Aaaaaand we’re back.

Let’s catch up, shall we?

In March I re-joined Blueprint. What that means is that I’m training, consulting, and talking about software requirements all over the flipping place.

In October we hosted another successful ProductCamp Toronto, which is now the event for product managers in the GTA.

And through it all, I must say that I’m still rather enjoying living in the city. Toronto has changed me, for the better. The city continues to open my eyes, and expose me to things I otherwise would not have experienced. But more importantly, it has prompted me to get involved, and hopefully change it for the better.

Which brings me to today.

Over the next year, I’m currently planning to kick things up a notch. The questions I’m currently trying to answer are: What things need to be kicked, and by how many notches?

And so it begins.

As most of my friends know, I left my full-time job at the beginning of September.

At the time I really didn’t know where I was going to end up. Not much in the job market really excited me; I wanted control, to lead… to build something. Any one of the above, really. But nothing fit the bill.

Then, shortly thereafter, I was lucky enough to receive a call from my ex-boss to offer me the opportunity to work for the company, on contract. I was a little hesitant at first, but I thought about how this might be the way to start my very own business. So I went for it.

Since that day, I’ve effectively been working for myself, and have been enjoying every single moment of it.

Continue reading Me, Inc. »

(Libin Pan, Greg Blackett, Maanav Mehta, and myself. Photo courtesy of Libin Pan.)

ProductCampToronto got underway officially last night with the first, and certainly not last, Pub Night, at Fionn MacCool’s. Personally, I had a great time and met a lot of interesting people. It also reaffirmed my belief that we’re going to have a popular event on our hands, once we find a home for the unconference.

Speaking of which, we’re still looking for a home for the unconference! If you have any contacts, ideas, or can offer up a space yourself, please take a peek at the discussion here.

Thank you all for coming out! We’ll keep you all posted as we plan more of these, with room for more!

(Photo courtesy of Thomas Purves. More photos of the event, here.)

DemoCamp was a blast!

First of all, a big thank you to the DemoCamp stewards for giving me the opportunity to present Requirements Center last night.

Despite demonstrating the product every week without giving it much thought, I was actually really nervous during the day of leading up to the event. Working within the five-minute time limit, while trying to make a sophisticated product make sense to a brand new audience, while knowing that my friends were out there–watching–all contributed to what kept my brain occupied over the past couple of days. Fortunately for everyone, I calmed down shortly after simply telling everybody my name, and things just naturally flowed from there. I even ended early!

My goals were to add a touch of humor, minimize the business babble, and keep it interesting for a technical audience. I hope I achieved these things. I was originally going to show how to go about adding things to the project, but after watching the first demo and gauging the resources I had, opted to just show and talk through the model. It seemed to work well.

After the show, it was great meeting some of the team behind the operation, as well as others in the community. All of whom were kind enough to share with me their insight on running BarCamp-style events, which I totally plan on socializing with the ProductCampToronto crew, soon.

Anyway, if you’re interested in seeing a full, live demo of the product, most weeks I co-host Blueprint’s free, weekly webinars, which you can sign up for here. You can also check out a series of videos in our Demo Center. For even more on Requirements Center, check out these gorgeous-looking pages.

To get things kicked off for planning ProductCampToronto, we’re holding the first ever ProductCampToronto Pub Night. Please use this link to register, as we’ve limited this to 20 30 seats:

http://pctpubnight.eventbrite.com/

When and Where?

Fionn MacCool’s (University & Adelaide) on Wednesday, August 6th @ 6:00pm.

Who Should Come?

Anybody who would like to help plan or volunteer to be a part of ProductCamp.

We are committed to ProductCamp being a success. It’s the first Canadian ProductCamp, and the third of its kind globally.

Look forward to seeing you there!

The Toronto Product Management Association has been great at organizing enlightening events around product management, and got some really interesting speakers on board over the past couple of seasons that I’ve attended.

However, I have to be honest that I’ve been really itching to see these discussions expand beyond these sessions on to blogs, and larger venues. That’s why I was excited when I stumbled upon Chris Herbert’s effort to bring the ProductCamp idea to Toronto.

What is a ProductCamp?

