mastery: lather, rinse & repeat

I experienced a profound sense of mastery this evening. This is not to suggest that learning in this particular area of endeavor is done - simply that I'm now aware of the impact of choice on each step of the process I followed, an awareness that has freed me to. . .

"Holy crap, Bob, you're doing it again. Enough with the cryptomysticism, get to the point. There's a Saturday Night Live repeat on NBC with that guy from the Office."

Fine, fine.

Tonight, I made. . .the perfect. . .shrimp scampi.

"You are such a ____ing idiot."

Hold on, Sparky. Have you ever made shrimp scampi? From scratch? Without. . .a recipe?

Have you gotten your mise ready without measuring anything?

Have you judged the doneness of the shrimp by sight and touch, instead of by the clock?

"Have you lost your mind?"

I've made so many crappy shrimp scampi recipes before I've lost count. Each time, I've screwed something up.

• Heated the oil and butter up too fast, which burns the butter
• Threw the garlic in for too long, which burns it
• Failed to totally defrost the shrimp, which encourages you to leave the shrimp in too long, which makes them rubbery
• Forgot the salt or added too much salt
• Added the lemon too early or too late and in too great a quantity
• Added the parsley too early, or too late in too great a quantity
• Added the red pepper too early
  
• Overcooked the pasta. . .

Or one of any of a dozen other opportunities for failure.

But if you balance the ingredients, the timing and the heat just so, something magical happens.

It's magical when you're plating the dish, you discover you've got left-over chopped flat-leaf parsley to dress the plate.

It's magical when you slide the plate in front of your wife you get that wide-eyed expression of "wow, that smells and looks great."

Then somewhere between bite three and bite four, when you've realized it's perfect, the thought pops into your mind. . .

"What can I do differently?"

Confident in your ability to deliver an excellent outcome, the student in you is released, free to experiment without fear of failure.

"So, was it good?"

"Yes, it was good."

unintentional: eno on product management

"One is always inclined as a composer to put more in than you need as a listener."

Brian Eno
Monday, June 26th, 2006

review: belstaff colonial canvas spring/summer 07 collection UPDATED

(UPDATE1 - You can read about the changes to the Belstaff Colonial Canvas line for spring/summer 08 here.)

(UPDATE2 - I'm in the process of working with Belstaff to get my bag repaired. Read about this here)

Readers of ack/nak know of my devotion to my Belstaff bag.

So it is with great enthusiasm that I learned of Belstaff's new line of Colonial Canvas bags for Spring/Summer 2007. Enthusiasm, I say!

Full disclosure: I've not managed to get my hands on any of these bags. What I know about them is what I've seen from the pictures I'm sharing with you here. Of course, if the nice people from Belstaff were to send a few of them to me, I could do a better job of putting them through their paces. Hint. Hint. My email address is down there on the right hand side. . . yes, over there. . . under "contact me".

Note on Colors: Belstaff changed the list of available colors for the Colonial collection from last year's line. The Fall06/Winter07 colors were: Colonial, India, Panama, Mountain Brown, Kaki and Black. The Spring/Summer07 Colors are divided into two groups: "Northern Colors" - Black, and "Southern Colors" - Ice, Kaki, Sand, Mountain Brown. Of all of these, Kaki and Mountain Brown look the best. I think the majority of the photos here feature bags in that color.

Image source: Belstaff

"Where can I buy one?" - I know of one store in New York (L'Uomo) that stocked the Shoulder Bag - but I don't know if they stock the rest of the line. When I visited the Belstaff store in London last fall, they recommended that anyone who wanted one of these bags should just give them a call.

Belstaff London Flagship Store
12-13 Conduit Street
W1 S2XW
tel +442074955897


Body Bag

No, you can't fit a body in this bag. This bag is designed to sling over your shoulder and fit snugly against your chest, potentially under a coat. Note the various and sundry external zippers, a Colonial line first AFAIK. For the serious traveler in unfriendly cities, this is probably a wise choice.



