products i learned to love
Long ago I realized that I could only be an effective marketer if I had a strong connection to my product and its users, so I decided to work only with products I enjoyed using myself. (I once politely declined a job offer from a root-canal drill manufacturer. No kidding.)
Among all the awesome products I got involved with, some bring back special memories.
elitebook 6930p
How do you make a business-rugged notebook that actually looks good? Top that with a full set of innovative security features and, voilá, you got your product team a [huge] challenge. The 6930p was quite ambitious, as it packed top performance and functionality in a sturdy build: magnesium alloy chassis, composite metal hinges, reinforced latching and other good stuff I can't remember. All that to meet the military standard 810.
Launching this product required a lot of work, but it was really fun. I only regret having to watch some of the rigorous testings for the military certification: our prototypes were exposed to bumps, drops, high humidity, extreme temperatures, and strong vibration. Test results were outstanding, but no serious product manager enjoys watching their child take a beating.
contract bridge & BBO
Did you know that it takes about 10 minutes to learn how to play bridge? Mastering it, however, takes quite a bit longer. The best part of playing bridge is that you never stop learning new tricks (pun intended).
Millions of people play it socially and many thousands compete in face-to-face and online tournaments.
Bridge is not just a thrilling game, but also a social activity that keeps your mind young and gives you opportunities to travel and meet new friends all around the globe.
Want to play? Take this youtube crash course. Then come practice and play at BBO (if you don't know how to navigate the site, check this video tutorial).
Have fun!
tableau & data analytics
My love affair with spreadsheets has a long history. It started back in high school, flirting with Visicalc. Skip a few years, and I was teaching Lotus 1-2-3 to help pay for college. Later, Windows arrived and a long relationship with Excel started.
Then I met Tableau. Piece-of-cake connectivity to most data sources? No more [prison] cells? Unlimited data visualization power? Super cool maps? SQL and R? OMG...
Excel still has a place in my heart, but when it comes to visualizing the data, Tableau opened my eyes. Literally.
At work, I like to play with data almost every day. Check my analytics portfolio, for a few examples.
voyage 200
Back in 2002, we were getting ready to announce the coolest calculator ever. The Voyage 200 was a successor of the venerable TI-92 Plus and packed a powerful CAS engine and some serious STEM-learning apps. As the product line manager, I helped our teams in Latin America and Asia-Pacific get ready to launch it in over 20 countries.
The Voyage 200 was well-received among educators and students, with a caveat: its name was hard to pronounce in several languages, including Spanish and Mandarin! It quickly became the "V200". A lesson learned on how to name a global product.
officeedge pro5500
Do you remember those cheap Lexmark inkjets from the 90s? Well, this was certainly not it: the Pro5500 was a serious contender in the small workgroup segment and packed functionality and performance that rivaled laser copiers ten times larger.
This little beast had a duplex ADF, so both sides of a paper sheet were scanned in a single pass (no pick-a-boo routine). It also printed fast, up to 21 ppm (ISO speeds for quality prints, not the draft-crap speeds others advertise). We were such proud parents...
Unfortunately, not long after launch, Lexmark decided to leave the inkjet segment, for strategic reasons. It was sad to see this great product family end without a rightful heir.
This article was also published on linkedin.