Bill Watt’s Blog

Yesterday and most of this week were excellent examples of suckness but also plenty of good stuff happened and that the suckness was a good reminder that I have nothing but first world problems.

Case in point… yesterday was full of stress over an impending release and a bunch of dropped balls. Still… I was able to work from home, attended several conf calls, and still managed to squeeze in Korean BBQ for lunch where I burned myself on the pot while watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my shiny new iPhone. Rough life, right?

So, at one point I was looking for a little humor and a sense that I’m not alone in this big world of Product Management pain. What did I do? Why, I googled “day in the life of a product manager” and came across more than a few gems. Check out this post from “The Cranky Product Manager” and you’ll see the kind of mood I was in.

The nice thing was how the day ended. Release issues (the most important ones anyway) are nearly resolved with a light at the end of the tunnel and I was able to go to Gary Dillabough’s going away party at eBay and see many of my favorite old time eBay folks.

Note for Hima and Ramya- I think I’m actually a hugger after all. Never fear- your protected status is still in place.

It was quite comforting in a way I really really needed yesterday to see good folks and wish Gary well. Two notes to Gary…

1. Thanks for telling the FAIM acquisition story. Even thought it hurts on some grand spiritual level for me to think about how close we were to being a Web 1.0 success story with your parting the number of people that even remember FAIM dropped to about what I can count on two hands and the number of execs who know it dropped to 2. I’m sure in 6 months they’ll rebuild the large merchant strategy and not even realize what they’ve missed out on.
2. Keep me in mind in your future projects. I’d happily clean your pool.

I know many folks has already talked about this and a friend (who controls his online footprint so I’ll leave it at that) at work keeps asking me when I’ll watch. For me… things like this are for the weekend but just in case any of you haven’t seen it, here is the email my friend sent me:

In case you never heard about the “last lecture” project- it was a series of lecture about what would you talk about if you had only one last lecture to do.
Many interesting lectures came out of it but Randy Pausch’s lecture became a must hear for everyone out there.

“On September 18, 2007, computer science professor Randy Pausch stepped in front of an audience of 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” With slides of his CT scans beaming out to the audience, Randy told his audience about the cancer that is devouring his pancreas and that will claim his life in a matter of months. On the stage that day, Randy was youthful, energetic, handsome, often cheerfully, darkly funny. He seemed invincible. But this was a brief moment, as he himself acknowledged.”

Randy’s lecture has become a phenomenon, celebrating the dreams we all strive to make realities. And now, in his book based on the now-famous lecture, Randy goes even deeper to inspire us all.
http://www.thelastlecture.com/
http://www.cmu.edu/uls/journeys/randy-pausch/index.html

Watch the lecture:
Short version (11min) : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8577255250907450469
Full lecture (1:16 hr): http://youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Randy just passed away after a long fight with cancer. We wish his family the best in this tough time and hope they can take some comfort in how he lived and inspired people.