recap: a product manager's year

This will be my last post of the year - thank you for making this blog a success in 2007, and I look forward to hearing from you in 2008.

What happened in 2007 in my now not-so-new gig? Before it becomes lost in the fog of memory, here are three highlights, each of which suggests a good question:

Some people came to town, some people left town. How do you deal with turnover from an emotional perspective?

We made tremendous progress implementing a variety of important systems, most signficantly for requirements and roadmap definition. Which product management systems are the most important ones for you to implement in a new job?

I learned I'm actually looking forward to saying "I don't know" more often. It takes quite the load off of me to not have to posess complete understanding of all things at all times. What can you do in 2008 to become a better member of your team?

I'm actually looking forward to 2008 more so than I can recall looking forward to any new year in recent memory. I hope you are too.

recommended: 3 blogs for post-Christmas fun

Merry/Happy Christmas to all of you in ack/nak land.  After a challenging day of removing toys from packages, wading through wrapping paper and other holiday fun, I have three blogs I can recommend for your post-Christmas enjoyment.

Japundit - not just another Engrish site, Japundit offers a stroll through Japanese culture as seen by insiders, but written for outsiders.  Ramen, anyone?

Ardeng Rabbit - because you can't cook the bunnies you get at the pet store.  Well, maybe you can, but I can't.  And it's time for hasenpfeffer.

Slot Car Illustrated - is there any more perfect activity on Christmas morning than putting together your first slot car track and sending a plastic car careening across the floor?  No, there is not.  Once you've figured out how to keep the cars on the track, you'll a) want them to go fast and b) want some more cars & track, and this blog will give you all manner of ideas for both a & b.  Their 1/32-scale forum is particularly impressive (as is the one at Slotforum).

welcome: tony blair joins catholic church

Today's news of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's reception into the Catholic Church was notable not for the fact that it happened, but for the fact that he waited so long to make it happen.

After all, Mr. Blair's wife and children are practicing Catholics.  And early on as Prime Minister he used to "participate fully" in the Mass, until Anglican Cardinal Basil Hume put the kibosh on it.  Prior to becoming Prime Minister, he "regularly attended mass at Westminster Cathedral, more often than not by himself, and always took communion. The priests there knew him well. He would normally either attend the 9am mass with his family, or the 5.30pm mass by himself." (source)

I'm glad he waited - as waiting avoided unnecessary complications in Northern Ireland.  

Think about it - when the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 (Comhaontú Aoine an Chéasta) was negotiated, how much more difficult would it have been had the sitting Prime Minister had to deal with accusations of being a Papist by the Ulster Unionist Party?

(I'm hoping my honorable friend Mr. Fitzgerald will have something to say on this.)

Fast-forward to nine years later - earlier this December - Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness are sitting together in the Oval Office with our President, where Mr. McGuinness says "up until the 26 March this year, Ian Paisley and I never had a conversation about anything – not even about the weather – and now we have worked very closely together over the last seven months and there's been no angry words between us. ... This shows we are set for a new course."

Clearly the world has turned upside down, or perhaps more hopefully, right-side up.

The Irish Catholic in me is thankful for all that has happened over these last ten years.  Operation Banner ended just shy of it's 40th anniversary.  The IRA has decommissioned its weapons.  The DUP and Sinn Féin have formed a government.  In a very real way, the Troubles are over.

And I'm thankful for Mr. Blair's decision to put off his decision to join the Catholic Church until he left office, and until it was clear that a lasting peace had taken hold in Ulster.

Perhaps I'm being overly simplistic to consider that the matter of Mr. Blair's faith would have had any impact on the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.  But I think it is certainly fair to say that inaction on his part avoided an unnecessary complication.

And so.  Welcome to the team, Mr. Blair.  You'll find we're an odd lot.

lyrics: the weebl and bob pork song

Pork! It's the meat of kings!

It's made from pig, try it with onion rings.

Pork sure goes with everything, cause it's made from swine, and swine sure tastes fine.

