New Job

It's been a while between posts - since then I've decided to take on a new role within Telecom heading up its Next Generation Product Management group. This role is part of the Consumer Business Unit and is primarily focussed on developing the product set that will be at the core of our next few decades. It will mean moving the entire residential set of products (and some wireless) onto new product platforms that are all IP based. This will transform the product set, and if done well, transform our business.

A few people have asked why I have decided to take on this role, which will be challenging (in the least!), as opposed to keeping on going with the role that I've had in researching customer behaviour and new technology.

For me, it's come down to a few things

1. Delivery - I really enjoy picking trends, but I found it very frustrating seeing these ideas incubate without getting to market. This role provides the opportunity to still use those skills and also combine them with getting stuff to market.

2. The Everest effect - this is a huge challenge - delivering a product set that is so compelling that all our existing customers choose to take it over all other alternatives by 2010. And the future of the business rests of achieving this successfully. I love the scale of this challenge and the possibilities that it creates!

3. My career - self-centred I know.... But I need to lead something of this nature to take my career to the next stage. This will make or break me. Everyone needs a little adrenaline in their life - this is mine!

It took me a good week of soul-searching and talking with key people inside and outside Telecom for me to feel confident enough that enough of the environment is in place for this to have a chance of success. Not all the pieces are there though - in particular a really clear view of what needs to be done by when, and described in such a way as to make everyone excited and motivated about getting in behind this. But I guess I have to do some of the hard work, don't I?

So the tone of this blog (when I write it of course!) will change and be more about the how we start building a team, some vision and then start executing. Next posts will be about describing the problem a more and how we're going about building a team.

Get your head around Identity 2.0

Tom Glover has been doing a LOT of work on identity - including building some core identity infrastructure (purely for prototypes of course!) as we speak. On top of that Tom is presenting at the invitation of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner on a "Day in the (digital) life" on 21st September in Wellington. Post a comment and I'll get you the details to get along - it's private up until then :)

I have to admit that while I get the need and opportunity for Telecom in the Identity space, I've never been able to articulate it clearly. I found the following links which have pointed me in the right direction.

Firstly a 15 minute primer on identity by Dick Hardt (anyone who has a tagline "who's the dick on my site" is worth a look). Not only does it get you up to speed with identity, its a great presentation from a style perspective. It was found on a list of Top 10 presentations in a review by Guy Kawasaki.

Secondly - add this site to your RSS feed reader.


Between these two links there is all you need to know about Identity 2.0

So the next thought has to be - where could Telecom be in all of this ? The answer most certainly isn't 'in the middle of it'. That's the customer's place. But we have a role to play - we just have to make sure that we aim to participate as opposed to control. Otherwise we will end up like Microsoft's Passport - REJECTED!