Happy New Year! 🎉🥳🍀 I’d like to reflect about a post by Shreyas from last year for 2026 that got my attention: You can keep chasing 100s of frameworks, mental models, tactics, playbooks, success stories, tools, and templates throughout your career, and yet the fundamental capability that will unleash your product mastery across domains and … More Self-Awareness: The Product Skill Nobody Teaches
2025 was another year of intense learning. It challenged how I view collaboration, my European and German identity, and the fragile foundation upon which our digital society is built. The Culture Map Moment It happened during our Commerce offsite. We sat together as a team, filling out the Culture Map framework, plotting our communication styles, … More Finding Ground: Identity and Values in 2025
As 2025 comes to a close, I’m grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the product community here in Frankfurt and the Rhein Main area alongside Steffen and Marisa. This year brought remarkable speakers, meaningful conversations, and a growing community of product professionals dedicated to solving real problems and creating genuine impact. July 2, 2025: … More ProductTank Frankfurt Rhein-Main: 2025 Year in Review
TL;DR Loved the ProductTank Frankfurt reboot celebrating a decade of Product Field and ProductTank Frankfurt? Don’t miss our next event with Matt LeMay on October 20, 2025 – register now! The Night and Why It Was Special Gude, Product People! We had an unforgettable restart of ProductTank Frankfurt & Rhein-Main on July 2, 2025, diving … More Celebrating 10 Years of Product Field & ProductTank Frankfurt
As someone who’s become a regular attendee of Product at Heart in Hamburg, I find myself returning year after year for the same compelling reasons: deepening my product management knowledge, staying current with industry trends, and connecting with like-minded people who share the same passion for building great products. This year’s conference once again delivered … More Product at Heart 2025: My Key Takeaways from Hamburg Conference
By May 27, 2025, Meta will begin systematically feeding the public data of billions of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads users into their AI systems. Despite the complex opt-out procedures, the effectiveness of these measures remains questionable. Meta assures that only “public data” will be used, but trust in such assurances is at an all-time low.
The illusion of European data sovereignty is crumbling. Our data, stored on American servers, is subject to a different legal system and political priorities. In the AI age, data is the new gold, and Meta is poised to exploit this gold mine. The potential for surveillance, manipulation, and discrimination is alarming.
The practical reality is that opting out may not matter. The data is already there, and your network continues to generate information about you. Meta’s dominance in the AI space is set to grow, raising questions about our digital sovereignty and the need for European alternatives. … More Meta.ai: Collecting Open Profiles from Facebook, Instagram, and More
Meta AI has just landed in Germany, now live on WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. As a tech enthusiast, I immediately tried using prompts to dig into my accounts, connections, and messages-only to hit a wall. Why? Europe’s strict GDPR rules block many of the deep-dive features available in the US. What If Meta AI … More Meta AI and the Potential Power of Combining Personal Data and Social Network
Problem Hypothesis Europe – and especially Germany – is critically dependent on non-European technology across nearly every layer of IT, from hardware manufacturing to cloud infrastructure and, most recently, generative AI. This dependency poses serious risks not only to privacy, but also to economic security, innovation capacity, and the future viability of entire industries. Even … More Germany’s Dependency: A Call for Digital Sovereignty
By a stroke of luck and a series of wonderful encounters, I’m excited to announce a new chapter: joining Steffen and Marisa as a co-organizer of ProductTank Frankfurt! “Gude Frankfurt!” – as we say around here – and what better way to greet this amazing community than by helping shape a space dedicated to all … More Gude Frankfurt! Excited to Co-Organize ProductTank Frankfurt/RheinMain
Something kind and beautiful happened to us during our vacation. We were traveling by train and had different seats reserved. It was our first time using the Spanish train service, and I wasn’t familiar with how to make seat reservations on the payment machine. Just before the journey began, a woman came by claiming her … More Reflections About the Power of Kindness and Giving
Personal Blog of Patrick Sauerwein 