friends of next play jam: Retention Roundtable
- Date
- 2025-05-13
- Host
- friends of next play
About this event
Retention is where good products become durable businesses. If you care about what keeps people coming back, this roundtable is a chance to get in a room with other thoughtful operators, builders, and community-minded people who want to talk honestly about what works, what does not, and what they are seeing right now. Expect a grounded, in-person conversation with peers who are interested in the real mechanics of keeping users engaged over time. This is not a polished conference talk or a passive sit-and-listen meetup. It is a focused gathering built around discussion, perspective-sharing, and practical ideas you can take back to your own work. About the Event friends of next play jam: Retention Roundtable is an in-person meetup centered on one of the hardest and most important topics in product, growth, and community-building: retention. Whether you are thinking about user habits, activation, repeat engagement, lifecycle moments, or long-term loyalty, this event creates space to compare notes with others who are working through similar questions. The roundtable format matters. Instead of one-way presentations, the emphasis is on conversation: people bringing examples, questions, patterns, and observations into the room and learning from each other. That makes it especially useful if you want nuance, not generic advice. Because this is part of a community-oriented gathering, you can expect the tone to be open, curious, and collaborative. People are there to contribute, not just consume. The value comes from hearing how different teams and individuals define retention, where they struggle, and what signals they trust when deciding what to improve next. If you have ever wanted to pressure-test your thinking with smart peers, this is the kind of setting where that can happen naturally. The conversation should be useful whether you are deeply technical, product-focused, growth-focused, or simply interested in how strong experiences keep people returning. What to Expect The evening will likely center around a shared discussion rather than a rigid program, which is part of what makes a roundtable valuable. You can expect a mix of introductions, framing around the topic, open conversation, and smaller moments of direct exchange with the people around you. A typical flow for this kind of event may include: Arrival and informal networking so people can settle in and get a sense of who is in the room A short opening to frame the theme of retention and set expectations for the discussion Roundtable conversation where attendees share experiences, questions, challenges, and ideas Peer-to-peer exchange on tactics, frameworks, and lessons learned Additional mingling after the main discussion for people who want to continue specific conversations The most useful contributions at events like this are usually concrete. That might mean discussing onboarding drop-off, habit loops, activation quality, community re-engagement, messaging strategy, feature adoption, churn signals, or how teams decide which retention problems are worth solving first. You do not need to arrive with a perfect answer or a polished case study. It is enough to come ready to participate, listen carefully, and speak candidly about what you have seen. The room becomes more valuable when people bring real examples and honest questions. Why Attend Retention can be deceptively hard to talk about in the abstract. Everyone agrees it matters, but the actual work often sits at the intersection of product decisions, user psychology, communication, incentives, and timing. Being in a room with others who are wrestling with the same complexity can help you sharpen your own thinking much faster. This event is especially useful if you want to move beyond surface-level growth talk. A roundtable gives you access to practical perspectives: how others frame the problem, what they measure, where they see momentum break down, and what kinds of interventions have made a real difference. You may leave with: New frameworks for thinking about retention in your own context Fresh questions that reveal where your current assumptions may be weak Useful tactics you can test in product, community, or engagement work Peer connections with people who care about similar problems A better sense of the landscape across teams, products, and communities There is also value in simply being around people who take this topic seriously. Good conversations often create follow-up ideas, future collaborations, and a clearer sense of where your own work fits into a broader ecosystem of builders and operators. Practical Details This event is in person, which makes a real difference for the quality of discussion and networking. It is easier to have nuanced conversations, ask follow-up questions, and build genuine connections when people are sharing the same room. The event takes place Tuesday, May 13 at 6:00 PM EDT. Since it is an evening meetup, expect a format that works well for after-work attendance: focused enough to be worthwhile, but social enough to encourage conversation before and after the main discussion. A few helpful ways to prepare: Come with one retention question you are actively thinking about Bring a real example from your work, product, or community if you want sharper feedback Be ready to participate rather than just observe Leave room for conversation afterward if you want to deepen connections If retention is a topic you keep returning to because it touches everything from product quality to user trust to long-term growth, this roundtable is a strong reason to show up. You will be in the company of people who understand that keeping attention is easy to talk about and much harder to earn.
Who should attend
This is for you if you want thoughtful, practical conversation about what actually drives people to come back. - You work in **product, growth, marketing, community, or operations** and want better ways to think about retention beyond dashboards and broad theory. - You are **building a product, program, or community** and need sharper insight into repeat engagement, churn, activation, or long-term value. - You like events where you can **talk with peers instead of sitting through formal presentations**, and you are willing to share what you are seeing in your own work. - You have a **specific retention challenge** on your mind and want to pressure-test your assumptions with other smart, curious people in the room. - You enjoy **cross-functional conversations** and want to hear how different people approach the same problem from product, user experience, lifecycle, or community angles. - You are looking for a **community-oriented in-person meetup** where the value comes from candid discussion, useful perspective, and meeting people who care about similar questions.