How do you discover your news?

There are many sources of information.  Yet not all sources are created equal.  Some sources give you breaking news, while others don't.  Some sources have better coverage than others in certain topics.  Some are created by media companies, while others are authored and curated by crowd.  Because there are so much richness in available sources, we have to rely on our sources and curators to filter out signals from noises.

These days I find myself getting my news from three different types.

1. Online news outlet i.e. Google News

2. News media such as NPR, WSJ, NYTimes, Times, Newsweek, Forbes, Fast Company

3. Social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn News, LinkedIn Groups, Facebook Interest

KQED Forum: Gearing Up on Innovation

This morning KQED Forum had Vijay Vaitheeswaran discussing how to gear up for innovation in 21st century.  Vijay is a global correspondent for The Economist.  He has been serving that post for 20 years covering environment and energy to innovation and health issues.

Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran;
he recently released a new book
"Need, Speed, and Greed"

Michael Krasny, the host of Forum, and Vijay covered a range of topics.  Vijay's key message was how we should prepare ourselves for coming innovation-driven era.  Future industries will be more about innovation regardless of the industry, and working on problems to which answers are unknown.  Thinking outside the box, collaborating creatively and innovative thought process are more important than staying within lines and following directions.  To prepare future generation, we must educate our children with new challenges ahead.

If you missed the broadcast, you can listen to streaming below.

Product Management: Data-driven PM on Prezi

One of the sessions that I missed at SVPCamp last Saturday was a session called Data-Driven Product Management by Ritu Narayan, Group Product Manager at eBay.  I got to see the presentation today.  It was interesting in two aspects.

First was her material.  Many product managers tend to be not as methodical about metrics as sales and marketing.  I think it's partly because of most PMs grow into the job and don't have necessary background to start data-driven process.  It could also be in part because of PMs are already overloaded with doing market research, defining a product, coordinating with engineering, releasing the product and enabling internal/external members on the product.  Whatever the case may be establishing these metrics will be a good thing to have especially as organization starts to scale.

Business Insider: Future of Mobile

Business Insider released slides regarding Future of Mobile last Thursday.  Everyone knows that mobile is changing the personal computing landscape.  Yet it's eye-opening to see all data presented in a single slide deck.  Kudos to Business Insider for putting it together in the context.

Some key takeaways for me were following:

Product Management: Minimum Viable Product

I was at 5th annual SVPCamp today.  There were several hundreds of product managers, entrepreneurs, programmers and designers to share ideas and network.  It was my second time at the event.  It felt great to connect with fellow product managers in Silicon Valley.  For those of you who missed SVPCamp 2012, I highly recommend that you attend the next year event.  I found that SVPCamp is the single best event for product managers to network and exchange ideas about product management challenges.

Your job as product manager is to strike the balance
between bare-bone minimum and
what will be acceptable in the market

This year there were several sessions around minimum viable product (MVP).  Discussions ranged from what MVP is, how to use it to reduce risk of launching a new product and what best practice looks like.  It looked like most of product managers and entrepreneurs were learning how to put together MVP on the job.

After listening to a couple of sessions and having some time to digest, I wanted to share my view on MVP.  As for slides from MVP-related sessions, I'll share the link once they come up.  For now, these are what I found to be key points of MVP through listening and mapping them to my own experience about MVP.

Note to employers: access public data, not password

Earlier today Facebook has released an official statement against employers asking for employee's and candidate's Facebook password.  Erin Egan, Facebook Chief Privacy Officer, has outlined their objection to user's revealing passwords to their employers.  Erin made it clear that Facebook will take action to protect their users through multiple means if necessary, such as engaging with policymakers and/or bringing legal action.

This is in reaction to recent report that some employers have requested job candidates to share their passwords as part of background check.  Other employers have also asked employees to provide passwords to ensure social media policy compliance.

Hacking Chinese censorship

People are natural improvisers.  When people see the need not being met by existing system, they apply creativity to solve the problem with existing means.  Some might call it wisdom of the crowd.  I call it improvising or hacking.

All of us are resourceful by nature.  We are wired that way.  If you look at all inventions, product designs, processes and so forth, all are created by people because they saw the need.  But our creativity does not stop at product design phase.  When users pick up something to apply to their problem, they again use their creativity to solve the problem by stretching intended use of the tool.  I wrote about this effect earlier.

This creativity does not know boundary.  It's happening in China as well.  When internet is censored to prohibit Chinese people from searching specific keywords, they are using their creativity to solve the censorship problem.  They are creating new urban dictionary terms to create new keywords to get around blacklisted keywords.

People will hack up a solution if there is a need.  Whenever you see one, there is an opportunity to improve the current design.

Bo Xilai is ousted Chinese official which triggered Chinese political instability;
find out more details from Wall Street Journal