I have been doing a bit more business travel lately as part of my recent job change (Well, it’s been over a year, so maybe not so recent). Not a problem, really, more of a shift, but I had noticed some shortcomings of my old laptop bag, and that, combined with some of the crazy TSA requirements for carry-ons prompted me to look for something new.

I have always been a fan of Timbuk2, having picked up one of their original messenger bags (a corporate version, embroidered with the equivalent of “Team Building Exercise ‘99“) at a thrift store for $4. The quality of the workmanship and materials is very high and Timbuk2 is known for their outstanding customer service.

First, let me briefly highlight the issues that I had with my previous two bags that I hoped to overcome with my new one.

1st Bag: Trager Cross Country

A great vertical bag that held everything I needed for a trip and a little bit more. It had both a shoulder strap and backpack straps that zip away so that they don’t get in the way when you don’t need them. A very high quality bag that served me for many years.

The main flaws with this bag were that when it was loaded, it always tipped over and despite having two types of straps, neither was terribly comfortable when slogging long distances across terminals or en route to meetings.

2nd Bag: Ogio Hip Hop

This was my first replacement for Bag #1. I liked it because it had a lot of compartments that were designed for specific uses (I especially liked the zippered pocket where the strap attaches to the bag and the “ticket pocket” on the back) and because it looked a lot nicer than Bag #1.

Unfortunately, this bag ended up being all looks. While it definitely looked nicer, the build quality was below that of Bag #1. And even with all of those compartments, it didn’t hold as much as Bag #1. Once it had the laptop and various accoutrements, there was really only room for a thin folder of documents or a newspaper. The final straw was the shoulder strap. It had two huge flaws. First, it was uncomfortable to carry. If caried on one shoulder, it tended to slide off, even with a pretty grippy shoulder pad. When worn across the chest, the bag banged into you as you walked, which was both uncomfortable and not too beneficial for the contents. The second issue was the way the strap attached to the bag. It had two narrow,  rectangular plastic rings on either end which almost immediately turned and caused the strap to bunch on both ends.

3rd Bag: Timbuk2 Commute 2.0

The Commute 2.0 caught my eye because it features a TSA-approved laptop section that lets you keep you the laptop in the bag while going through security. For anyone who has had to go through security at a major hub airport, you know what a pain it is to dig out your laptop, put it in a bin, and then retrieve it and put it back on the other side of the scanners. And keeping the laptop in the bag is a deterrant for theft, since would-be theives cannot easily see what type of laptop it is, and they would have to grab the whole bag, which would be much less conspicuous than just taking the laptop.

The bag is also huge, without looking huge. It has some dedicated storage areas that are great for cables, a wireless mouse, thumb drives, and other accessories, but there is room for a large things, too, like a fleece jacket or books or binders. I realized how much stuff this bag holds, when I had to yank everything out of it to send it back for warranty service (more about that later).

And just for hah’s, it’s also waterproof, top to bottom, so if you have to lug it around in inclement weather, you don’t have to worry about your papers, accessories, or laptop getting wrecked by the rain.

Some things about the bag are hit-or-miss, depending on what you like in a computer bag. I could do without the velcro on the flap (it has clips, too), and the side pocket for water bottles doesn’t easily accomodate larger bottles (I mostly stuff travel snacks in it). I also wish that the interior zippered pocket was a bit bigger and more robust so that it would hold its shape, but that’s really nit-picking. And, I miss the ticket pocket from the Ogio. That is a great feature and one that could easily be added to either the front flap or back of the Commute 2.0.

Where there is opportunity for much improvement is the laptop area. Because I spend a lot of time either in airplanes or waiting for airplanes, I have a Dell D630 with the extended battery.  With the largest available bag, the laptop barely fits. Also, with the laptop in its sleeve, the roller bag handle pass through (where you can slip the bag on to your luggage handle) is too snug to actually fit over the handle. I have tried this on several different rolling suitcases, just to see if mine was especially fat, and it doesn’t fit on any of them. An elastic strap (maybe even an adjustable one) probably would have been better, though likely not as aesthetic.

