echo: comment for a six-year old dead blog post

AS I ADMITTED in my last missive, I am a Pack Rat in matters personal. At work, I purge paper and emails ruthlessly, per my personal and professional records retention practice and as a fundamental part of my ongoing efforts to stay focused. But that's another story entirely.

So it came as no great surprise when I happened upon an archive of a blog I started and abandoned in the space of three months back in early 2001. In those heady days when Blogger was relatively new and Pyra Labs still stalked the earth, I started a "blog", thinking it would immediately attract all manner of like-minded individuals who would enthusiastically begin to collaborate with me in the development of (what I self-importantly believed were) fantastic creative projects.

Needless to say, no one showed up. Not one comment, not one email of interest. Crickets.

In a fit of hubris I walked away from the blog and forgot about it. But true to form, prior to abandoning it, I archived everything. In the normal course of events it got burned onto a CD and filed.

Race forward (nearly) six years.

One of the little joys of being a compulsive archivist is getting letters from your past self. I stumbled upon that particular archive CD in my search for Something Else, and opened up the long-forgotten archive of the too-cleverly titled "Knocklong Press" blog.

99% of the content was, as it was then, utter crap, but hidden in it was a reflection on being the parent of two very young children (3 and 1 year old, respectively).

As the eldest of these two prepares for his ninth birthday, I realized I had forgotten just how soul-shatteringly weary parenting was in those days. Perhaps you, dear reader, have a better memory than I do, but it took the discovery of this piece to bring back all of those feelings that I had left behind six years ago.

Do you leave messages for yourself to remind you of where you've been, and who you once were?

Here's mine, from April 2001:

Oi vey, what a day. Roll out the screaming baby at 12:30am and 5:25am (yes, I looked at the clock) and you've got the makings of a topper.

Spring finally rolled up I-95 and stopped in northern Jersey before getting back on the road and heading for Connecticut. About effing time.

Thunderstorms rolled through about seven tonight, kept rolling for hours. The boy didn't like the storms; he got all clammy and agitated. Ultimately he fell asleep. Odds are he won't stay asleep. Odds are on any given night one of the two of them won't sleep. It's guaranteed.

It's amazing how noone (sic) tells you that sleep is the first thing to go once you have children. Intimacy with the spouse second. A close third is your ability to actually do anything without roughly an hour of prep-time. Thought you'd go out to dinner without a backpack full of amusements, jars of baby food, wipes (gotta have your wipes), extra diapers for the occasional crap-a-thon, medicine, whatever, and actually manage to finish your meal without having to take one of them for a tour of the joint? No way. They don't tell you this stuff. They keep it a secret so they can ruin someone else's life and laugh their ass off.

I think it's mostly the lack of sleep that's got me all bitter. And the kicker is - get this - to stay awake, you get all wired on coffee. Then you can't go to sleep.

Like all the other posts on that long-dead blog, there were no comments. So in the spirit of the moment, here's a comment to a dead blog post:

Sounds like a tough day - have courage, it gets better. Actually, that's wrong - it gets different. Over time you'll exchange the hardships of sleep deprivation for the hardships of dealing with teachers, of trying to teach morality and respect, of comforting them when you move them away from their friends and family. You'll deal with having to explain to them why daddy isn't working right now. In every way you'll put their interests first, certainly ahead of trivial things like sleep.

So enjoy your coffee, try to sleep, and endeavor to persevere. And lay off the blogging for a while, you have better things to do - most importantly, you need to make sure you remember the too-brief moment when your children are still very small, because the moment doesn't last. You'll forget what it feels like to hold them close to your chest and smell their hair as you rock them to sleep. You'll lose any memory of sliding them into high-chairs, of wrapping them up in bulky snow-suits. You'll never again see them climb into boxes on Christmas morning and shriek with joy as they play with the wrapping paper.

So enjoy where you are now. And for God's sake, say thank you to your wife more often. She deserves it.

personal: 5 things

After a good hour watching the State of the Union Address what do I find but I've been tagged. By no less greater (sorry Steve) a luminary than Steve Johnson, by gum. When Steve gets his Tag-o-Matic out, golly, you'd better respond.



