Author: gander

Product Manager in Tech. Guitar player. Bicycle Rider. Dog rescuer. Techie.
/ gander

Five Little Words

Five little words. “That feature doesn’t sell products“. Seems innocuous enough, but it is the death of product development when uttered by engineering.

Product Management is tasked with defining what a product should do, what features are needed, and how to compare/differentiate vis-a-vis with the competitors. We write requirements, and guide them into and through the development process.

All to have engineering remove features that they don’t believe drive value. Unfortunately, engineering often isn’t cognizant the concept of “whole product“. That beyond the core widget are the services and traits of the product that extend the offering, and provide the unique value proposition, thus enticing the customer to choose to purchase your product or service. Continue reading →

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Tech – Laptops with eSATA ports

A general whine here today, but a while back, probably 2009 or so, the rage was laptops with eSATA ports, for faster external storage. USB3 was a glimmer, and FW800 seemed to be relegated to the Mac world.

My new (at the time) Dell Latitude had this eSATA port, and I was running a lot of VMs on VMWare Workstation, and more bandwidth was desirable.

So I bought a high performance Seagate eSATA external drive (7200 rpm drive in an enclosure), and thought for sure I was golden. Continue reading →

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Competitive Analysis

One core aspect of the product and marketing role is to get insight on the competitive landscape. Apart from what you can find from their websites, you will want to dig deeper, and gain understanding of their business.

Fortunately, there are several sources to go to. Some of these are free, and some are not, but if you can get access to these, I highly recommend taking full advantage.

Dunn and Bradstreet – This is the gold standard.  It is not cheap, but if you have an investor relations group, odds are good that you have access to D&B.  It is worth the effort to get to this source.  Far more information on even small and early stage companies, as well as the best information on privately held firms.  I doubt I could justify the cost if I worked someplace without a subscription, but it really helps pave the path, and fill in blanks. Continue reading →

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Adopt-A-Physicist

It is not a well hidden fact that I have a degree in Physics. But during my studies at San Jose State University, I had a few amazing semesters, really knocked it out of the park. That earned me an invitation to join the honor society, Sigma-Pi-Sigma. At the time, 1988 or so, I thought nothing of it, and forgot about it.

Then around 2009, they “found” me. Apparently, you never are dropped from their roles. Something to add to my resume. But it also lead to an invitation to participate in a program called “Adopt-a-Physicist“, where they Society of Physics Students matches physicists in their roster with up to three classes of high school students who are taking a physics class. Continue reading →

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Life with a Thinkpad and Win 10

With my new gig, I was issued a sparkly new Lenovo Thinkpad T450 (must have gotten the tail end of the run, as it was revved to T460 shortly after I started) with a reasonable sized SSD, 8G ram, a decent screen, and the expected accouterments.

About the same time, my employer began rolling out Windows 10 on the desktop, so I am part of that world now. Prior to this, I had been using Windows 7 since 2010, and had become comfortable, passing up the whole Win 8 and 8.1 in the interim.

First thoughts were that I hated it. No, it wasn’t forced the “metro” interface that came with the initial launch of Win 8, and which turned off all the enterprise IT people I knew, but it still had some of that flavor that, well sucked. Continue reading →

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Right Wing Talking Point: Solyndra

One thing I get tired of reading is the abuse piled on the Obama Administration by the Republicans (really, more specifically the Tea Party wing) about how the DoE loan guarantee extended to alternative energy companies was wasteful, and little more than political fluffery to reward a loyal demographic.

Alas, this story has been debunked over and over, yet the response “What about Solyndra?” is their rallying cry.

So, what about Solyndra? It was a startup that was taking a unique view of how to build efficient solar power modules. Using a thin film process, known as CIGS, to create efficiency somewhere between the then principal technologies, polycrystaline silicon, and monocrystalline silicon cells. PolySi cells were 15 – 18% efficient, and monoSi cells were 20 – 22%. Continue reading →

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Innovation Management

As I research the Innovation process in preparation for a potential training program around Innovation Management, there are several thoughts that are swirling in my head.
Being a long time technical marketer, I am familiar with many of the “Chasmista’s” methodologies (loosely the body of thought inspired by Geoffrey Moore and his seminal work “Crossing the Chasm”), the concept of disruption, innovation, “tornado” markets are all well captured.

But I have also read practical marketing advice from Theodore Levin (in “The Marketing Imagination”) that innovation is often difficult, and that the leaders in innovation are frequently not the dominant force in the market, that often it is better to get the second bite at the apple (let someone else do that difficult work, and apply their learning to have cost, scale, or other advantages – The irony being that Apple often is seen as an innovator, but in reality, they are far better at that second bite.) Continue reading →

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Data Scientist / Data Engineer

As part of my assignment, I have been researching a couple of hot roles in the digitization or digital transformation sphere, that of Data Engineer and Data Scientist. This fascinating trek down the rabbit hole has been quite illuminating.

One of the backbones of the digital transformation is the advent, and rise of this little thing called “Big Data”. With Software taking over the world, compute power becoming ubiquitous and practically free, just about every part of modern life creates data that can be leveraged in myriad ways. From tracking your browsing history so that if you research Chicago Deep Dish pizza pans, the next time you log into Facebook, you will see ads from Amazon or Sur la Table for hard anodized, non-stick deep dish pizza pans. Continue reading →

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Digital Transformation and the GOtV efforts

As I have been focused on the various roles of digital transformation, researching how it affects individuals across the organization, I stumbled on an interesting article in the NY Times that embodied the phenomenon in a way that hadn’t occurred to me.

This article was around the ground game of the coming election (2016 US Presidential) in Las Vegas Nevada. Shadowing a doorbell ringer, a person who goes door to door to remind people of the importance of voting in the election. An offhand reference to this doorbell ringer consulting her smartphone to find the next target of her efforts. Continue reading →

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Customer Success

Customer success. When you hear it, what does it call to mind? Your customers winning in the market? The warm thought that you have helped them achieve their goals? That your technology is delivering quantifiable benefits to your customer’s bottom line?

Yes. To all of this. However, there is a more formal definition that is gaining currency. But, before we get to that, let’s digress a bit and talk about Digital Transformation, and how that is causing significant disruption in the modern business world.

Digital Transformation, what is it?

Continue reading →