The Best ProductCamp Sessions Start with a Question, Not an Answer

Published October 27, 2025

Walk into ProductCamp Atlanta on Saturday morning and you’ll see a wall of ideas: handwritten cards, bright markers, and a crowd of people debating where to stick their votes. Some of those cards will have polished titles. Others will just have a question.

And honestly? The best ones usually start that way.

Forget the Polished Talk, Start with Curiosity

There’s a myth that to lead a ProductCamp session you need slides, a case study, or a rehearsed talk. Not true.

ProductCamp isn’t a conference where speakers lecture and audiences listen. It’s an unconference. That means your job isn’t to present; it’s to provoke a conversation.

In the Ideas Jam & Virtual Mixer, Sam Duong-Woloszynski encourages participants to flip their thinking. Instead of asking “What do I know enough about that I could share?” (around 00:05:10), she reframes it as “What does the audience want to know?” (around 00:05:46). That shift from telling to discovering captures what ProductCamp is all about: creating learning experiences together, not delivering finished lectures.

When you start from curiosity instead of expertise, you open the door for everyone else to contribute what they’ve learned too.

Why a Great Question Beats a Great Deck

A good question does three things:

It’s specific enough to focus the room.
“How can product managers work better with UX?” gives everyone a place to start.
It’s open enough to invite conversation.
If your session has only one right answer, it’s a quiz, not a discussion.
It’s something you’re genuinely exploring.
When your curiosity is real, people can feel it, and they lean in.

In Pitch It. Lead It. Own It., Zoe Becerra shares that every talk or session should begin with three questions: your why, your who, and your so what (approximately 00:07:02 – 00:08:01).

Why you care about the topic
Who you’re speaking to
So what it means for them

Those three questions are a great starting point for any ProductCamp session because they help you find the purpose behind the question you want to explore.

Turning Your Question into a Session

Here’s how to take that spark of curiosity and turn it into something people will vote for and love being part of.

1. Pitch it.
You’ll have about 30 seconds to share your idea. Keep it conversational. Say what question you want to explore, why it matters, and what you hope to learn from others.
(You can see how Sam sets this tone early in the Ideas Jam intro, around 2:40).

2. Post it.
Stick your card on the wall. Watch the dots appear. That’s your first signal that your question resonates.

3. Facilitate it.
When it’s time for your session, your job isn’t to teach; it’s to guide.
Set the context, ask your question, and let the room build.

Zoe Becerra also talks about using simple storytelling to keep people engaged (around 13:00). She reminds us that people remember how you make them feel more than what you say. That’s as true for unconference sessions as it is for formal talks.

What Makes ProductCamp Special

ProductCamp works because we learn from each other. Every session, whether it’s a debate, a demo, or a hallway huddle, starts with someone brave enough to say, “I’ve been thinking about this, and I’d love to hear what you think.”

That’s how community learning happens.

So this year, don’t wait until your idea feels perfect. You don’t need a slide deck or a script. You just need a great question and the willingness to explore it with smart, curious people.

What’s your question?
That’s your session.