With my abundance of spare time lately, I have been picking up some of the books I have on a variety of business topics. Books that I have skimmed or have done some spear fishing for in the past when I needed to quickly get up to speed. As one of the core tasks of product management, pricing has always been somewhat of a challenge. Not the act of setting prices, although at some places I have...
San Diego trip – Coda
It was a wonderful weekend in San Diego, and apart from some serious rain Sunday morning, the weather was exemplary. About what you expect from the historical experience. We trekked down to visit my folks for my dad’s 83rd birthday celebration. My sister and myself were the family, as alas, our brother was tied up and unable to make the journey from Seattle. As I documented, Saturday was...
San Diego Diary – day 1
After a sluggish start, we decided that we would go to Torrey Pines Preserve. Alas, when we got there, the parking situation was, uh, abysmal, so we regrouped and headed to the Carlsbad Flower Fields. The Flower Fields were touted in a blog on Sandiego.org, so we asked Siri to get us there. Fortunately, it was only 20 minutes from Del Mar when we passed the Torrey Pines crowds. Karen had been...
San Diego Travel Log – 1
As a follow on from my post on visiting Napa to buy some of the yummy V Sattui Madeira for my dad’s birthday party this weekend, we are now in San Diego. Friday – Travel Day As airfares were ridiculously expensive, even a month in advance, we decided to drive. Save the airfare, and the cost of a rental car. Big win. Of course, that meant driving the 9 hours (with pit stops) from San...
Napa Surgical Strike
Yesterday, I did a quick trip to Napa Valley. The first one since before I moved to Arizona back in 2003. Being a weekday, and off season, it was a pleasant drive with not too much traffic. A bonus. The reason for the quick day trip? My father is celebrating his 84th birthday this coming Sunday, and we are visiting him in San Diego, and one of his favorite libations is to take a nip of the...
Sleazy Sniping Domain Registrars
I have a few sites, most of them I have paid the extra bucks for the “privacy” options. But there are two that I just forgot this extra. Bad idea. Yesterday, I got in the mail two letters for the two domains where I didn’t pay for the privacy option. They were identical. They look awful official. They try to scare me into opening my wallet and get my credit card out. Of course...
The Dreaded Zombie Product
At every company I have been at with some history (more than a decade or two), I have found there to be at least one product that is long beyond the “Milk it” stage. Orders have dropped off, and customers have moved to either a different technology, or into a replacement product. Of course, you still get the occasional batch of orders for it, thus the hesitancy to discontinue it...
Three Generations
Old passports provide ample memories from many trips around for business and for pleasure.
Strategic Marketing Definition
The words “Strategic Marketing” evokes grand ideas and concepts. But as with many phrases, there is more than a little bit of ambiguity in the perception of those who hear it. Different groups within the organization will likely have quite different interpretations of “Strategic Marketing” Sales When Sales hears the term “Strategic Marketing,” they think that means helping them sell more to what...
Managing un-sexy products
If you follow the #prodmgmt or #prodmktg hashtags on Twitter, and the ever increasing variety of product management blogs, it would seem like every product management job is some leading edge, hyper tech start up product that is positioned to be the next Facebook, (or Dropbox, or {insert cool cloud technology}). However, it is much more likely that you work at a company that has a history, and...