Welcome to ProductHub

As President of the Boston Product Management Association, I am happy to have this opportunity to welcome you to the our NEW member contributed blog, ProductHub. I’m very excited about this initiative and honored to be the first official contributor. After some thought, I decided this inaugural post would be best used to tell you a little bit about what we hope this blog will become and why we decided to start it.A while back, we reached out to BPMA members and non-members with a detailed survey on your preferences and demographics. We reached you by email and at ProductCamp to gather over 200 responses. Our primary goals were to get to know you better and determine ways to better serve you, our community. The findings confirm a broad diversity across industries, experience and interests. For instance,

• The majority of you (over 50%) work in High Tech, IT, and Software. However, there are also many other industries represented including Healthcare and Internet
• Nearly half of our members have over 15 years of experience, but another 30% have under 10 years
• You follow the BPMA for networking and career opportunities, but professional development is a strong motivation as well
• You are interested in a broad array of product management and marketing topics, and also expertise from your peers is important to you. [Note that the variety of topics and subtopics we’re sourcing posts are a reflection of the above]

The depth and breadth of product management and marketing expertise across variety of industries clearly an asset we as a community can leverage. We at BPMA are convinced that providing a medium for sharing techniques and ideas will facilitate a powerful cross-pollination of product best practices. This we firmly believe will yield professional development opportunities across the community.So why not start a great blog, by the community and for the community? We want this blog to be a forum where members from different industries and at different levels of experience can contribute and learn from each other. They can talk about what’s working for them, and strengthen their connection to the community by sharing their hard-earned expertise.One other thing that stands out from the survey – there’s a big opportunity here to inspire new product professionals through this effort. As you will note from the highlights above, 30% of our membership has under ten years of experience, and 15% has under 5. This was underscored again by a large portion of student and inexperienced attendees at the recent Career Night event – “How to be a Product Manager”. We see this blog as a means to give these young professionals and students accessible guidance from you – the leaders in the field. Guidance that I hope will lead to them becoming leaders within the product professional community themselves.There are many great Product Management and Product Marketing blogs out there, but to my knowledge, ours will be the first that offers such a diversity of perspectives. Together, let us join hands to build something special here.  I look forward to seeing your contributions.  Thanks.