The Cranky Product Manager has gone all new-agey — doing yoga and eating organic food and crap like that…rethinking life, trying to think positive (“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me”) and all. (What’s next? Macrame?)
Anyway, perhaps as a result, the Cranky Product Manager’s body has become less poluted and her psyche a bit more courageous. More intrepid. Less of a chicken-shit. And as such, the CPM has actually started SPEAKING… out LOUD! And you, gentle readers, can even listen in.
First, there was a podcast with the illustrious ho-bag Forrester analyst Tom Grant, back in June.
And then, there was the recent podcast with the celebrated Michael Ray Hopkin, proprietor of the glorious Lead on Purpose Blog and The Product Management Pulse.
Check em’ out. We discuss all kinda fun stuff, like, is product management the best job or the most wretched? Where should PM report in the organization (don’t PMs just LOVE to debate that one)? How do you handle those pesky Sales Droids? Why do you sometime have to shoot your product in the head?
Note that in both podcasts, the Cranky Product Manager’s “real voice” has been distorted mightily, and that her hideous cackle-laugh has been replaced with an equally horrendous, yet different, cackle-laugh. The Cranky PM is not that courageous yet, folks. (You will, however, determine that that Cranky Product Manager has a quintessential middle-America accent. Go do some detective work with that.)
Next up? The Cranky Product Manager is going to speak IN THE FLESH at The Business of Software 2009 Conference (a Joel of Software Conference) in San Francisco, November 9-11. It should be a WICKED AWESOME conference. The possibility of meeting the adorably brilliant Joel Spolsky and her hero Geoffrey Moore (not to mention the wicked awesomeness of Kathy Sierra, Heidi Roizen, Don Norman and Paul Graham) is why the Cranky Product Manager decided to take on this risky adventure.
Needless to say, the Cranky PM is scared s#!#less. She’s not yet sure how she’ll handle the anonymity issue — should she “come out”? Wear a wig and sunglasses? Hire a devastatingly attractive model to go in her place? Take lessons from that douche David Blaine on how to enter and escape from a conference room without witnesses? Or what…?
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ASIDE:
Maybe it’s time to just come out and get it over with. A wise reader recently forwarded the Cranky Product Manager this advice from famous blogger Penelope Trunk – she says to blog under your real name, as someone whose anonymous blog went so awry that she ended up chaning her REAL NAME to her pen name. And while the Cranky Product Manager is DEFINITELY not EVER going to change her real name to “Cranky PM”, it did give her food for thought….
