Explosion of mobile devices

I've been talking about how internet-connected mobile devices will become ubiquitous around us.  By 2016, number of connected devices will exceed the world population.  As mobile devices becomes mainstream, there is explosion of consumer options for mobile devices.

This week has been a good example.  Amazon announced 3 new models of Kindle Fire along with Kindle reader with back-lit screen; Motorola announced Droid Razr HD, Droid Razr Maxx HD, and the Droid Razr M running Android; and Nokia also hurried up and announced Lumia 920 and 820 running Windows 8.  Oh yeah, and there will be iPhone 5 announcement happening next week along with mini iPad.

HootSuite += Seesmic

HootSuite just announced that they are acquiring Seesmic.  This is not an acquisition for talents or technology, but primarily to absorb Seesmic's paying customer base and to eliminate a competitor.

HootSuite gets Seesmic users;
or one may say HootSuite owl gobbles up Seesmic raccoon.

Product Manager: Product must be fun to use

Fun is not the first thing that a product manager thinks about when designing a product.  Especially those of us in enterprise software market.  People think that making something fun would only apply to companies like Zynga, Electronic Arts, etc.  But I think we all want a fun product as consumers, and we are all underestimating the effect of having fun when we use the product.

A classic example of a fun product is computer games.  It is purposefully created to deliver 'fun' to users.  So if we analyse what games deliver to their players, we must be getting closer to definition of 'fun'.

There are many wonderful talks available on YouTube about introducing game mechanics to your product, so called gamification.  I recommend talks by Amy Jo Kim, Gabe Zichermann, and Jane McGonigal.

Let me put them in my own words.  A fun product does following things:

Product Management: Admit that you don't know all facts and start there

When I was working as an engineer, I did what I was told to build.  Specs were handed to me by my engineering manager spelling out exactly what he needed and how it should behave.  When I had a question on expected behavior I could always ask someone else.  More often than not I got answers to my questions.

Life was simple.  As I gained more confidence with art of coding, I started to form my opinions about how to write faster and more efficient implementation.  No matter how complex the problem was, I knew that I could apply Keep-It-Simple-Stupid principle and will come out on the other end with the least amount of code.

If you find yourself having this conversation, you need to adopt Lean Startup.
Pick up Eric Ries' The Lean Startup.
Short answer is release now!

Korea vs Finland: Stark differences in education system

I grew up in South Korea.  I spent my first 17 years in Seoul, completing up to my high school junior year in intense South Korean education system.  Students are expected to put in 16 hour day 5 days a week to study.  School curriculum work ends in late afternoon, but immediately following students head to after-school academies called 'hak-won' to continue studying.  All these studying is driven by parents' zeal to see their children advance to prestigious universities in and out of country.

It's a system motivated by intense competition and fear of falling behind.  Competition to get ahead gotten so bad that South Korea government had to institute a policy to outlaw hak-wons to close its door after 10 PM.

Samsung needs crisis culture with room for failure

It's nice to dream about a workplace that is stress-free and devoid of emotional boss.  But it's not going to happen.  Most workplaces will have plenty of stress and emotionally charged boss who will give you an assignment while you are already working on a critical assignment.  Welcome to private sector.

One of primary examples is creating sense of crisis.  Often company creates sense of crisis to get the most out of each employee.  "Because our competitors are beating us", "because market is not going to wait for us", etc. are reasons cited by management team to fear and uncertainty among employees.  When employees are called to put out a fire, they rally behind it to meet the immediate objective.  So employers tend to use this tactic to get the extra mileage from everyone.  It unites the team behind a singular goal, and that's been field-tested to increase productivity.

But what happens when employees are consistently called to handle crisis?  What if everyone is asked to embrace crisis culture?

Samsung is well known for its crisis-driven management by following the leader.
It's time to think about how to fail-fast with new ideas.

Promise of self-driving car

California has passed a legislature legalizing self-driving car to be on the road.  This is an exciting development.  Google has been road testing its self-driving car, and it may be lot sooner than we think that we see self-driving cars on the road.

Self-driving car will change many things around us;
I cannot wait to see it on the road.

I don't think anyone fully realizes what this means.  I don't think anyone does.