Overall, this is a great bag. It has a few shortcomings, but all of the things in the plus column far outweigh them, at least for me. I highly recommend this bag for power travelers who have to essentially carry their office with them when they travel.

Warranty

Now, about that warranty thing. I originally bought this bag in July, when it first became available. About a month or two later, I noticed that the handle had started to fray and come unattached to the bag. It was minor, but I knew that it would eventually fail and past experience has taught me that a) the handle is an important part of a laptop bag; and b) it will fail at the least opportune time possible.

So I contacted Timbuk2’s customer support about returning it for repair. They said, “No problem, send it back and we’ll fix it or replace it.” So I did. A few days later, I got an email saying that they received my bag and that they were issuing me a coupon for $120 (the cost of the bag) and that I should just order another one. That was easy!

But wait a second. I paid tax and shipping (and return shipping) on my first bag. And now I had to pay tax and shipping on the warranty replacement bag. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s an extra $30 for the warranty replacement.

So, I contacted Timbuk2 customer support again and made my case. The CS rep listened to me and he agreed. He adjusted my account to waive the shipping costs and tax. No arguing. No excuses. No quoting policy from a script binder. Good stuff!

Quality product. Quality support. Happy customer. Repeat customer. Evangelist customer. You do the math.

Popularity: 1% [?]

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Tags: airline, brand experience, business problem, Design, fashion, product, Support, transit, travel

This is probably the last Product Management Reader of the year. Not for sure yet, but probably. To keep you busy through the end of the year, here is an extra wonderful list of stuff to fill your days with. Unless you’ve got something better to do, which I HIGHLY doubt!

1. The Price of Leadership
   [Lead on Purpose]
2. The Famous ProductBeautiful Roadmapping Drinking Game
   [Product Beautiful]
3. An Engineer Roasts “Marketecture”
   [ProductMarketing.com]
4. How Product Management Must Change to Enable the Agile Enterprise
   [InfoQ]
5. Stop Giving Your Customers Too Many Choices — They Don’t Want Them!
   [Accidental Product Manager]
6. Against a Grand Theory of PM, part 1
   [Forrester Blog for Technology Product Management and Marketing]
7. Organising Agile Teams With A Visual Calendar
   [All About Agile]
8. Product Marketing is NOT Marketing Communications
   [Outside InView]
9. Guest Post: Measuring Product Management (part 3)
   [On Product Management]
10. Attainable Requirements
    [Tyner Blain]

Disclaimer: Including a link to a particular posting in the Product Management Reader  is not an indication that I agree with the original author. In fact, I may post topics that are the opposite of my views or at least somewhat controversial in order to provide a contrasting viewpoint to the one I present on The Productologist.

Popularity: 2% [?]

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• Resources (1)
• Welcome to The Productologist (2)
• Why the UI is Important (4)
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Tags: agile, engineer, enterprise, leadership, Marketing, marketing communications, product management, product marketing, requirement, roadmap, software

Last week (3Dec09), Forrester Research Analyst Tom Grant led a discussion on Agile in Technology and how it pertains to Product Management. I took some copious notes on the discussion and thought I would share them here.

Be forewarned, some of this may seem a bit cryptic. I was typing in real time (on my new HP Netbook) and participating in the discussion, so I didn’t capture every single piece of the conversation. Plus, they’re notes, so by definition they are brief. I’ll try to add some clarity where  I can. Items with ** denote topics that were brought up as part of a response, but not discussed in detail.

<NOTES>

Agile in tech orgs requires company-wide changes to be successful

Topics for discussion (desired @ start)

• Multiple Groups
• Agile Adoption Path
• Communicating Up
• Roadmap
• Associated Groups
• Longer-term Projects
• Cult of Agile

**Does Agile get used for things other than software (service, hardware, etc)?

What does Agile really mean?