Large Man Bag

This is an excellent compromise for someone who needs the capacity of the shoulder bag but doesn't like it's "landscape" format. Compare this to the Man Bag and Medium Man Bag to see what I mean. Of all of the new Colonial bags, this is the one I covet most. Note the two front pockets.



Large Shoulder Bag

Bigger than the classic shoulder bag, but smaller than the travel bag, this baby seems a bit on the big size for an everyday briefcase, but perhaps just right as an overnight bag.


Man Bag

The man bag is unique in the Colonial line in its use of top-mounted strap rings - all of the other bags use side-mounted strap rings. It also lacks a front pocket, which seriously limits its flexibility. But for a small bag, what do you want.



Marsupium

I like the mix of zippered pocket and button pocket in addition to a main zippered pouch. Another winner for travelling types, this looks like it would ride equally well on your hip as elsewhere. The marsupium is #2 on my most-coveted list.


Medium Man Bag

The ultimate man bag compromise: one external pocket, side-mounted strap rings. Don't expect to be able to put a magazine in this without folding it, but it seems to bring more capacity (and flexibility) to the table than the basic man bag. This looks like it would be a very serviceable camera bag.



Shoulder Bag

The shoulder bag is my every-day briefcase, carry-on bag and general partner in crime. Two front pockets, two side pockets and an internal zippered enclosure give it tremendous flexibility. It even has a back-mounted "handle" so you don't always have to lift it by the strap. It wears wonderfully slung across the body, in part due to the clever leather padding on the strap. Buy one.


Travel Bag

A multi-compartmented, zippered and handled monster of a bag, this addition to the Colonial collection screams "throw me in the back of the single-prop plane and let's fly over the jungle." Since my plans for flying in single-prop planes and flying over jungles are as yet unformed, I don't see one of these in my future.

So there you have it. Of course, if you're not a fan of canvas-cloth bags, Belstaff has a lot of other stuff you might like. But for me, I find the durability, charming shabbiness and comfort of my shoulder bag to be just right.

meme: identity and access management

The hammer and anvil of "security" and "compliance" are coming together - finally - to create opportunities for software companies. And consultants. Don't forget the consultants.

But I digress.

I say "finally" because I was talking about this about eight years ago back in my Teleran days. Back then, we talked about iSight and iGuard as vehicles for tracking and controlling how users accessed relational databases. We even won a nice award for our work. Some guy from Microsoft is still pissed that he got beaten by us that day.

Jump ahead eight years. Companies like Centrify and Preemptive are actively promoting solutions to detect "improper usage" of applications. I'm particularly keen on Preemptive's approach for detecting attempts to tinker with deployed software assets, a solution that leverages their deep experience in code obfuscation.

Even my old pals at MVSN are getting in the game, with a solution for the games space that embeds Update Service (oops, "FLEXnet Connect") in games so publishers can update them remotely. . .and figure out what sort of exposure their games have to P2P distribution. Assuming pirates aren't smart enough to remove the updating software before re-distributing it, of course.

I'm sure there are many more solutions out there whose sole purpose in life is to tell you that someone is messing with your stuff. Any other products come to mind?

Or movies?

Psycho: My name's Francis Sawyer... but everyone calls me Psycho. Any of you guys call me Francis... I'll kill ya.

Leon: Ooooooh.

Psycho: You just made the list, buddy. Also, I don't like no one touching my stuff. So just keep your meathooks off. If I catch any of you guys in my stuff... I'll kill ya. And I don't like nobody touching me. Any of you homos touch me... I'll kill ya.

Sergeant Hulka: Lighten up, Francis. We're all in this together. One of these men may save your life one of these days, you understand that?

