Product Bugle: 9/9/22 - all change
A new name. A new side-hustle. Some good stuff from ProductCon.
Goodbye Ockham Bugle - Hello Product Bugle
Keen observers will notice I’ve had a rebrand. Having resisted a nice simple name with the word ‘Product’ in for so long, I’ve finally accepted that that’s what I actually write about on here, and so I’ve put it in the name.
I don’t think I’d ever come up with the name ‘The Product Bugle’ from scratch - but it felt like an elegant compromise.
Launching soon: TheBestProductStuff.com
Sticking to my new habit of ultra-literal naming, I’m launching a very beta version of a little vanity project/ side hustle in a couple of weeks: TheBestProductStuff.com, which - and I think you might have got there before me - is a list of all the best product stuff (there’s slightly more to it than that, but not much!)
So - if you’re looking for some guidance on how to do a product strategy, how to prepare for a PM interview, or if you want some guidance on how to get into product management, or you want to find out how a company like Figma ships product or Instagram suggests new content, I’ve gone and found the best stuff to help you.
It’s very simple: Part labour of love. Part to solve a problem I have of finding stuff and then never actually being able to find it again. Part because I think there’s a real need for busy PMs (and aspirant PMs) to be able to find useful stuff quickly.
If you’d like to be part of and elite squad of people I ask to take an early look at it, you can sign up here.
Avoiding the evil of averages
I spent Thursday yo-yoing in and out of the London ProductCon stream. I think they’re going to put all of the videos from this week’s ProductCon up here in about a week - and I recommend you take a look.
There’s lot worth seeing. Georgie Smallwood (pictured above) was great on diversity in teams; and Elena Verna excellent on growth (you can hear her here on Lenny’s podcast); and (and I want to catch up on What Crises Reveal about Your PM Culture with Ben Retourné, VP of Product & Design at BlaBlaCar).
But, I really liked the talk by Katie Cummings (pictured above) from Deliveroo on (and I paraphrase slightly due to lack of notes ‘Data-driven products with a human face’. Definitely worth watching.. Above is her summary slide, and in the middle of it, she made the point that doesn’t - and can’t - be made enough, about the importance of avoiding averages.
Her example was an A/B test that delivered flat results - but was actually positive when you looked at it’s impact on a new customer cohort. At Amazon we always split results by segmenting the results by whether or not someone had Prime or not; and whether or not they had streamed before.
Repeat after me: there is no such thing as the ‘average’ user.
Oh - and what do Product managers do with ML products..this was pretty handy..
Anyway - there’s lots more there. Worth skipping through a few sessions when the videos come out.
More on copycat tactics
Last week I wrote a bit about ‘murder clones’ in light of Instagram copying BeReal. As often happens, the second after I pressed ‘Publish’ I found a few pieces that I really should have linked to. All better than anything I had to say.
In Marketing week, Mark Ritson: ‘You can’t beat TikTok by becoming its clone’
On Stratechery: Instagram, Tik Tok and the Three Trends - which pointed to this tweet/ screenshot on the evolution of the digital media attention food chain, with this evolutionary proces
The Pre-Internet ‘People Magazine’ Era
Content from ‘your friends’ kills People Magazine
Kardashians/Professional ‘friends’ kill real friends
Algorithmic everyone kills Kardashians
Next is pure-AI content which beats ‘algorithmic everyone’
Researching as you grow
Yes you need to do some research. But what research should you carry out - and when, in order to help you make the right product decisions. This piece: Research Twice, Build Once over on future.com is a pretty good answer to those questions.
If you feel the need to learn about Neural networks..
And let’s face it - we all do. There’s this conversation (podcast and a full transcription) over on the Intercom product and design blog is pretty helpful.
Watching, listening and reading
Black Bird on Apple TV - proved to be great. Horribly dark in places.
The Suspect over on ITV is keeping me on my toes.
Can’t get enough of Shetland at home
And work book alert: just finishing The Cold Start problem, which has been great.
And that’s it for this week.
Keeping it brief as I have a lot of lists of great product stuff to sort out! Have a great weekend.