Three years ago, I asked myself and several of my mentors within and outside of Microsoft - "What's the closest thing to entrepreneurship at Microsoft?" The unanimous answer was - "Become a Program Manager on a product that's about to grow/explode!!" I took the leap of faith and it worked. I've enjoyed every bit of it and would recommend it to anyone, who's passionate about technology, entrepreneurship and design.
Several folks have asked me a gamut of questions aboutthe role of a program manager, but the most common threads of conversations have been around "becoming a program manager at Microsoft."
While the role is called Program Manager, it is similar to the role of a product manager at most other companies including Google, Facebook, startups, etc. At Microsoft, Product Manager is a marketing role. Much has been written about the role by my mentors and people who are much more experienced, so I won't delve into it. I recently wrote two posts on the topic on my official/personal blog:
Part 1: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/08/how-to-become-a.html
Part 2: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/08/how-to-become-1.html
Let's create great things!
-Kintan
It is rare that I would share an email publicly. But this one is pretty interesting. Microfinance, poverty elimination and Unitus are gaining popularity in the Microsoft community. Ed Bland, former General Manager of XBOX marketing (he and his team first launched one of the biggest marketing campaigns for the first launch of XBOX), recently left Microsoft to join Unitus as the COO. Here's a mail from him, with interesting video messages from other Microsoft executives and employees.
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Dear Kintan,
When I left Microsoft two years ago, I set out to discover how I could best invest my time and effort to make a real difference in the world. But where was the greatest need? Here’s what I learned:
- Half the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day.
- Over 100 million primary school-age children are not in school today because they cannot afford to be there.
- Every year, 6 million children die from malnutrition before their 5th birthday.
Despite the numbers, there is reason for hope—and for action. As I dug deeper into these issues, one idea kept surfacing: microfinance. It was a concept as quantitatively successful as it was radically ambitious. Microfinance offered the big idea I was after—a remarkably effective, sustainable, and scalable approach to alleviating global poverty. And among the most innovative organizations leading this movement, one stood out: Unitus.
I have been the COO of Unitus for just over a month now. In that time, I’ve visited several of our partners (the small banks to the poor that we partner with and help rapidly grow), have seen our impact on the ground, and have met women and men lifting themselves out of poverty with nothing more than a small loan, hard work, and an overwhelming desire to improve their family’s future.
Microfinance works. Unitus is making it work for more people by increasing access to these life-changing financial services throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Our partners add clients an incredible 11 times faster than the industry average. But today we need your help to realize our ambition of reaching 15 million of the working poor by 2010.
Click here to support Unitus through the Microsoft Giving Campaign.
Best regards,
Ed Bland
Chief Operating Officer
p.s. To the right and below you'll find several familiar faces explaining why they support Unitus. I hope you will join them, and me, as we change the lives of millions now and for generations to come. You can also help by forwarding this email to your Microsoft friends and colleagues!
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Ed Bland
COO, Unitus
(Former General Manager, Entertainment and Devices / Xbox Division)
S. Somasegar
Corporate VP, Developer Division
Brian Arbogast
Corporate VP, Windows Live
Rogers Weed
Former General Manager, Entertainment and Devices Division
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orignially published on www.kintya.com
Technorati tags: poverty , Unitus , Microsoft , Giving , Corporate Philanthropy , microfinance
In spirit of the ongoing TechEd conference, I thought this would be an interesting post..
I've been to six conferences in the past year and have organized a few mini-conferences here and there in the past. I've been always fascinated to learn about people's motivations for doing any particular activity or making a specific decision.
"Attending a conference" may turn out to be an expensive ordeal, especially if you have to travel to a different city (or a country), take out the time from your daily planned work, pay for transportation, accomodation and other compulsive costs associated to going to a new place, in addition to paying the conference fees. But people still go to conferences.
When I was in school, I got lucky to be part of the school's engineering magazine's staff (which entitled me to a free pass to all major conferences in the country), and I selectively attended many. Currently I go to a conference either to present, to demo my product to learn more about a new industry/technology. But, the common and the highest order bit for me to attend any conference has always been and will always be "to meet new people", with similar or different interests.