• Fail fast
• Rapid iterative sprints (vs. releases)
• Consumer v. enterprise
• Empowering for Dev
• Customers funding development of features (demise of PM?)
• Customers/requirements mob-style
• Discover issues more quickly

**Designating sprints as design or build can provide balance for dev team and product team

What are the characteristics that make Agile truly Agile (are there minimal reqs to be Agile)?

• Daily communication
• User stories
• Coaching (external training)
• Executive sponsorship

**Challenge of balancing defect/feature in sprint/releases

How can Agile better accommodate futures (12 month plan)

• Showing a long-term roadmap that likely won’t happen that way vs.  showing a 3 month roadmap that is likely, but without future planning
• Use backlog as “possible” roadmap

Challenges of Waterfall and Agile turn out to be very similar, but are labeled differently

1st age of Agile is done, moving to 2nd age where Agile is more broadly adopted and enhanced

</NOTES>

Popularity: 2% [?]

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Tags: agile, backlog, balance, challenges, Customers, Design, forrester, product management, requirement, roadmap, sprint, tom grant, waterfall

And these days, who isn’t?

My company is having a webinar this month covering how to put together a Social Media strategy for your company or organization. If you (or your company) haven’t figured out to monitor and utilize social media channels, then this is a good primer.

It will be heavily geared toward marketing folks (hey, that’s who our customers are!), but even if you don’t fall into that category, there’s good info that may be useful for you as you find new ways to collect data about your products and services and interact with customers and prospects in new ways.

Here are the details:

How to Implement a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Presented by Marcus Tewksbury, Director of Alterian Customer Intelligence

Thursday, December 17th 10:00am Central / 16.00 UK

To register: http://www.alterian.com/smleadgen (Tell ‘em The Productologist sent you!)

What you already know: Your emails are starting to fall on deaf ears; the quality and ROI of your PPC campaigns are on the decline; and your prospects and customers are spending more and more time online, but not necessarily on your site.

What you need to know: Social media can address all of these issues in a measurable, programmable way by taking the brand experience to the community and engaging people where they form impressions and find answers.

In this webinar, Marcus will walk through the steps that can make you a social star.  He will cover:

• Tracking customers online and identifying the right social channels
• Creating content that sticks and sells
• Crafting calls-to-action that are tailored to the social media
• Being accountable, and showing straightforward ways to demonstrate lift and ROI
• Developing a search strategy that gives your content the best chance of being found
• Enabling new social channels like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter to cheaply and efficiently spread your brand message
• And much more…

Popularity: 2% [?]

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Tags: brand experience, community, customer intelligence, Customers, Marketing, media strategy, products, Prospects, strategy, twitter, youtube

A shorter list than usual this time, thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, but that should in no way diminish the importance of any of the articles listed below. Besides, the list includes a post from April Dunford at Rocket Watcher, and she’s the best Product Management blogger in the world (Note: she’s actually from Canada, but we’ll let that slide).

1. Capturing Ideas
   [Lead on Purpose]
2. Beta Applies to Messaging Too: Rogers On Demand Online
   [Rocket Watcher]
3. 6 “Bootstrapping” Tools for Software Product Managers
   [Software Product Management]
4. Why ROI Is The WRONG Way To Measure Your Product’s Marketing Program
   [Accidental Product Manager]
5. Can You Write Website Requirements Without a Product Manager
   [Tyner Blain]
6. Product Marketing & Management + Sales Ops = Necessary Ingredients to Win
   [OutsideIn View]
7. A Quick, Easy Way to Gather Info for Buyer Personas
   [Buyer Personas]
8. Translation of The Cranky Product Manager
   [Cranky Product Manager]

Disclaimer: Just because I include a link to a particular posting, that is not an indication that I agree with the original author. In fact, I may post topics that are the opposite of my views or at least somewhat controversial in order to provide a contrasting viewpoint to the one I present on The Productologist.

Popularity: 2% [?]

