Next week is the American holiday of Thanksgiving. We won’t be having lots of friends and relatives over for a meal this year, alas. But there are somethings to be thankful for, even in times of hardship.
I’d like to take a moment and thank a bunch of you for your help and inspiration this year.
Dozens and dozens of you for working so hard in my workshops
Teresa Torres, product discovery maven, for setting a great example of saying “no”
Barry O’Reilly for making it OK to post pictures of “quarantinis”
Gib Biddle, strategist extraordinaire, for letting me help here and there
John Cutler, development team fixer, for his continuous stream of insights on Twitter
Gareth Marlow, always one step ahead of me, for introducing me to Jamboard
Joe Leech, my new broadcasting mentor, for convincing me I needed new Zoom lighting
Felipe Castro, one of the few who do OKRs right, for collaborating
Julie Marobella, heavy lift CPO, for never holding back
Radhika Dutt, advocate of radical common sense, for reaching out
Conor O’Mahoney, tallest CPO I know, for constantly upping everyone's game
C. Todd Lombardo, co-writer of many great things, for taking my ideas and giving me back better ones
David Bland, business scientist, for experimenting with me
Christina Wodtke, unapologetic opinionater, for saying I was nice
Filippo Monastra, engineer of success, for trusting me with his team
Analisa Plehn, the heart of the team, for thinking of me
Mark Littlewood, conference artiste, for taking a (digital) leap with me
Hamish Stevenson, leader-by-example, for always being a mensch
Janna Bastow, co-founder of ProdPad, for making friends
Martin Eriksson (who needs no introduction) for speaking up about imposter syndrome
Steve Portigal, favorite uncle of UX research, for eating sonhos in the car with me in Portugal
Venkat Narayanan, indefatigable enterprise coach, for spreading the message
Kelly Kidd, smart strength evangelist (parse that a few ways), for pointing me in the right direction
Frank Qiu, partner in crime at Product Culture, for calling me on it when I am wrong
Nina Mitchell, Product Culture maker of happening, for her irrepressible nature
Amanda McCarthy, crack editor, for always knowing the answer to a grammar, spelling, or punctuation question
Devon McCarthy, deep thinker, for jumping fully into the fall semester despite the current weirdness
Christine McCarthy, an order of magnitude smarter than me, for sharing Star Trek with me
LEGO, my lifelong medium of expression, for keeping me sane
And of course, I will be extremely thankful for good vaccines, when they come out. What are you thankful for?