Despite being the single-most motivating factor, I haven't been able to optimally meet all the right people I can potentially meet at any such conference, and I'm often frustrated. After every conference, I do a tally of business cards that I have collected (obviously in return of sharing my business card), and I always feel that I could have met more people with specific interests.
Few sites like Confabb (supported by Dave Winer, started by Salim Ismail) and Pubshub are attempting to create some kind of social community around conferences, but it hasn't worked out for me yet (although I've always yearned for something like this for years)..Confabb recently acquired assets of a Seattle startup from Ben Curtis - Conferencemeetup, which claims to have some social features. It will be interesting to see them integrated into confabb.
I did a quick Facebook poll to learn about people's motivations for attending conferences and here are the results:
Question: Why do you go to a conference?
1. To view demos from exhibitors (7%)
2. To meet new people with similar interests. (24%)
3. To listen to speakers/presentations.(34%)
4. To get away from work.(36%)
Today, with prolific blogging about all events worth attending and the generous conference organizers, who share content (even videos, see examples at www.ted.com and www.allthingsd.com) of the conference for free (in return of advertising), it becomes hard to justify paying the fees for listening to speakers/presentations. There is an interesting debate on value of such services on Techcrunch.
Why do/would you go to a conference?
-Kintan
originally posted at www.kintya.com
Technorati tags: confabb , conference , Ben Curtis , conferencemeetup , entrepreneur , Dave Winer
As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, if you have $100, you would first give them to your lawyer, then to your accountant, and then lastly to your market researcher. Facebook launched polls recently, which enables the users to quickly and cheaply($5 basic insertion fee plus $0.10 per answer) set up a poll (a question with multiple possible answers) and target it to the Facebook community (based on some very high level criteria - age, sex, profile keyword, etc.)
I am impressed by the simple design of workflow of poll-creation, implementation and analysis. But, the most exciting part was the speed. Facebook claims that they can get answers as quick as within 30 minutes (if you pay $1 per answer), but even when I chose the cheapest option ($0.10), I got the answers fairly quickly (I set up the poll, went to sleep and the answers were ready by the time I woke up -- and I didn't oversleep!!)
I set up a sample poll with a simple question?
Why do you go to a conference?
I was happy with the answers that I received, but I am not confident about the statistical significance of the data. If I were to make a critical product design decision, could I rely blindly on results of Facebook polls? I don't know. Probably not, at least now.
Overall, I do believe that Facebook will become a major cultural and economic force, leading up to a huge value creation for its founders and investors. If you've tried their polls, please share your experience. My friend Robert Scoble had doubts about facebook's appeal earlier in December 2006, but he's expressed positive notes about Facebook recently. Facebook is rapidly creating a tightly bound network/community and it is intelligently leveraging its vibrant community for lucrative applications, besides advertising.
Michael Arrington from Techcrunch describes Facebook polls as a marketer's paradise and I agree. I wonder if Microsoft Program Managers would start leveraging such quick polls to get additional datapoints.
get on Facebook.
-Kintan
originally posted at: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2007/06/facebook_polls_.html
Technorati tags: facebook , facebook polls , market research , entrepreneur , marketing
If you are going to read only one book on design during your lifetime, my recommendation will be to read - The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman. This book has been instrumental in shaping some of my own approaches to design and I'm sure it has influenced several thousands of designers across the world. I would highly recommend this book for anyone applying for a Program Manager position at Microsoft.
Below is a list of my notes (both interpretations and highlighted from the book). I may have taken some sentences directly from the book, to ensure that the message is communicated optimally. The copyright remains with the author - Donald Norman.
Here's what I found important and interesting from the book:
- The appearance of the device must provide the critical clues required for its proper operation - knowledge has to be both in the head and in the world.
- What makes design a highly challenging and rewarding discipline is that it grapples with the need to accommodate apparently conflicting requirements. All great designs have an appropriate balance and harmony of aesthetic beauty, reliability and safety, usability, cost and functionality.
- Art and beauty play essential roles in our lives. Technology changes rapidly, people change slowly.