'Winger: Then again maybe one of us won't.

ha: obligatory priest & rabbi joke

A Catholic priest and a rabbi were seated together by chance on a small commuter plane. Well, the weather got bad, and the small plane started to bob up and down like a roller coaster. Seeing the look of fear on the rabbi's face, the priest saw it as a perfect opportunity to try to convert him to what he saw as the only true religion--the Catholic one.

The rabbi would have none of it. The storm worsened, and, as the plane went into a nose-dive, the priest again tried to get the rabbi to convert.

Nothing doing.

Well, the plane crashes, and everyone is killed--except for the rabbi and the Catholic priest. The priest looks over, and, to his surprise, sees the rabbi making the sign of the cross. Elated, the priest walks over to him and says,

"You saw the light! You converted!"

The rabbi, again appearing to cross himself, says,

"Conversion, smersion, I was just checking to see if everything was still there:"

"Spectacles, testicles, wallet, cigar."

spring: fog in the garden

I've lived in Chicago for four years now, and in that time I've come to appreciate that spring comes and goes in the blink of an eye.


For about five days nestled between "cold and grey" and "blazing effing hot" is a brief period of what I'd characterize as similar to "soft Irish weather."

You can leave your windows open at night. The air has a texture to it that makes you want to stand still and just breathe. All around you the ground is fairly seething with signs of green as nature shakes off winter's stupor and starts to get down to business. All the more reason for us to spend a morning getting ready.

I like this time of potential. Today we'll go out into the garden and clean up the scattered remains of winter, reinforce the mulch, trim-back the sedum heads, sage branches and fountain grass stalks.

There are already some surprises. The bulbs we planted in the fall of 2005 are well ahead of where they were last spring. The sedum "Autumn Fire" is getting ready for a thuggish display of expansion, if the small rosettes of new growth are any sign.

And there are some worries. I don't know if the PJM rhododendrons survived, or if the fall bulbs got in far enough in advance of the first frost to take. Some of last summer's perennials are under the spotlight to see how they got along over the winter. And then there's the primrose: still green, but unproven as a survivor.

I worry about my garden like I worry about my product. If I do a good job in my garden, it will stand on its own and give lots of happiness to everyone who sees it. They won't see me - they shouldn't.

mii: jim foxworthy

World-famous cattle wrangler and product management expert Jim Foxworthy is the first to answer my call to "Send me your Mii".

To those of you who haven't figured it out - if Jim can do it, you can. And I mean that in only the most positive way, Jim.

biblio: pike the bookman

IN EVERY large city like New York there are human astrays who make a precious living by hanging on the borders of the book trade. They drift around from one bookseller to another picking up a small profit by selling some item to one bookseller that another bookseller has in stock. Or, they take out an item and find a private purchaser who may want it for family reasons. For instance, in the autograph trade the roving trader will take an old Livingston letter and sell is (sic) to some present member of the family, --and often gets a price much higher than the normal one. Or, in the book trade he learns that some man is collecting books about Lincoln, and when he finds a Lincoln book he takes it to him. These men have no capital and they keep no stock on hand. They get trusted for the books and generally are honest.

They are men who have seen better days, who have education, often genteel manners, but for some reason have lost their hold and failed in life. Such a man was James Trevett Pike, who died some weeks ago, aged 73 years. He was a tall man with a full white beard, and a curiously mottled face. His father was a well-known scientist who was well to do and gave the son a good education. The young man entered Wall street as a bond salesman, was successful and at one time was worth $130,000. All of this was lost in a panic and after that his living was precarious. He became a book peddler and for twenty years past drifted around in the trade, and sometimes acted as a buyer at auctions. Of late years as he grew old and his health bad, he made many blunders, and caused laughter at sales. His manners were very courteous and excited sympathy, thought he was not lacking in shrewdness in business. He had two friends, Joseph Sabin and Mr. Hartsoff, of G. A. Baker & Co., who stood by him, and they kept him on his feet. Then he broke down entirely, was taken to a hospital, and the end came soon.

