It Was Time For Me To Write

It Started At a Dinner

A few months ago a friend asked if I’d have dinner with him so he could “pick my brain” on a few things. I had a feeling he wanted to chat about career-related stuff, but I wasn’t exactly sure. Either way, I agreed and we met for a beer. He runs a Product Management team similar to mine, but in a different industry. The discussion ran the gamut from how he runs his team, to where he is in his career, and more. I always enjoy these kinds of conversations, I always get a lot out of them and I find the opportunity to discover how other Product teams function to be fascinating.

Towards the end of the dinner he asked me something that for the first time in many years I didn’t have an immediate answer to: “So Mark what’s next for you - professionally?”.

Wow - I thought for a minute and didn’t really know what to say. I’ve been in my current role for almost two years. We’ve accomplished a ton in those two years, but we still have a lot to do. My job is still very challenging, I really love my team and our product, and I’m not looking to leave - generally, I’m happy.

So my answer was “I’m not really sure”. But then I thought for a minute and something came to me. Not something to blurt out just to have an answer, but something that felt right. It felt like the right thing and when I said it - I knew it had to be the “next thing”. I said, “I’d like to really like to become a thought leader on Product Management”. Not some cheesy hack looking to land consulting gigs or speaking slots (no offense). But really offer value to the members of our industry, try to take my experiences and use them to help others. And most of all, I wanted to give back a little. The world of Product Management, the software design community, the web development community, and the web-at-large have all given me so much. It was time to give something back.

Really Dude, a Blog In 2018?

Yep - I had the exact same thought. As I started to think about how best to accomplish the goal of “giving back” writing was the obvious place to start. It likely won’t be the only thing, but it will be my focus for a while. OK - so we’re going to write some stuff, cool - where are we going to post it?

The “where” turned out to be much harder than I anticipated. In the current day of the web, there’s almost an infinite amount of places to write and share content. Most of them are easy to use, fast to spin up, are free, and require no technical skills at all. Awesome let’s go! Not so fast. After looking at a few and really thinking about them, I decided none of them were for me. Why? Because I wanted to own my content, I wanted to be in control of my content, and most of all I wanted this to be all mine, forever.

Selfish I know, but you have to consider that the web isn’t really in the best condition these days. And I didn’t want to hitch my wagon to a Social Media platform I didn’t fully trust or some other platform that’s here today and may be gone tomorrow. So an actual blog on a domain I owned and controlled was the only real answer.

It’s a Coaching Thing Too I Guess

So there was a little distrust and selfishness in the platform decisions but the overall objective felt like a really good thing. However, there was another thing I had to really think about too. And that was “am I really ready for this?” I mean - do I really have something to say? Do I have a voice? Can I actually help people? I decided the answer to all of that was yes. I knew it was because I do exactly that every day all day at work.

I like to think of my team as an actual Football team and I’m the head coach. This probably explains why I like HBO’s “Hard Knocks” so much. I usually feel when I’m helping one of my PM’s on an issue or giving them feedback, or strategizing with them on a feature - I’m coaching. This space will be another outlet for me to do that. On a side note I truly enjoy coaching, ironically I’ve only actually coached my kids’ sports stuff a few times and oddly it isn’t my favorite activity - go figure.

And… I Needed a Playground

I wanted a place to play. A place where I could test new ideas, play with code and web technology, and a place where I could just tinker. I plan to really deliver value, help as many people as I can and have a ton of fun doing it. I’m glad we’re finally all here together! Let’s go!