- Humans do not always err, but they do when the things they use are badly conceived and designed.
- The psychology of everyday things demonstrate the importance of visibility, appropriate clues and feedback of one's actions.
- Affordance refers to the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used. For instance, a round object is assumed to have an affordance of a ball.
Something that happens right after an action appears to be caused by that action.
Two fundamental principles of designing for people are : 1. provide a good conceptual model and 2. make things visible.
- Good designs have good mappings between the controls and the things controlled by them. For instance, the "next" button on a screen/wizard should be either on the right or bottom of the screen and not on the top left.
- Errors should be easy to detect, they should have minimal consequences, and, if possible, their effects should be reversible. Errors can sometimes be prevented by using forcing functions.
- Designers can use three methods to prevent users get into an erroneous state:
1. Intelocks - by forcing operations to occur in a particular order
2. Lockin - by keeping an operation active, preventing someone from prematurely stopping it
3. Lockout - by preventing someone from entering an erroneous state
- Ask the following seven design questions while designing - How easily can one:
1. Determine the function of the device?
2. Tell what actions are possible?
3. Determine mapping from intention to physical movement?
4. Perform the action?
5. Tell if system is in desired state?
6. Determine mapping from system state to interpretation?
7. Tell what state the system is in?
These principles have worked for me and I'm certain that they'll work for you.
Let's design something extraordinary.
Kintan
PS: I'm blogging regularly at www.kintya.com This was originally blogged at http://www.kintya.com/blog/2007/06/design_of_every.html
Technorati tags: design of everyday things , Donald Norman , program manager , design
IBM recently announced the introduction of the first suite of social networking applications for the enterprise, thus validating the usefulness and applicability of social applications. When, I had first blogged about the implications of social networking and a set of Web 2.0 trends including blogs, wikis, tags, activity tracking, social directories, etc. in February 2006, the "social networking for enterprise" space was marked by a few emerging enterprises like Zimbra, SocialText and JotSpot.
We had read about Microsoft's Knowledge Network and IBM's forray into enterprise social networking through Dogear. Today at Lotusphere, IBM's VP of Social Software Business Unit, Jeff Schick announced an enterprise suite of social software that will include the following five applications:
- Profiles: A list of profiles of all employees within an enterprise, which will be entered by the employees themselves. The profiles will include tags that indicate subject matter expertise and interests of every employee and empower employees to easily search and network with other employees.
- Communities: IBM claims to have designed some concepts of community 2.0, with appropriate tagging and social aspects embedded in the user interface.
- Blogs: Corporate blogs and basic blog templates will be included by default in Lotus Connections. This is in addition to the basic blog templates that are/will be available with Lotus Notes 8.
- Bookmarks: This is the product version of the popular "Dogear" project from IBM research, which developed an enterprise version of del.icio.us and enabled corporate employees to create and share bookmarks in a social fasion.
- Activities: IBM's notion of activity-centered computing is fueled by adding tags to a knowledge worker's tasks and sharing them.
The compelling aspect of Lotus Connections is the "suite" aspect, which enables end to end productivity scenarios by using all five aspects in an integrated manner. Tags or user-generated meta data is the glue that connects every application, leading to easier information sharing.
Although the above description is the "messaging" from IBM and I haven't personally validated their usability, the notion of delivering personal value to the knowledge worker by enabling end to end scenarios and thereby creating self-evolving social networks is a believable notion.
I see the following risks for applying social software in the enterprise space:
- Architecture for participation:
An enterprise user or a knowledge worker may not contribute to the applications, for the same reasons that motivate consumers to contribute to personal social networks like MySpace, Orkut or Facebook. The architecture of participation in the enterprise social networks need to be fueled with appropriate incentives for participation.
- Scale:
Restricted social networks that are limited to a particular enterprise may not deliver "real" value to their users, as seen in the consumer world. While MySpace may boast hundreds of thousands of users, very few enterprises will have more than fifty thousand users. It will be interesting to see the impact of social networks when a ceiling is placed on its size.