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• Resources (1)
• Welcome to The Productologist (2)
• Less is More (2)
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Tags: beta, Bootstrapping, buyer personas, Canada, Marketing, Measure, Personas, product management, Product Managers, Requirements, Sales, software

I wrote a post back in 2007 [Passion, part 1] that highlighted how products that get users excited benefit from the passion that they generate. One of the companies I commented on was Tivo, one of the pioneers of the DVR and digital time shifting. See my comment in the original post on what they were up against.

Here’s an update on where they are now (courtesy of Gizmodo): http://bit.ly/5jbHAm

Popularity: 2% [?]

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Tags: DVR, Gizmodo, passion, Tivo

Product Manager’s Desk Reference by Steven Haines

There are books and there are Books, and with 700+ pages, the Product Manager’s Desk Reference (PMDR) definitely falls in the latter category of capital B books. It’s not a book you can throw in your laptop bag to read on the plane (or train). Actually, you could, but you might not have room for your laptop!

There are many books (and blogs) out there that purport to tell you how to be a Product Manager. I have discussed some of them here before and there are many reviews on sites like Amazon. The PMDR is unique among them in that it covers a very broad range of Product Management topics and it covers them in significant depth.

And fortunately, the PMDR is not just limited to the traditional Product Management functions. Haines covers all the topics that a Product Manager would even remotely have to think about or interact with–Leadership, Finance, Team Management, Research, and Career Development, just to highlight some.

In previous book reviews, I have gone through the book and summarized the main points and added some comments (observations, critiques, or questions). That’s a bit harder this time around since the PMDR is so big and I don’t think that it would add much value. What I am going to do with this one is pick out some of my favorite topics or points and provide some guidance on who it would be good for (New Product Manager (NEW), Experienced Product Manager (EPM), Big Company Product Manager (BIG), Start Up Product Manager (SUP) or everyone):

Topic	Starting Page	NEW	EPM	SUP	BIG
Stay Calm, Even When Your Hair’s on Fire	48	X	X	X	X
Documenting the Decision Process Chart	92	X	X	X	X
Basic Financial Statements	106	X			X
Competitive Positioning	150	X	X	X	X
Strategy as a Dynamic Continuum	216		X
SWOT	237	X		X
Product Strategy Review Template	345		X		X
Sorting Out Opportunities	270			X	X
So What?: The Value Proposition	277	X	X	X	X
Marketing Functional Support Plan	297	X			X
Product Performance and Monitoring	311	X	X	X	X
Eliciting Requirements	326	X
Functional Requirements	331	X
Make vs. Buy	337	X	X	X	X
Competitor Research	392		X		X
PM Role During Dev Phase	416	X
Decision Matrix for Development Changes	437	X	X	X	X
The 3 A’s of Product Launch	451	X	X	X	X
Win/Loss Audits	481				X
Recasting the Strategic Mix	502		X		X
Chapter 22 – Charting Your Career	559	X	X	X	X
Coaching Product Managers	583		X		X

There is much more to the PMDR than what I have covered above, but I think the areas I highlighted are important topics that many Product Managers struggle with. Like others who have reviewed this book (On Product Management, Cranky PM, and Product Management Zen), I think this book is a welcome edition to the library of Product Management books out there and serves to provide a broad foundation for Product Managers both within the field and beyond.

Recommendation: The PMDR is a fantastic resource for any Product Manager who wants to fill in gaps in their training/education or who wants a good reference tool for revisiting some of the areas and skills that they don’t use as much. Due to its size, it’s not portable and I wish the templates were available electronically AND free of charge for book owners, but it’s still a great book that should be in every Product Managers library.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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Tags: Book Review, career, career development, competitive, Launch, leadership, new product manager, process, product launch, product management, product management books, product strategy, requirement, Requirements, skills, strategy, training

The BW and I took a trip to Vegas this summer (her first) as long weekend getaway. Our experiences there were quite different, even though we were together 99 percent of the time. Vegas is many things to many people and we had different expectations (from each other) going in and by the time we were headed home, we had different views about the experience.