This particular tag is a conspiracy-meme designed to pry self-reported "facts" out of normally self-effacing, secretive product managers who, curiously, act out in strangely self-aggrandizing, public ways through the irregular publication of "opinions". Fair enough.

And since I am not a fictional character (to my knowledge)(unlike other product managers), I have resolved to share some potentially illuminating but probably self-serving and most likely practically useless observations pertaining to collective embodiment of id, ego and superego that manifests itself (in this incarnation) as me. Fictionally.

Well then. Five Things You Don't Know About Me.

1. I am a Pack Rat. My (long-suffering) (clutter-averse) wife and I have reached a détente of sorts on this: as long as I keep my so-called "files" organized and my "collections" in a discrete "zone" of our "house", we're "OK".

2. I am a good driver, sure in my conviction that Momentum is your Friend, as it Preserves your Options.

3. My business hero is Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder version).

4. I applied to only one college - and in my application, I let them know that I was only applying to one college,"since they were the only college I wanted to go to" and "I had full confidence that I would be accepted". It worked, and collectively this explains an awful lot about me.

5. I can fall asleep near-instantly at night.

Dear reader, what will you do with this new-found knowledge? Are you seething in disappointment? Have I thoroughly shattered your long-kept notions of "the author"?

For you, the angry few, I offer these Alternative Five Facts about Me:

1. I have a detachable hand over which I may retain temporary remote motile influences. In my younger days, this made me very popular on dates. Today, it assists in the retrieval of keys.

2. I can live for an extended period of time on a diet of aphids.

3. I understand the secret language of trees, and I'm tired of listening to them bitch all the time.

4. I am the secret author of the novel Frown and Disgust.

5. I have a small portable shrine to John Hodgeman.

press: interview with emmi ceo mark achler

The Healthcare IT Guy, Shahid N. Shah, published an interview today with the CEO of my company, Mark Achler. The title of the interview is "Improving Patient Communication Often Leads to Improved Healthcare", which is certainly appropriate to our company's mission.


In healthcare, what passes for communication is, in many ways, exactly the antithesis of communication. Examples:

• Stacks of brochures you pick up in the waiting room are not communication.
• 10 minutes with a doctor before your surgery is not communication.
• A postcard in the mail from your care management nurse is not communication.

In short, a fire-and-forget missile is not communication. Communication is a verb, not a noun. To be successful you need to engage people in a dialog, listen for feedback, adapt and repeat. One of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now is because improving the quality and effectiveness (not necessarily the same thing) of healthcare communication is something I feel passionately about. Just like I feel passionately about product management.

I'll posit that improving communication around x leads to improved x, where x=just about anything. YMMV.

found: dafont.com

I have a colleague, let's call him Zaphod. He's a big fan of fonts. Well, who isn't. In honor of Zaphod, I offer you, my dear reader, the find of the day - dafont.com, a veritable treasure trove of fontish delights, both free and un-free. Enjoy.

(Image: Logo rendered in Docteur Atomic, by Jonathan Paquette)

relief: first MRD distributed

There are a few milestones every PM reaches as they settle in to a new opportunity. First customer meeting, first sales call, first roadmap discussion.

For me, a big milestone came today with the broad(er) distribution of my first MRD.

This particular MRD (or Market Requirements Document) was the product of four weeks of intense requirements gathering from, well, everywhere. It was written for a product concept that had been floating around the organization for a year, but had reached the "go/no-go" phase with the added frisson of "perceived market urgency".

Perfect candidate for a whiff of process, I thought, and the race was on.

A few lessons:

1. Look at so-called competitors with suspicion - just because other companies have "solutions" in the space doesn't mean they understand the market. You don't necessarily need "more" than them to be "better" than them.

2. Get feedback from your development and production leads into the document before it hits a broad audience - you want them to support your effort, not undermine it with "the PM is smoking some serious dope if he thinks we can release it by such-and-such a date".

3. Capture and use prospect quotes in your discussion of the marketplace. Bitter experience has taught me that what I think, while interesting, is irrelevant. What prospects think matters. So share what they think.

4. Include projected financials, especially a take on the total available market.

5. Think laterally when it comes to all the ways you can leverage a solution to target new and different markets, not just the one you'll serve first. In this case, doing this product will, in a future release, open the door to targeting an entirely new category of customer, which is a good thing.

