Market7

In the  Creative: Show the path, not the destination at SxSW today, the theme reminded me of a core tenant of our Agile process. Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners and Brendan Dawes, creative director of Mn talked about how in creating content, it is a great idea to build the interaction framework and leave the story development open ended, allowing the audience to tell you where to go next.

They advocated multiple paths to interact with the audience not only to maximize the quantity of input but also to prove how interested you are in their feedback.

” I’m really into people vs machines. … Examples of how people walk across a park compared
to how we plot paths.”    – Brendan Dawes

Although it was content focused, It reinforced my commitment to our agile process. At Market7, we try to make some basic assumptions (create the path) but encourage our users to redefine those paths to affect our development.  Our connection to our users is through multiple connections (GetSatisfaction, Twitter, Blog, email).  Finally, we circle back in those forums to let those same users know when we have encorporated those changes (so that they can see their story unfold!)

The best thing for a product manager is actually building a product for an undiscovered market. That’s what I think we have here with video producers. Of the thirty or so users I have been able to sit down with or have a phone conversation with in my short tenure, you can almost hear their heart pound with excitement when I tell them about what our product does and what it plans to do. This is by far the most passionate and motivated group of users I have ever been around. And why wouldn’t they be, doing something that you love, which is why most of them are in the “business” in the first place, you can’t help but have it shine through.

So don’t get me wrong, these producers have been treated to many technological advances in editing software, and new video formats. However, no one has created a “one stop” shop for his or her business operation and client management needs. Which leads me the pleasure of getting in touch with my client base and busy compiling the feature list. So for all you producers out there, Market7 is officially here and we are listening!