A ProductCamp is a conference, of sorts, focused on Product Marketing and Product Management topics, and is based on the concept of the BarCamp:

BarCamp is an ad-hoc unconference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

When you come, be prepared to share with barcampers.
When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.

In Toronto, the number of these events–and those inspired by them–have really blossomed over the past while, and I’ve really enjoyed attending as many as I’ve deemed interesting. So, when the idea of a BarCamp focused on product management appeared, I had to jump on board to help make it happen.

Learning from the Pros

ProductCamp Austin recently held their first, day-long conference on June 14th (a Saturday) and had between 80-90 attendees. In my opinion, this is quite an accomplishment for a session held for the first time. (Congratulations, guys!) Organizer Paul Young summarized the experience over at ProductBeautiful.

Some of the TPMA sessions (particularly the free ones) that I have attended have been sizable, so I know that the interest definitely exists in Toronto!

What You Can Do to Help

The key is that the event is member supported, so we need volunteers to help make this happen.

To start the gears turning, we are planning on holding a PCT Pub Night on July 31st August 6th, at Fionn MacCool’s (at University & Adelaide). We’re finalizing the details and will announce event registration soon. (Update: Sign up for PCT Pub Night here.)

As for the conference itself, we’re tentatively thinking that it will take place during a Saturday in October… which should hopefully give us all time to organize and prepare.

Here’s how we can collaborate on this:

• The ProductCampToronto Wiki. Our home base on the web for the event is the PCT wiki. It will become a portal for everything related to the Event.
• Staying Updated. Over on Twitter, we’ll keep everybody posted frequent news updates, and upcoming events; think of this as the PCT blog, for now.
• Promotions. On Facebook, you can join our group. And if LinkedIn is more your speed, we have a group there too.
• Planning. We’ll be using Google Groups as an open discussion forum, for announcements, and to help plan these events.

But most of all…

Talk about Product Management!

If you’re thinking of coming to ProductCamp and have a blog, feel free to promote it on the the PCT wiki. You’ll also find badges there if you’d like to promote the event on your blog. (Please tag your posts with “ProductCampToronto”.) I’m personally curious to see who else is out there.

We’ve also created a PCT FriendFeed Room to aggregate discussions on blogs, and other assorted content about product management, and the event itself. Please feel free to share anything you find interesting.

Lastly, if you’ve done this sort of thing before, please join the discussion, or drop us a line. We could always use your help.

Here’s to making ProductCampToronto a success!

Sweet! I was selected to do a demonstration of Blueprint Requirements Center at DemoCampToronto18!

Now, the trick will be squeezing what’s typically a 40 minute demo into 5 minutes… Or, rather, the trick will be selecting the appropriate things to remove.

Wish me luck!

To borrow a phrase from a friend: Holy macaroni!

It’s already halfway through the year! What the heck happened!?

At this point I’d love to refer you back to a blog post from January where I outlined my resolutions for 2008… but Past Chris didn’t deliver.

So, to celebrate the end of the hump month (if you will) I thought I would re-establish my own goals for the year, and make sure I’m on track with them… or at least make sure I’m somewhere near the rails. Sharing them with you only increases my odds of actually doing these things, or at the very least raises my odds of embarrassment.

Continue reading My Mid-Year’s Resolutions for 2008 »

So, a couple of weeks ago our company launched the latest version of our flagship product, Requirements Center 2009.

As part of the launch, I was responsible for refreshing the Products area of our web site. The result is a vast improvement over the previous incarnation and conveys more useful information, in a visually-pleasing manner.

I’ll happily admit that the new design was substantially inspired by one of my favorite companies. But in my defense, I think that the format works particularly well for communicating a product’s benefits, and providing a clear call to action.

These pages were entirely hand-crafted, and — despite now having the entire Adobe suite at my disposal — I relied on my trusty copy of Paint Shop Pro 6 for the majority of the graphics work. Sometimes the simplest tools really are all you need!

Take a look at the pages in my portfolio.

Says Read/Write Web: “In a bid to push open source 3D modeling software Blender as a suitable environment for professional 3D animation, Blender has released the results of its second open movie project.” And it’s quite funny. Take a look!