On the outside, Las Vegas is flashy. A large, shiny diamond with many facets, twinkling in the light. Everything blinks or flashes or emits sound. Sometimes all three. Sometimes, all the time. Everything in Las Vegas is vying for your attention. Underneath that sheen, though, it is still very gritty, very unrefined.

The minute that you step off of your plane onto the jetway, you feel the heat. When you reach the terminal at McCarran airport, you feel the sudden shift in temperature as the air conditioning hits you full force. Then it’s the rows of slot machines. Only a few by comparison to a casino, but in the sparse area of an airport, their constant wave of chimes and chirps is a stark contrast to the standard airport experience.

The bombardment continues on the cab ride (even within the cab itself, via “coupon books”, maps, and billboards attached to the ceiling of the cab) to the hotel. Billboards for shows, neon signs for casinos, the visage of Donny & Marie or Penn & Teller emblazoned across the side of hotel towers and myriad ads for lawyers who can get you out of any trouble you have found yourself in during your trip to Sin City.

Unless you are sight- or hearing-impaired, you can’t escape it.

And so it goes even as you arrive at your destination, only more focused. See our shows! Join our VIP club! Sample our expansive seafood buffet! Free drinks at the tables and slots! In the end, it turns into white noise. A din that is undifferentiated from the sound of traffic on the freeway, but which you cannot avoid or turn off.

Products can be this way, too, in a couple of ways. One is how the product is marketed, but the other is how it is made.

On the marketing side, Vegas gave me the feeling of being at a tradeshow. The leaflets being handed out are a little less risque (at tradeshows), but the intent is the same–”Come by our booth and check out our goods; we’ve got the best/hottest/fastest/cheapest (depending on your preferences) thing in town.”

There is also a sense of one-upmanship going on, too. Instead of a product being judged on it’s own merits, there is a comparison to how much better a product is than it’s competition. I’ve always disliked that type of positioning. Not only does it have the potential to bring a specific competitor into the picture if they were not already there, but it doesn’t allow the product to be evaluated on what problem it solves for the user.

Let me give some Vegas-style examples (and some commentary):

• Loosest slots in town
  Really? Your slot machines payout more often than other casinos?

• More rooms
  OK, but doesn’t that equate to being more crowded? Why is that good for me?

• The best shows in Las Vegas
  What makes a show the best? What metric is used to validate this: laughs per minute or volume/duration of clapping per show?

• The most stores
  This one is pretty easy to metric, but who goes to Las Vegas to shop. Most of the stores I have seen fall into two distinct categories: stores that already exist in my hometown or stores that are so expensive that most vistors would only be able to purchase something AFTER winning big at the loosest slots in town. When was the last time you bought a Faberge egg or a $4000 handbag?

• Something for everyone in your family!
  I laugh at this every time. There is a reason that Las Vegas is known as Sin City. Sure, there’s a thin plastic veneer over the top that makes it all look sparkly clean and family-friendly, but really, what part of gambling, drinking, smoking, scantily-clad folks (visitors and staff) is family-friendly? I’m an adult and I enjoy one or more of those (you can try to guess which one(s), but even if you don’t partake of any of those, they are pervasive. From the swimming pool and hotel lobby to the hostesses to the flashing billboards.

That last one also is a big problem for products. Great products start off solving a challenging problem for users, but as a product matures, it typically expands to meet a broader set challenges, but in doing so, loses focus on what made it successful in the first place. Microsoft Word is a good example of how this happens. It started off a solid, Every subsequent release offers new features, which dilute the user experience and make the software more complex.

Complex is fine as long as it is the software that is handling the complex part. As software matures, the user experience should become easier; better, not worse.

Now Microsoft Word has hundreds, maybe even thousands of features, most of them unused by the majority of users. The most important feature, the one that has the greatest impact to users is not one in that is actually in the product. It’s ubiquity. The ability to share documents with almost any person who has a computer. Oh, and spell-check, but I would argue that feature causes more problems than it solves.