Technorati tags: enterprise web2.0 , Lotus Connections ,enterprise Social Software ,Lotusphere
via Kintya
I was fortunate to realize very early in my career that there are "different" companies and there are "difference" companies. I have always strived to get involved with latter, because they are more likely to change the world. When it comes to changing the world, I often think about Louis Armstrong's famous "What a wonderful world!". If the world is indeed so wonderful, then why change it? It is only, when we look at the world from 36,000 ft and search for the biggest problems. I believe that poverty is big and it needs to be changed. It leads to other problems of tectonic magnitude - illiteracy, congenial epidemics, crime, terrorism, and many more derivatives. I am convinced that one of the simplest ways to change the world is by eradicating poverty from the world.
Many thought leaders have been working towards the mission, including Bono from U2 with his ONE campaign. But, the one that excites me the most is the entrepreneurial approach - through microfinancing. The whole notion of fostering entrepreneurship to alleviate poverty is "WOW". In the simplest terms, microfinancing is to provide small amounts of loans($50-$100) to extremely poor people as seed capital to start a small business in developing countries. The concept was popularized by Dr. Muhammad Yunus, who founded the Grameen bank in 1976.
Over last three decades, about 3,000 or so micro-finance institutions have been founded and have provided loans to a few thousand people. But, when we look at 700+ million poor people in the world who define the term poverty, the minor impact of these small-mid-sized micro-finance institutions does not scale. Here's where a truly "difference" organization comes into play - UNITUS. Founded by Mike Murray - a passionate former executive at two other "difference" companies (Apple and Microsoft), Unitus takes the venture capital approach to dramatically increase the impact of micro-financing.
Unitus defines itself as a microfinance-accelerator, and that is what it does. The smart and passionate team members at Unitus apply the strictest due-diligence to select the top performing microfinance institutions in the world and infuse capital as well as thought leadership into these high-performing microfinance institutions (MFI). Unitus's intervention exponentially increases the MFI's ability to give loans. Instead of giving loans to a few thousand people, MFIs are now equipped to serve hundreds of thousands of people.
I am passionate about entrepreneurship and leveraging entrepreneurship to eradicate poverty. Yesterday, I got an opportunity to discuss "entrepreneurship vs. poverty" with a group of thought leaders at Microsoft. S. Somasegar recently blogged about the meeting.
Let's change the world.
Kintan
Technorati tags: microfinance , unitus , poverty, entrepreneurship
Robert Scoble and Channel 9 decided to shoot a video on my team's products, specifically about Microsoft Office Live Communication Server. So here are a few of my friends (or shall I say colleagues) and me in the video. The video is now live at: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=183636
I am back to blogging after a short hiatus (forced due to other impending priorities). So, expect more sizzle coming to your RSS reader from Kintan.
Let's communicate...
Kintan
Historically, we've seen that the applicaions that have been popular/successful in the consumer world have been usually successful in the enterprise space. Instant messaging is a great example. What started out as ICQ, has been so immensly valuable and impactful that it made its obvious entry within the enterprise. Microsoft has products like Live Communication Server and Office Communicator, IBM has SameTime and then we have Jabber. On the other hand, successful enterprise concepts have made their way into the consumer space. Take email for instance.
Besides historic trends, there are several semantics that play a role in determining the success of a software within the enterprise. I have been thinking lately about the value that an enterprise setting adds to the successful deployment and use of a particular software. Jeff Clavier made a valid point about the obvious tension between the legacy IT department, which runs on a command/control structure and the open/participation oriented nature of social software. I want to focus on the positive side of an enterprise setting.
What does an enterprise setting offer:
1. Authentication and accountability: Since a user can be traced through Active Directory (good bye annonymous comments and spam!), it can add measurable value to the social aspect of the enterprise. Various aspects of social software can be applied with respect to group policies and Access Control Lists.
2. Accountable uptime. No downtime (see Salesforce.com's recent experience.)
3. Better integration with existing meaningful application. Enterprises already have a rich set of ERP applications. The social software can add a new layer of UI metaphors that will dramatically increase the value of existing ERP applications.
Some of the thoughts bouncing in my mind include:
How long does it take for a successful consumer application to be adopted within the enterprise? (my guess is two years, from when it became prevalent in the consumer space. Would it be faster/slower with Web 2.0?