Just bring some to the picnic baby, 

You know you wanna stuff it in my hamper

But please put it in some tupperware

Cause I don't wanna be a porky chancer.

Let's talk about pork

Converse about meat

Veggies get wedgies cause meat can't be beat

Ham and bacon you should taste them

I know it's surprising but it's so appetizing!

(repeat)

Link to video (note the Full Screen option)

(image care of AdFreak)

eats: hopleaf

ABC 7 Chicago's Steve "Hungry Hound" Dolinsky teased us tonight with a brief view of a local restaurant called Hopleaf.

"Head up to Andersonville, for the city's most extensive list of Belgian beers at the venerable Hopleaf - a beer lover's nirvana. While you're there, dig into steamed mussels and frites, or an organic Montreal-style brisket sandwich. Spice-rubbed, slow-roasted and briefly smoked, it's sliced thin, piled high on sourdough, and served with addictive fries and a crunchy-tart homemade pickle."

It was pure brisket porn.  Oi vey.  Groove on this menu, then let's meet to eat meat there.

With apologies to Mr. Meaty, of course.

caution: christmas tree syncope

Dr. Wes reminds us to avoid hanging too many ornaments on one side of our Christmas trees.

Why?

To avoid Christmas Tree Syncope, of course.

milestone: two years of ack/nak

Today is the second anniversary of the birth of ack/nak.





In case you were curious, here's what you can expect of two year olds:

Two-year-olds like to be independent! Favorite words are "Mine" and "No" and "I do it!" Emotions take on a roller coaster-like quality as 2-year-olds can go from excitement to anger to laughter within a few moments. A great deal of time is spent exploring, pushing, pulling, filling, dumping, and touching.

(source)

Thank you to all of you who have helped make ack/nak a success through your emails, comments and most of all, visiting and reading the irregular stream of semi-coherent prattle you've come to expect from this fine publication.

If I could ask anything, I'd ask you to share some of your favorite ack/nak posts in the comments section. I'm always keen to know what you're enjoying.

Here's to the new year.

Bob

read: caslon analytics on blogging

Caslon, an Australian "research, analytics and strategy consultancy", has written a profile on blogging. It is comprehensive in scope, opinionated, and thoroughly enjoyable.

It does make me ask whether blogging is the modern equivalent of the CB radio craze of the late 70s, when for one brief odd moment we all imagined ourselves to be long-haul truckers. I wonder because I've learned the average lifespan of a blog is three (3) months (thanks to Andy Coates). Interesting. Even Gartner Group agrees, predicting that the number of blogs will peak in 2007.

dreaming/waking: of digital assistants (updated)

Flurries of recent speculation and more recent Apple job postings are giving me flashbacks.

In 1994 we started getting word of hand-held devices that could truly live up to the "digital assistant" promise. Tools that wouldn't just keep your calendar, but would enable you to engage the world around you in new ways. Remember General Magic? When Sony, AT&T and Motorola announced their devices at the same time that Apple was getting ready to launch the Newton 120, we seemed to be on the edge of something special.

But as is often the case, bad execution and bad timing killed great vision.

Without distributed Telescript applications, Magic Cap devices became isolated islands with no access to the sorts of services and capabilities that were the foundation of the General Magic value proposition. The fact that they ran on a proprietary network at a time when the free internet (via Mosaic) was first taking off was the nail in the coffin.

And without the processing power to make its handwriting recognition really shine, the Newton suffered in the eyes of the public, especially when compared to the brain-dead simplicity of the Palm Pilot. By the time the Newton 2100 was released, the world had moved on - myself included. I bought a Palm Pilot after using it at a Gartner Group show where its size, ease-of-use and speed forced me to see my Newton for what it was - a dream.

In the end the Palm Pilot was a soulless thing without vision. It wasn't a digital assistant. It was a Filofax replacement. And the day my Pilot crapped out while I was looking for a phone number was the day I abandoned it for paper. I had come full circle, from dreaming to waking to dreaming again.

