, improve, and get as close as we can to perfecting?

How can current and near-future AI tools help us better our craft while we stay in control of our craft. 

Is “Humans In The Loop” (HIL) different from “Humans In Control with AI in the Loop” (HICWAIL, I just made that up)?

As I look at the amazing agenda Eve has cooked up, and the topics that the PMM Jam Mentors will be covering, I think these issues will probably be front and center.  Or at least front and toward the center and embedded in their topics and the discussions they start.

You tell me!

Am I full of it? Am I making any decent points?  Do you have better ways to articulate what I am trying to say?  Or am I just hallucinating on a Sunday night?

I am gdietz@garydietz.com, I’ll be on the PMM Jam Slack Channels, and I’ll be daily blogging about my reflections on each day’s PMM Jam presenter. (I won’t be giving away the secret sauce, and never commenting on the private slacks or non-recorded discussions from the PMM Jam. So join the PMM Jam as a participant to see it firsthand.)

You can learn more about me at garydietz.com (you are already there probably) and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/garymdietz/   

Written WITHOUT AI (isn’t that ironic) and only a light editing afterward asking for typos and stuff that was accidentally offensive.