About @bb
Hi, my name is Brian. I'm a user-centered product leader, writer, and community builder in Austin, Texas. My core values are empathy, craftsmanship, continuous improvement, and trust.
My work is at the intersection between people, products, and processes—specifically the way the how of the work infuences the outcome of the work. I love live music, short novels, and talking to uncommon, friendly people.
Let's talk about
- Building better products
- Building better teams
- Creating healthy, thriving communities
- Finding common ground and enlarging the circle of we
- Writing, editing, blogging
- Career development
- Any of my favorite things
- 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.
Before that, I was the Labs Product Manager at Return Path, leading experimental product development of web and mobile apps.
I was also part of the founding team at Gowalla. I managed multiple teams, development projects, and virtual good economies.
A few highlights
- Joined 37signals as Head of Product Strategy
- Profiled for the @yet weirdos project
- Learned Shape Up and Jobs to Be Done with 37signals and the Re-wired Group during a 3-day workshop in Chicago
- Promoted to VP of Product at Pingboard, leading product strategy and a team of product managers, designers, data analysts, and content designers
- Completed a Go programming course
- Joined the founding team at Pingboard
- Wrote Uniquely Yours for the 16th issue of Offscreen Magazine
- Co-authored a paper presented at Web Science 2016: Social Machines in Practice: Solutions, Stakeholders and Scopes
- Profiled in Fast Company: Finally, A Social Network That Won’t Turn Us Into Addicts–But How Will It Thrive?
- Created Uncommon in Common, a front porch for the internet and one-of-a-kind online community with members in 25 countries
- Joined Return Path as a product manager
- Consulted for Votizen, a political startup
- Got acquired by Facebook
- Learned Ruby on Rails from Chad Fowler and Dave Thomas in a 3-day workshop
- Went to SXSW Interactive 9 years in a row
- Joined the founding team at Alamofire, later Gowalla
- Interviewed about blogging by The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Dallas Morning News
- 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.
- Led my first team of web developers and designers
- Managed Linux servers and wrote code in my first technology role
- Became the 13,420th person to join Twitter
- Published my first blog post in 2001
- Graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in Philosophy and Political Theory
- Learn more on LinkedIn
About this site
Logo by etherbrian. Design and code by Andy. Font is Source Sans Pro. Posts are curated in Things, written in iA Writer, and published to Ghost.