I'm still stuck on paper as I dream of a day when I can expect more from a hand-held device than playing music or making calls or fiddling with my calendar.

Who knows, maybe that day is coming. And when it does it'll find a Web 2.0 world of distributed applications waiting for it and more than enough processing power to drive it.













(artwork by audiopollution, courtesy of AppleInsider)

Update 1 - The clever lads at AppleInsider have reported on an (unconfirmed) Apple decision to make use of Intel's "Menlow" Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform, specifically "the upcoming 45-nanometer (nm) Silverthorne chip, agreeing to use it in not one but multiple products currently situated on its 2008 calendar year product roadmap." If true, this is more than enough processing power to drive a Newton successor product with an acceptable power profile.

two takes: on right now

take 1

It is very tempting to live in the past.  In fact, most of us do.  Psychologists tell us that most of our conscious thoughts are thoughts of the past.  We replay old scenes in our minds; we fight old battles; we recall past joys; and most of all we find ourselves stuck in the pains of the past.  We spend much energy reliving old scenes over and over again.  The sad part is that the past is over.

The second most common place for our minds to dwell, after the past, is in the future.  Our minds are filled with hopes, fantasies, and fears for the future.  We want to create a future exactly as we dream it should be.  We have an ideal vision and want to realize that vision but our fears and conflicts nag at us, jeopardizing our future.  Ironically, most of our fears for the future never materialize.

from When the Lion Roars by Stephen K. Rossetti (Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, IN  2003)

take 2

A monk told Joshu: "I have just entered the monastery.  Please teach me."

Joshu asked: "Have you eaten your rice porridge?"

The monk replied: "I have eaten."

Joshu said: "Then you had better wash your bowl."

At that moment the monk was enlightened.

Koan #7 - Joshu Washes the Bowl from The Gateless Gate by Ekai (called Mu-mon, circa 1228)

soundtrack: testing some background music (updated)

One trait I share with the common magpie is a slavish fondness of shiny objects. Others are a habit of teasing cats, shyness, and an ability to eat nearly anything. But I digress.

My "shiny object du jour" is a music player in the center column, care of MyFlashFetish. What an oddly-named website, you say. I agree.

I've taken the liberty of linking this player to a few ambient soundscapes from The Wandering Ear, a wonderful site featured in a previous post. You can change the track to one of the other three I've chosen, or simply pause it if you wish.

If you find it terribly annoying, let me know. I'll swap some tunes in and out as the sprit takes me, hopefully you'll enjoy my selections.

UPDATE - You find it terribly annoying. Cammie, bless her, was kind enough to ask if it could start on mute, but others of you were less, shall we say, circumspect in your comments. Fair enough, mischief managed. I'm replacing the widget with one from TuneFeed, we'll see how well that works out.

UPDATE 2 - Nope, it doesn't work out.

UPDATE 3 - I've added the minimalist boomp3 player - see if you like that. Remember, the music restarts when you switch pages, so make liberal use of the 'open in a new tab' function if you want to hunt around without the music stopping/restarting.

1Cor13: say less, be heard more

How many people do you know who have an ON button? I'm one of them.

A year ago if you brushed against it accidentally you might get "an inspirational speech", accompanied by "appropriate gestures" and "stage right/center/left focus points", along with snippets of "jargon" and a liberal sprinkling of "wacky metaphors". It was almost a game show trick. On a good day, I could fire off 30 minutes without blinking an eye.

A month ago you might have had to hit the button a few times, but you'd have gotten much the same result.

Yesterday I was asked to say a few words at a meeting of our extended management team. I opened with "I'm going to try to be a model of restraint and limit my comments to introducing the members of the team." I made a single point, then passed the ball to my colleagues.

When they were done, I thanked them, and reiterated the single point I made in my opening comments by means of a conclusion.

It was the most effective talk I think I've ever given. And one of the shortest.