Pike The Bookman by Walter R. Benjamin
from The Biblio, Vol. 2, No. 4, October 1922
(Pompton Lakes, New Jersey)

(image: "Der Bücherworm" by Carl Spitzweg)

bait: second generation zune

You can learn an awful lot from reading your activity logs.

One lovely bit of learning has been a new-found appreciation for just how hungry the denizens of the intrawebs are for any shred of news about a "second generation zune".

Visitors to ack/nak in search of news and/or rumor on this topic have been treated to the following, a light-hearted dig at Zune Haters and tech reviewer hyperbole.


I'm truly curious of the following:

1. Who is interested in a second generation Zune? Are you the same people who celebrated Microsoft Bob's birthday today? Just curious.

2. Are those of you trolling for news on the second generation Zune employees, distributors, agents, lackeys or (G-d forbid) lawyers for Mmmm. . .Mmmmm. . .those guys? If so, don't tell me.

In either event, I invite you, my most transient of visitors, to extend your stay here. Read something. Consider your alternatives. Enjoy a tasty beverage.

That is all.

gear: yupo synthetic paper

About half-way through this month's issue of How Magazine you'll find a sample of Yupo Synthetic Paper. The ad features a three by three grid-style illustration of an apple using a variety of different printing styles and coatings.

Kids, it's the coolest thing I've seen in years from a paper. The colors literally leap off the page, and the spot gloss UV and texture varnish treatments give a nearly three-dimensional quality to the sample photos.

This is no simple paper. It's got an instruction manual. Your printer has to know what the *$&# he's doing with it or you'll end up with a mess. Thankfully they've got a new version that is fast-drying for gum-figured mooks like me.

I don't generally like to inject myself into the Great Marcom Production Mysteries, but you owe it to yourself to take a close look at this stuff.

metareview: david kamp on jonathan lethem

In this week's New York Times Book Review, David Kamp closed his review of Jonathan Lethem's latest work, You Don't Love Me Yet, with this snarky little zinger:

As they'd say in the rock magazines, this new release is worthwhile for the Lethem completist, but perhaps not for the first-time buyer.

To be fair, Kamp, a self-described contributing editor to VANITY FAIR and GQ who also writes the occasional BOOK (his caps), characterized Lethem's previous two novels - "Motherless Brooklyn" and "The Fortress of Solitude" as "maximalist humdingers", so I should have seen this zinger coming.

Apparently, the author of such fine works as “The United States of Arugula” and “The Rock Snob’s Dictionary" isn't satisfied with lighter fare once he's had a taste of a maximalist humdinger. One Wonders what he'd have to say about the rest of Lethem's oeuvre, which includes such high-brow titles as "Men and Cartoons", "As She Climbed Across the Table" and my favorite, "Gun with Occasional Music". Perhaps "minimalist hornswagglers".

After spending many hours - days even - on his other works, I'm happy when Lethem serves up a burger and fries to mix things up. Kamp missed the point of "You Don't Love Me Yet" - it wasn't meant to stand up to "The Fortress of Solitude" or even "Motherless Brooklyn". It's an intermezzo, a rapid-fire LA passion play, not a genre-bending detective story or a lengthy meditation on culture.

When Kamp complains that Lethem's latest is "a mite too parenthetical", he's cluing us in to the sad fact that he was disappointed - a sure sign that he started the book with the wrong set of expectations. A fault which, I'll venture, is not the best trait for a reviewer to admit.

"Maximalist humdinger". . . oi vey.

mii: the real you

I think there is something to be said for taking the time to craft your own archetype.

So in the belief that all of us need to get in touch with our cartoony center, I invite you, dear reader, to visit the MiiMaker on MiiWare and craft your own. . .you.

Save it as a nice 24-bit bitmap then send it to me, and I'll post it for all of us to enjoy. Happy Friday.