6. Start thinking about go-to-market earlier rather than later - have an idea of what the launch will look like, what the PR will smell like, what sales training will require, etc.

7. Consider the advantages of pre-announcing. This is a fun strategy discussion that you can lead with the Great Minds of your particular organization.

Of course, my baby might get savaged upon further review, but the very act of sending it out was, to me, a big deal.

Alea jacta est. Stay tuned.

news: boxxet announces launch date, financing round

You Mon Tsang, CEO of Boxxet, told ack/nak today that Boxxet will be officially launching its service on January 16, 2007.

Additionally, the company plans to announce a "small financing round" from Ascend Venture Group.

A special web page established by Boxxet to help describe the service to journalists and the blogosphere has been set up here.

According to the company:

Boxxet brings together the 'best of' news, blogs, photos, gear and much more on people's favorite subjects. Boxxet's unique combination of computer automation and community passion produces the most diverse and complete best-of compilations on the Web's most popular and interesting subjects.

Congratulations to the entire team at Boxxet and to You Mon Tsang for staying focused on what they do very, very well - turning chaotic streams of content into well-organized "sets" of knowledge that everyone can enjoy. If you've never visited Boxxet, visit it today - if you've been following them as long as I have, you'll be amazed at what they've accomplished since beta. Well done!

hmm: the things your blog becomes known for

Month after month, I get emails that go Something Like This:

1. "Can you send me a Boxxet invite?"

2. "Where did you find your Belstaff Colonial Canvas Shoulder Bag?"

3. "You schmuck, of course you write the MRD first."

Funny stuff. It's enough to make me want to become a social networking Belstaff reselling MRD writer.

roadmap: the pm's best defense

I love building product and solution roadmaps almost as much as I love talking to customers. The reason is simple - once you get executive buy-in that the path you've articulated is one that will deliver on your revenue and profitability goals, you've got the rough equivalent of a shield against the depredations of enthusiasm and entrepreneurialism that come your way on a daily basis.

Sing with me here - you *do* get new ideas coming at you every day, don't you. You might even be the source of some of them. Think of each of these ideas as a threat to you, a disruptive force that might bring good, but if left unmanaged, will certainly deliver a world of hurt.

Without a roadmap, you have no defense other than "I thought we agreed to such and such" and "the development team is already working on so and so". Imagine strapping some cardboard to your arm before going up against an opponent with a Spiky Atomic War Club. Not too effective.

The goal is to have everyone feel like he/she "owns" the roadmap - that the path it describes is the one that will lead the team (and the customer) to the promised land. Once this happens, the need for the roadmap doesn't diminish, but the protective effect it has is no longer quite as urgently necessary.

This is not to say that roadmaps don't change - they do. But without a benchmark to measure changes against, you're at the mercy of hope and luck, neither of which are valid management strategies.

painting: steve dean

Steve Dean is a genius in any scale, but he really shines in 15 millimeter. For rules that work for the medieval period, I'm torn between Hordes of the Things (HOTT), De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) and De Bellis Multitudinis (DBM).



I've got a lot of respect for any man or woman who has the patience to do the little things well.

(Photos: Steve Dean)

insight: no stacks

I have in my life been guilty (ahem) of being cluttered, both mentally and organizationally. In the interest of minimizing the former, I've adopted some strategies for dealing with the massive flow of information and actionable tasks that come my way each day.

One controversial strategy of mine is to maintain an empty Outlook in-box, a Getting Things Done lesson if ever there was one. People I Have Known have at times been almost proud to tell me how many unread emails were in their in-boxes. One record-holder would auto-delete anything unread that was over 30 days. My take is that if someone sent it to me, there might be something in it of value. Best to find out sooner rather than later.

But the strategy that sprang from this that I find most appealing - and so far most challenging - is to avoid creating a stack of anything on my desk.

Put simply, the rule works like this: No item may be placed on any other item.

Given that I have limited real estate on my desk, and given that I know OOS=OOM (out of sight equals out of mind), this forces me to make some hard choices on a constant basis about What I am Doing Now, What I Am Doing Next. To say nothing of Later or Never.

It's strangely calming. Try it and let me know what you think.