Products need to grow. The challenges that users face change over time and your product has to change, too. But be careful about what shape that change takes. It’s very easy to tack on features and capabilities. It’s more difficult to do it in a coherent way that actually simplifies using the product.

My suggestion to those of you who have both growing and mature products is to look at your product. Look it in the face as a user does and ask yourself, “Does my product look like Las Vegas? Am I just placing a thin veneer over the top to make it look better in the sales cycle or am I creating something that truly solves a problem for my users?”

Popularity: 3% [?]

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Tags: free drinks, neon signs, product management, user experience

Travel usually makes for a very productive Productologist (long waits in airport terminals and poor in-flight entertainment typically give me the time to crank out the great blog posts you all have become accustomed to). But lately, I have been worshiping at the altar of the Red-Eye trans-continental (or trans-Atlantic) flight, which has resulted in a decrease in blog productivity, but an increase in actual work productivity and familial relations. It’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just that I don’t LIKE-like you. Sorry. Here, take this pen. It’s a really nice pen.

1. Are Product Managers ready to focus on research?
   [Forrester Blog for Technology Product Management and Marketing]
2. Our product’s got no pants on
   [Carl Knibbs]
3. 8 lessons we can learn from Infomercials
   [On Product Management]
4. How to present like Steve Jobs
   [Product Matters]
5. Make Time to Read
   [Product Management Zen]
6. Product Management is more than prioritizing features
   [How to be a Good Product Manager]
7. Authority vs. Influence
   [Strategic Product Manager]
8. Market Problems or Just (Bad) Ideas You Want To Build?
   [Enthiosys]
9. Spam is not Marketing
   [Rocket Watcher]
10. How Can Product Managers Mange People?
    [Accidental Product Manager]

Disclaimer: Just because I include a link to a particular posting, that is not an indication that I agree with the original author. In fact, I may post topics that are the opposite of my views or at least somewhat controversial in order to provide a contrasting viewpoint to the one I present on The Productologist.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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Tags: airport terminals, infomercials, management and marketing, Marketing, Prioritizing, product management, productivity, spam, steve jobs, Strategic, technology, UI, zen

Well folks, this is it. The FINAL PMQC.  Today we are talking with Amita Paul, Founder of ObjectiveMarketer, a solution for extending Marketing, Sales and Customer Service into Social Media. This session has been in the works for a looong time. Originally, Amita was going to write some guest posts for The Productologist, but we couldn’t quite get the timing right. Then she started working on ObjectiveMarketer and as anyone who has started their own company knows, there is not much time for extracurricular activity. Ideally, this interview would have fit in with the entrepreneurial ones I did a while back, but alas, it was not meant to be. Anyway, this one promises to be a good one.

Q: How did you come into the role of Product Manager and was it planned?

A: At the risk of sounding cliché, let me tell the story that has been my inspiration all this while. It goes like this – “At a construction site, one could see three workers doing the hard work. When asked about the work, one said, he was laying bricks for the foundation, the other said, he was carving stones, but the third one said, he was building a temple.” I had heard this story at a pretty young age, when I was still in my school and had zilch experience. But, I instantly could relate myself to the story and specifically, the third construction worker.

Fast forward a few years (1999), and I am in my first job as s/w engineer (in India) for a big multinational, where for first few months, all I did was fix typos and alignments in some random reports. Soon, I realized, pretty much every engineer in the company did the same!  Frustrated, I cursed myself. Leave aside the temple; I could not even see the bricks!

Fast forward 10 more years (2009). Day in and day out, I am doing nothing but thinking of the temple that I am trying to build. Sometimes, I have the bricks and mortar. But, mostly I have nothing more than a huge space! How did this happen?

So, to answer the question – the role of Product Manager was not planned, but was envisioned! I continued doing things that I loved – defining product features, integrating technologies, creating collateral – even when I had the designation of Software Engineer, much to the chagrin of my manager. However, after I did my MBA, I moved into the formal role of Product Management.

Q: What are the biggest challenges you have experienced as a Product Manager and how did you overcome them?