(edit - the MiiMaker does not offer a "save" function to unregistered users. Sooo. Do a Print Screen, paste it into Paint, crop your Mii and save it. Then send it to me.)

hmm: PR stunts

Just a quick thought - it's been said (over and over) that there is no such thing as bad PR. While I'll agree with Oscar Wilde ("There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about") I have to hold up my hand to suggest there is bad PR, especially if you're engineering that bad PR.

Don't fret, dear readers, your author hasn't screwed up (yet). But in considering campaigns for a product launch, one of the ideas that surfaced was something that would capitalize on an item in the news.

Yes, it would capture the imagination of the news-hounds. It would also drive some good results that I could use as a PM. But in the long run, we'd be "those guys who did that thing back when".

All I'm suggesting is that in the execution of public relations that we proud few, we product managers, must always be diligent. Just because something "can" be done certainly does not mean that it "should" be done. Axiomatic, yes, but when asked "do we have to do anything to the product in order to do foo", it might be useful to reply, "why in G-d's name would you ever in a million years want to do foo?"

(I'll repeat - all the more reason to have good marketing leadership.)

requirements: different types of goodness

In the third of Liao-Fan's Four Lessons we find this little nugget:

Liao-Fan: If we were to examine goodness closely, we would find that there are many different kinds.

Narrator: There is real goodness and false goodness, honest goodness and crooked goodness, hidden and visible, seeming and unseeming, proper and improper, full and half, big and small, and finally, difficult and easy.

Liao-Fan: These different types of goodness each have their own reason, which are to be carefully learned and understood. If we practice kind deeds but do not learn the way to differentiate between right and wrong, we may end up doing harm instead of good.

As I consider a raft of requirements from both inside and outside the organization, I'm struck by the motivations behind them. Some features are suggested because "they'll make money". Others because "they complete the product". Still others "are really, really important to customer x". Competitors dictate some, preferences of developers others, and executives still others. The list of sources is as long as my arm, which truth be told, is rather on the longish side.

A feature, in isolation, is a pure good - it serves to empower an individual to accomplish work that would otherwise be difficult to do.

But in the context of the broader solution's gestalt, an individual feature loses its "pure goodness" and takes on different meaning. What capabilities did we not develop by working on this feature? What users are going to be unhappy because we delivered feature x instead of feature y? Does that competitor over there have an articulated frabjulator and you don't?

All of a sudden that one feature takes on a somewhat sinister quality - it's existence is an affront, an insult, to an alternative and (it is assumed) more desirable state.

And by association, those who created the feature become similarly tainted, but none so badly as the product manager who was supposed to know better.

What to do, what to do.

We do research, we pour endless hours into requirements, we socialize and we justify. But perhaps, just perhaps, it would be helpful to draw a great big circle into which we pour the entire universe of potential customers.

Inside this big circle we draw progressively smaller circles. Size doesn't matter, just that they get smaller and they are drawn inside each other.

Until you have a circle that is quite a lot smaller than the biggest one.

You're developing for people in that circle. Make them happy. What you create should do more good than harm for those in the circles just outside of the one you're developing for. That's important, as in time you'll be servicing their needs as well.

You can call this an abstraction of persona design if that makes you feel better. But if you design a product that is half-way good to a great many different buyers, each of them will work hard to pull you in distinct (and more than likely incompatible) directions.

Stay within your concentric circles and your efforts will always be aligned with the broader good.

Caveat - this gets a lot easier if you've got excellent positioning, messaging and strategic vision. So go get some. Marketing FTW!

event: the development kick-off

We celebrate product launches.

We stage elaborate meetings at customers for product training.

We hold focus groups and beta summits.

But do we get the team together at the start of a development process to share the "why" of a release?

Do we bring in customers who really need what it is that we're planning to build, so developers and production teams can see them and hear how their work will change based on what we're building?

Do we highlight those aspects of a release that sprang from internal innovation, as opposed to the fertile mind of the product manager?

Do we leave the door open for continued innovation during development through an explicit change management process?