Today someone I work with whose opinion I value told me, "you said less, and you were heard more".  

In 2008 there are three aspects of "less is more" that I'm going to be paying very close attention to. The management consultants call them "Communication", "Feedback" and "Consensual". In Bob-speak they mean "speak clearly, respond thoughtfully, and listen actively".

But the deeper challenge is this - I think I've been speaking in the tongues of mortals and angels for years, and all this time I haven't realized I've been coming across as a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

It's a sensation that is equal parts humbling, depressing and inspiring. I'll have more for you later.

sleep aid: journal of clinical sleep medicine podcast

Who needs sleep aids when you can listen to a podcast from the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine?

No offense, of course.

moyashimon: toys=success (updated x 2)

I'm enjoying Moyashimon enough after six episodes to start wondering if others are enjoying it too. One sure-fire indicator of a show's success is when the toys start surfacing.

So find a nearby gashapon machine.

Look at it very carefully.

If you see the smiling faces of Aspergillus oryzae peering out at you from inside the plastic capsules (like in this picture), start hammering it with 100 yen pieces.

Kaiyodo's first series of Moyashimon magnets (site is in Japanese) features eight bacteria, including the hero of the show a. oryzae, e. coli and others including the one that soured the sake in episode 2 whose name I've forgotten...

The meta-issue here is pretty simple. When planning a new product, how far in advance do you line up industry support, and what triggers do you look to before you start engaging the second wave?

I like to have my first wave of support committed at launch, with second wave pending pre-determined success metrics (units sold, customer announcements, etc.) If you get to the second wave, you're doing well.

In the anime business, I see the emergence of toys as a sign of second wave support. Feel free to argue.

(previously - moyashimon: anime for microbiologists)

UPDATE 1 - Here is are two promotional images associated with the Moyashimon gashapon described above. There are other gashapon coming in March, but they're. . . plush. And therefore much too frivolous for display here. Ahem.

UPDATE 2 - Here is the homepage for the Moyashimon anime - there are some nice resources there even if you don't speak Japanese.

huffington: hates huckabee

My digg hates guiliani post stimulated a flurry of ack/nak reader email, some quite partisan in nature. Thank you.

In the grand tradition of "if it ain't broke, bang it harder", I therefore return to the scene of the crime with the following - The Huffington Post has latched on to multiple Mike Huckabee stories like a terrier to a shaky-legged hobo. Most notably, they've brought the tragic Drumond story to national attention, which if true, will kill his candidacy the same way stories of Mayor Guiliani's taxpayer-sponsored love taxi have killed his (or so it seems in advance of big-state primaries in February).

Consider these headlines:

• Huckabee: Gay Marriage Would End Civilization
• Former Aide Contradicts Huckabee Defense Of Rapist's Release
• Huckabee: God Responsible For My Rise In Polls
• Documents Expose Huckabee's Role In Serial Rapist's Release
• Of Hucksters, Hooligans and Huckabee
• Mike Huckabee's Wife Can Handle A Grenade Launcher

(I'm a big fan of that last one - that's one quality in a first lady that I've always admired.)

It's a little curious that the Huffington Post didn't publish its Drumond story until a day after this headline: Huckabee Pulls Within 3 Of Rudy Giuliani. And the day after it dropped that bombshell, it reported: Huckabee Now GOP Frontrunner, Giuliani Falling Fast.

It's also a little curious that the Huffington Post has created a convenient Huckabee Watch post that summarizes all of the lurid "news" coming out on the candidate.

It makes you wonder who else is jumping on the bandwagon. Like, say, CNN:

observed: everything bad is good for you

Today's article in the New York Times on the upcoming release of the first American-made absinthe since 1912 (specifically St. George Spirits Absinthe Verte, $75 per bottle beginning December 21st) was interesting, but not surprising.


Because it seems everything bad is good for you. And not in the way Stephen Berlin Johnson writes about it, thank you.

Go ahead, test me.