Which Web 2.0 concepts make the most sense in the enterprise? (I know Jeff Nolan and SocialText are very optimistic about Wikis and I totally agree. What is beyond that?)
If Jeff (Clavier or Nolan), I would like to hear your take on this.
Loose control!
Kintan
via Kintya
Technorati tags: enterprise web 2.0 , web20enterprise , Jeff Clavier , Jeff Nolan
Design has essentially become one of the key competitive advantages of the killer apps of Web 2.0. Why has design become so important - all of a sudden? Or was it always important? Scott Berkun once said that the best user interface is "no" user interface. The thinking here is that the user should not realize that he/she is working in accordance with some user interface. The user interface should not make its presence felt. This was resonated in an interesting observation made by my architect friend Gianpaolo, while watching the movie - The Usual Suspects. In the movie, Kevin Spacey says, "the greatest trick the devil achieved was to make people believe he didn't exist." I believe that great UI and application designers make people believe that the user interface is not there.
A majority of people including me, read most blogs through some flavor of a RSS aggregator - reader.
But there is one blog that I prefer to read on a web site on the browser. EmilyChang's blog (see OneNote screen clipping on the side)on strategic design is designed in a unbelievably appealing and surprisingly simple style. The choice of colors, the size of fonts, and the placement of items on the blog are visually attractive. The are subtle differences in the structure of the contents of the blog (For example, to expand a post, rather than clicking on the title of the post, you have to click on the actual text of the post, which is not intuitive, but very easily discoverable!!) She conducts interviews with innovative founders of various successful Web 2.0 companies. In a recent post, she has compiled the list of "design philosophies" of each of those companies.
It is apparent from these interviews that the creators of killer Web 2.0 applications consider design as their competitive advantage. While some companies had a quantifiable design philosophy (all functions should be accessible with one click.), several focused on the importance of iterative feedback from the users(release early, release often, listen, learn, incorporate). Interestingly, few designers stressed on "instant gratification." Emily's list is pretty comprehensive and helps derive the main design trends of Web 2.0, which she depicts as
simple
fast
intuitive
social
minimal
choice
useful
fun
Can these design trends be applied to enterprise software? Can we make ERP systems, simple, social, minimal(you wish!), and fun?
Let's create the extra-ordinary!
Kintan
via Kintya
Technorati tags: design , emily chang , web 2.0
A few people have asked me about some introductory resources to ATLAS and Ajax.NET. I had asked the same question to Alex Barnett some time ago, and he had pointed me to some useful resources.
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2005/06/28/416185.aspx
http://atlas.asp.net/docs/default.htm
http://www.asp.net/default.aspx?tabindex=9&tabid=47
If you know of any other helpful resources for beginners, who are starting to get their feet wet with Ajax, please share.
Thanks.
Kintan
I've always wanted to start a company around Stanford, in the bay area. But through a course of highly exciting and interesting events, I've landed up in the pacific northwest. I believe firmly that geography does make a huge impact on the success of a startup. The proximity to potential customers, venture capitalists, and advisors does make a great difference. The most important ingredient of startups - people are also determined by the location of the startup. I've heard Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital once say that he won't invest in a company that he cannot drive up to on a regular basis (he has invested in companies that don't fit this description, but that's just an exception!) The quality of universities have a large impact on determining, the quality of students(potential hires) available and the depth of research/innovation conducted in the area.
After my recent trip to the bay area, a introspective thought struck me - am I missing out on somet
hing by not being in the silicon valley? The valley breathes entrepreneurship. But, is it true when it comes to Web 2.0? I've discussed it some entrepreneurial folks at Stanford, YouTube and Google. Ryan Williams has geocoded the Web 2.0 companies to create an "Innovation Map" - that shows the geographical distribution of leading Web 2.0 companies (No, they are not all located in the valley, but a majority of them are.)
Dwipal has a cool link to a poster with logos of leading Web 2.0 companies.
Kosmar has created a neat mindcloud to describe a variety of Web 2.0 companies.
Loose control!
