PMM JAM: Turning Engagement by Design into a Repeatable Learning Experience

Product marketers kept telling me the same thing: many were between roles, and the breadth of the PMM job made it hard to show what set each of them apart. Their best work lived in confidential client and employer decks they couldn't share.

I was in the same boat. As an independent product-marketing consultant with a background in big data and tech, gaming, and hospitality, I designed go-to-market and sales-enablement programs for large organizations. When those projects stalled, I needed a way to show how I think and work without handing out full client deliverables as free lead generators.

I decided to test an event-based format using skills I already had in sales engagement, training, gamification, and user experience. My initial idea was a hackathon, but market testing showed that product marketers, the largest audience I could reach, didn’t naturally identify with that label. After discussing the concept with fellow product marketers, @Gary Dietz suggested a name that fit better: PMM JAM

The business objective was to test whether PMM JAM could become a repeatable product—not just a one-off event—while exploring viable monetization paths. My personal objective was to create a credible, engaging way to demonstrate my product-marketing, training, and gamification skills without giving away client work as free advertising.

I owned the concept, framework, website, pricing, contributor recruitment, and launch. I had very little money to invest, so I recruited mentors with a small honorarium, demo assets, and access to my network rather than conventional fees. I also needed to prove that people would assign value to the experience: I priced admission at $25, offered discount codes without presenting it as free, and left room for participants to pay more. I defined success in four ways:

1. A repeatable structure I could run again
2. Meaningful participation
3. Live engagement and completed projects
4. Evidence for which revenue paths could support future editions: participant fees, sponsorship, or corporate versions.

Because I was building PMM JAM on a very small budget, the tools mattered less as a polished stack than as a set of connections I could make work together. handled the website, payments, pricing, and discount codes. captured registrations and participant information, while and bridged the gaps between the two systems. That connection powered the Jammer Wall: participants submitted a form and photo in , the data moved into , and the live content appeared on the website.

The engagement design held: PMM JAM met the four success measures I set. A global cohort of product marketers from more than 10 countries participated, and majority of participants came through referral codes shared by their favorite mentors. That showed me mentors were not only content contributors but PMM Jam’s strongest distribution channel.

Engagement translated into work: 68% of Jammers engaged live across the sessions, and 12% submitted a full project judged across four award categories. Participants teamed up in Slack, traded feedback, and created work they could show without exposing confidential client material. @Ben Price posted his winning case study on , and Jammer described as “the best product marketing thing that happened to me this year.” Months later, participants told me the Jam had led to job connections or new work.