This past weekend I had the opportunity to present a session entitled "You should always follow the rules, except when you shouldn't" at Product camp St. Louis. My session was one of 50 proposed sessions and I was lucky enough to be selected as one of the 30 that was presented. I have to admit not being sure whether anyone would vote for something with a title as abstract as that.

The feedback I got at the end of the session was that it felt like a philosophy discussion. In some ways, that's what I had intended, structuring it so that about half of the 45 minutes would be filled by me and the remainder filled by the participants in the session. This was an exploratory session on my part trying out some of the ideas that I've been working on for a course, maybe by the same name, at the School of the Possible.

The conversation during the session was outstanding, much better than I could have hoped for. Among the participants were a kindergarten teacher, a high school teacher, quite a few product managers designers, others that you would find on a product team. It was a nicely diverse group as well, including men and women of all ages and several cultural backgrounds. It was from these diverse views that I gained the most insight.

I will be incorporating all that I learned and many of the conversations into my continued development of the course. So much fun.