Kintan
via Kintya
I had heard stories about free lunches and onsite massage centers for Googlers, but I didn't find those stories appealing. A friend of mine had invited me to visit her at Google, so after finishing up my recruiting duties at the Stanford Computer Forum, I drove down to Mountain View to Google's headquarters (Googleplex).
I was surprised by the gamut of minor perks that Googlers enjoy. Free valet parking, car wash and car detailing services made the first impression. I literally hate it when I have to keep dr
iving from one floor of the parking garage to another, just because some people prefer to sleep early and wake up early to get to work early. A valet service would certainly help. The on-site massage center and a hair salon can certainly save time. But I found the concierge service to be the coolest. Googlers can have the concierge "take their dog for a walk", or "buy their spouse flowers", while they are busy making search better (or playing pool!) Another cool perk are the mini-scooters and segways, that Googlers can use to commute from one office to another down the hall. I don't mind walking/running down the hall, but won't it be cool to ride around on a Segway!!
Romans ruled on one principle: "Feed and entertain and you'll conquer." Google gets this one right. Google makes sure that the Googlers are well fed. The cafeteria offers a wide variety of delicacies to Googlers and their guests, throughout the day and into the evenings. The kitchen area offers a variety of hip beverages, including Naked juices, Vitamin water, Tejava, etc. Googlers also enjoy free access to a variety of organic chips, snacks and chocolates to ensure that they are high on sugar all the time (so much for making search better!!)
Although Microsoft offers paid dining services from Eurest and first come first serve - parking amenities, I believe firmly that Microsoft offers employees with an environment to fully unleash their potential. When we compare Microsoft's almost 60,000 employees to Google's mere 5,000 + employees, Microsoft offers terrific perks at that scale. But can Google still afford to continue providing these perks as it grows? Every year, Microsoft hires more people than Google's total population and still manages to offer some of the best perks. Just for a thought, can Microsoft afford to offer Google-like amenities to all its 60,000 employees? Would Google be able to continue providing these perks, as it grows (if it grows to be that large!!) Should it? Are these frivolous expenses justified for a public company?
Considering the competition in attracting the best talent, can a typical startup afford to provide such perks to its employees?
Loose control!
Kintan
via Kintya
On my recent recruiting trip to Stanford, I got an opportunity to listen to and meet with John Chambers (CEO, Cisco). He shared his views on the sustained market leadership position maintained by Cisco in several market segments (networking - routers, switching, voice, etc.) John attributed Cisco's (almost) consistent market leadership to his team's ability to catch market transitions, before they become obvious. In 2000, when Cisco was enjoying a solid market position in routers and switches, John had bet on the vision that voice, data and video will be delivered over the same platform and it paid off.
John believes that "networking" affords Moore's law on steroids, as the speed(bandwidth) doubles every 12 months (as opposed to 18 months for microprocessors), for the same cost. Speaking about the next "big" transition - the concept of "Network as a platform" stands out. He envisions a network, which is aware of the type of applications that run on it - rather than the applications that need to be aware of the network. On a high level, he believes in that the next trends are going to be around "interactions" (information >> transactions >> interactions), and the fact that high bandwidth will be much cheaper in the near future, the scope of applications and their interactions should be impressive. John believes that video will have a big role to play in the next few years.
Speaking of R&D, he believes that corporations have consistently failed in creating breakthrough research contributions in the technology sector (citing Xerox PARC, IBM and Wang labs). In his opinion, the best way to foster research is through lobbying the government to give more research grants to academic institutions.
On a non-tech side, I found John as a prolific "connector". Whether he was giving a public lecture or talking in person, he made the other person feel his "equal". He entered the room in a business suit, but took off his coat, when he found that no one else was formally dressed.
I'll write about my visit to the Google campus in the next post.
Let's change the world!
Kintan
via Kintya
Emails have become the official means of recorded conversations in corporations. At Microsoft, a typical program manager writes an average of 30-40 emails every day and reads many more. It would certainly help improve productivity, if the emails are crafted in an optimally sound way. Guy Kawasaki has done a great job in delineating the craft of email writing in a recent post.
Let's change the world!
Kintan
via Kintya