A: PACE and RISK PROFILE – the two differences between you (the PM) and your people!

As a PM you are churning ideas, snooping every possible place to combat competition; and geared with that momentum you draw the most powerful roadmap. The biggest challenge then is to convince the engineers “Man, this needs to get out the door like yesterday!” and to tell the management “No, this is not as risky as it looks. And yes, let us take this risk! May be this time! Please?”
These are hard nuts to crack though! And sometimes, I feel “wish, I still did code”.

Q: What have you done or what would you consider the best way(s) for Product Managers to improve themselves?

A: Considering that fundamentals of Product Management are clear (there are myriad of good advice on the net including “The Productologist”), these are some of my tips -

1. Be visible, be available and be ready to speak up. It is your product and you have to protect it and promote it all the time – in meetings, in cafeteria, in restroom, in elevator, in carpool…
2. Become multi-lingual as fast as you can. With engineers, with sales folks, with management, with customers, you should know to speak their lingo. Listening to what these different groups mean and presenting your concepts to them in a way that they can understand, is the key.
3. Be quick in rectifying mistakes. Do not get obsessed to an idea to the extent that it becomes overkill.  Accept, learn and move forward.  If there are human beings in your organization, they will understand.
4. Take break. No work for sometime is not a bad thing. Free up your mind from overworked issues, solutions and situations. Start afresh!
5. Finally, never forget the temple that you are trying to build. Even, if it is an iterative project, there is always a temple within a temple!

Q: Where is the best place for the Product Management function in an organization and why?

A: I believe Product Management should be tied with P&L responsibility. So, in an ideal world I would like to see Product Management being managed as an independent function –tightly integrated with Marketing, Sales, Engineering and Finance – but, not under any of them. Being outside of a group has its own disadvantages – most importantly loosing the influence in decision making. That rests on the capability of the people who run this function.

Q: If someone told you that they wanted to be a Product Manager, what would you tell them?

A: Go ahead! But, wait a minute … do you see the temple???

___________
And now for Amita’s question for The Productologist:

Q: In last one 5 years if you were to pick one, which technology product or service would you call par excellent and why?

A: Even though it’s not so much a technology in and of itself, but rather a use of technology, I feel that the advent of tools for creating User-Generated Content (UGC) has had the most profound impact in the past 5 years. When the Internet was first made commercially available and followed shortly thereafter by the Web, it was primarily corporate entities that claimed the space to broadcast their ideas. Websites popped up here and there and even though almost anyone COULD create a website, almost nobody knew HOW to create websites.

Then along came tools and apps that allowed less technical folks to create content on the Web. Sites like Tripod and GeoCities let laypeople create content without having to know much about the underlying HTML code. Granted, most of it was atrocious looking (who can forget the <blink> and <marquee> tags of early HTML pages?), but it was the first steps of the public having direct access to a large-scale publishing and broadcasting medium.

Over time, more powerful tools emerged which allowed non-technical users to embrace more of the computing side of the web. Apps like Dreamweaver let designers build websites that were connected to rudimentary databases (often just excel spreadsheets) to generate pages on the fly.

Some years later, blogs started to emerge and once that happened, it was as if the floodgates had been cast open. The number of pages on the Web grew astronomically. The same problem of signal-to-noise remained, but new voices were heard and new viewpoints were put forth and discussed.

Social Media is an interesting extension to that. I am not sure where it will go, since it is such a broad category and it includes many diverse areas, but to be sure, sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others have made a significant impact on the role of communication in the 21st century.

A bit more about Amita:

As a founder and CEO of a new startup, ObjectiveMarketer, Amita is fulfilling the most challenging Product Management function of her career so far. ObjeciveMarketer is a comprehensive marketing platform for social media, offering campaign management and analytics solution for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. She is focused on growing the business and building functionality that will increase adoption of social media as a viable business channel.  All in all, it is fun and I am enjoying every moment of it.  To connect with her, you can follow @amitapaul or @objMarketer on Twitter or through LinkedIn and Facebook.

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