Podcast
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July 15, 2020

Driving innovation at LinkedIn and reinventing events at OMR with Christian Byza

Michel Gagnon
Michel Gagnon
CEO of Stun&Awe

We deep dive into how product development is done at LinkedIn and how product managers gather feedback to constantly improve the offering.

With more than 20,000 employees, how does LinkedIn continue to innovate and remain agile? In our episode today, we deep dive specifically into how product development is done at LinkedIn and how product managers gather feedback from users to constantly improve the offering.

Our guest, Christian Byza, is Principal Product Manager, InMail & Premium Messaging at LinkedIn as well as Co-Founder of the OMR Festival, one of the world’s largest events for digital marketing and technology. He's also the host of The OMR Silicon Valley Update Podcast. Christian left Germany eight years ago to work for some of the top tech companies in Silicon Valley.

In this episode, Christian and I talk about how LinkedIn encourages innovation, tests ideas before starting building, and measures success. We chat about how Christian’s CounterStrike event organization back in the days turned into the creation of OMR. We also look into Silicon Valley’s secret ingredient to driving innovation.

Enjoy the show!

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Show Notes

Christian’s current role at LinkedIn – [01:30]

How product development works at LinkedIn – [03:56]

LinkedIn’s mechanisms to encourage innovation – [08:08]

How Christian pitched his way into his current role – [10:13]

What Christian is doing to keep InMail relevant and non spammy – [12:14]

What metrics Christian’s team uses to measure success and plan new features – [14:58]

LinkedIn’s product vision, How Might Wes, and experiments – [17:08]

How Christian interacts with users and creates fans – [19:01]

The story of how Christian’s CounterStrike event organization led to the creation of OMR – [21:59]

The importance of experience in designing remarkable events – [24:41]

The secret that helped OMR scale into one of the world’s largest events for digital marketing and technology – [28:26]

How Christian sees the future of event in a post-COVID19 world – [31:55]

Christian’s move to the US eight years ago – [36:10]

Silicon Valley’s secret ingredient to driving innovation – [38:55]

The launch of the OMR Silicon Valley Update Podcast and the personality traits of those who make it in the valley – [41:52]

What’s next for Christian – [47:15]

Selected Links

Christian on LinkedIn

Christian on Twitter

The OMR Silicon Valley Update Podcast

OMR

OMR Podcast

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