Introduction
I would like to begin this blogging exercise to state that I am generally against blogging. I have high standards for content – I like to see well-researched, citation-heavy, long-form articles that pave new ground and contribute not just information, but a synthesis of knowledge to whatever topic is being discussed. I don’t like listicles – I doubt there is much to learn from “3 Things Highly Creative People Don’t Not Do Every Day,” and most posts promising ‘business insights’ end up delivering merely common sense.
If you simply must insist on ‘thought leadership’ and putting numbers in your post titles to increase click-through rates, then you at least need to have a target audience and ensure that you are giving generously to your community, that you are genuinely adding value, rather than performing a bait-and-switch for a product pitch. It’s the golden rule of content marketing.
This blog neither has a target audience, nor will each post be especially thorough. This makes me uncomfortable. But there is a point to the discomfort – professional growth. I know it is a best practice for a professional to reflect and write a lot as he learns and advances in his career. Even though I think this sort of writing is best left local, private, in an Evernote notebook, I am going to put aside my skepticism and publish my raw thoughts, my learning processes for the world (or absolutely no one) to see.
I already blog about my artistic career, but not yet about my professional one. That’s because I’ve had clarity for quite some time on what I want to achieve with my performing and composing. After eight years of work ‘wearing many hats’ at two different tech startups, I’ve decided to align my career strategy with the goal of becoming a product manager at a SaaS company. It’s a wonderfully cross-disciplinary role, sitting somewhere between business, engineering, and user experience. If I am anything, I am Glue – I hold things together. I collaborate, I translate between disciplines. So I am taking all of my previous hats (account manager, customer support, project manager, event planner, music marketer, data analyst, band leader) and putting them all in the product manager basket. Perhaps I will first spend a few years as a sales engineer, an account manager, or a software project manager – but the end game is to become a product manager.
So. This blog. A place for me to document the journey. I’m finally getting direct experience in a product role – I just started a contract to do product analysis for an advertising technology startup. I suspect there will be posts about that. Also, I intend to learn Python. Of the many languages I could start with, I chose Python because it is not limited to web development, and it is the lingua franca of data scientists (along with R, a statistical programming language). Finally, I am currently enrolled in a user experience class (taught by my friend and former colleague!).
If you’re out there, feel free to comment. Welcome to Artifex!