Let me suggest that how we finish is directly proportional to how well we begin.

balance: focus on financials / foster innovation

Susan Quandt, author of Sudden Impact - Top Business Leaders Reveal the Secrets to Past Success (Jossey-Bass, September 2006), makes the following observation:

In the first half of 2005, more than 770 CEOs left their jobs—a full 90% higher than turnover the previous year. And according to one survey, with the easing of the job market, a whopping 96% of currently employed senior executives expect to change companies…within a year. Another survey of middle managers found that 48% were currently job hunting or planned to start looking as the job market improves.

Here is a telling bit of Q&A around why she left finance/marketing/sales world to pursue a PhD in organizational development at her own company:

Every time I moved to another executive position I kept thinking, “Is this all there is?” I knew something was missing in how companies focused just on their financials, or ROI—return on investment. I did some deep soul-searching and realized the missing component was the focus on people and how they ultimately influenced that ROI. I also could see that the laser focus on financials was depleting organizations of any semblance of innovation, imagination or creativity.

A CEO (primarily of public companies) who fails to balance a focus on financials with an equal focus on building the human capital that is the essential source of their organization's innovation, imagination and creativity. . . hmmm. Have any of you encountered one of these?

photo: pillars at templo de los guerreros - chich'en itza

These pillars used to support a long covered walkway that extended around the perimeter of The Temple of the Warriors at Chich'en Itza. Follow the wikipedia link for a picture of this structure from the air - this picture was taken facing south-east, with El Castillo to my right.

photo: el castillo - chich'en itza

It was hot like the surface of the sun at Chich'en Itza last Friday - but still beautiful. Photo taken with a Blackberry Pearl.

gasp: you want the product to do *what*?

Sing along with me - how many times have you gotten a call from A Valued Sales Colleague (VSC) that sounded something like this:



VSC: Hi Bob, can you tell me when the next version is coming out?

Bob: (Immediately senses danger and feigns a seizure) Ack, cough.

VSC: Are you OK?

Bob: Yes, I'm fine. Thanks for the call. I'll talk to you later.

VSC: You didn't answer my question.

Bob: You had a question?

VSC: Yes. I need to know when the next version is coming out.

Bob: What's wrong with the version you have?

VSC: The customer said they'd buy if we could give them an articulated frabjulator.

Bob: We don't have an articulated frabjulator. In fact, we have no intention of ever having an articulated frabjulator, as we are not in the articulated frabjulator market.

VSC: That's a problem, because that's what they're buying. I need you to build it into the next release so we can compete.

Bob: (attempts to climb through the phone and give the VSC his best super angry face)

VSC: Hello?

I really don't have much of lesson here. No real wisdom, nothing enlightening. This post was written to express two simple things:

1. Sometimes sales people must be rendered into lard. But with love, for we love all of our good friends in sales for their many sacrifices and their zen-like focus on the Almighty Dollar.

2. Sometimes you find a picture out on the intrawebs you just have to appropriate. Such as the one above, which perfectly expresses the product manager's true feelings, and potentially the product manager's Actual Expression, when he (or she) gets a call like the one documented above.

whew redux: coming home (with bonus back pain)

I've got a lot of news (and pictures) to share with you this coming week about the Week That Was. For now, we're settling down with some tea to relax after a full day of schlepping, flying and temperature extremes. It is, after all, our 12th wedding anniversary.

But in advance, I need to caution all of you against the temptation to "man up and dig out" when Mother Nature throws you a driveway-full of freezing rain and snow. Take your time to do it right - bend from the knees, avoid the urge to try and move a mountain with a single shovelful when three smaller ones will do.

Why?

Because a week after "digging out" my lower back still hurts! Arrrgh!

Thank heavens I can now enjoy an Emmi program for Lower Back Pain. If any of you are experiencing lower back pain and are curious to learn more about it, drop me a private note with your email address and I'll sign you up for the EmmiPrep "Back Pain" program. It's a winner, even when your back is a loser.