About @bb

Hi, I'm Brian 👋, a product strategist and writer in Northampton, MA.

Say hello! bb@hey.com

Let's talk about

Shape Up, product development, and building great teams
Creating thriving communities
Writing, editing, and what makes a great sentence
Fiction, jazz, baseball or any of your favorite things

Career

I'm the Head of Product Strategy at 37signals, the makers of Basecamp and HEY. I write about product strategy on HEY World.

Previously, I was the VP of Product at Pingboard. As part of the founding team, I also started and led design, data, content strategy, support, and people ops teams. Acquired by Workleap.

Before that, I was a Product Manager at Return Path, leading experimental product development of web and mobile apps. Acquired by Validity.

I was also part of the founding team at Gowalla. I managed multiple teams, development projects, and virtual good economies. We were good at a few things, including titles. Mine alternated between Glue Guy and Washington Bureau Chief. Acquired by Facebook.

Learn more on LinkedIn.

A few other highlights

Graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in Philosophy and Political Theory
Published my first blog post in 2001
Wrote a book for Jossey-Bass called The Blogging Church to help non-profits and churches use blogs to share their stories and start communities. Seth Godin wrote the blurb for it. I was interviewed about blogging by The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Dallas Morning News.
Started Uncommon in Common, a front porch for the internet and one-of-a-kind online community with members in 25 countries
Profiled in Fast Company: Finally, A Social Network That Won’t Turn Us Into Addicts–But How Will It Thrive?
Co-authored a paper presented at Web Science 2016: Social Machines in Practice: Solutions, Stakeholders and Scopes
Wrote Uniquely Yours for the 16th issue of Offscreen Magazine

About this site

Logo by etherbrian. Design and code by Andy. Font is Source Sans Pro. Posts are written in iA Writer and published to Ghost.