Another timeout for a little self-promotion as I am proud to announce I am now a Certified Scrum Product Owner, or CSPO. A week ago I took a 2-day course and in the process gained certification through Scrum Alliance.

What is a CSPO?

A CSPO is a practitioner of the Scrum. With its origins in software development, Scrum is “framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.” A product owner is one of 3 roles on a Scrum team, along with the Scrum Master and Developers. The team delivers software, or whatever the work product is, in an iterative approach over periods of time called sprints, where a sprint can last a few weeks to a month. You can read more on Scrum in the Scrum Guide the “bible” on the framework.

The role of the Product Owner is an empowered representative of the stakeholders for the product the entire Scrum team is working on. Its mission is to maximize the value of the product for said stakeholders and its users. High-level responsibilities include defining the Product Goal, managing the Product Backlog (or what the team will be working on), communicating and ensuring transparency.

Why the Product Owner Course? And didn’t you take the Scrum Master course?

Last year I took the course and exam to become a Certified ScrumMaster through Scrum Alliance. Through this process, I was really intrigued by the Product Owner role. In my current job, in many regards I serve as a Product Owner more than I do a Scrum Master. Also, I found a lot more emphasis on the Scrum Master role on the Scrum team “out there” more than I did on the Product Owner. This led me to pursue this course of study and serve in this capacity. Even had I not had this strong interest in being a Product Owner, I feel it important to understand all of the Scrum team roles to better serve as one of them.

The Course Itself

Before the global lockdowns last year, Scrum courses were never taught remotely. You would take a course near you or travel to take one in person. The Scrum Master course I took last year was virtual, though I had signed up for it as an in-person course originally. I was pleased with the last-minute pivot, the instructor and learned a lot from it.

All Scrum trainers have since gone to a virtual model. Where some courses are now starting to be taught in person, the majority are still online. This opened wide the possibilities from where to take the course. As I chose to continue courses through Scrum Alliance, I took the CSPO course through Mike Cohn, a veteran Scrum practitioner, trainer and author.

Where I have only taken a few courses online over the years, this was by far the best offering I have experienced. The online “space” is integrated into Agile Mentors, a community and resource center whose membership is included for a year with the course. Before the live sessions, there was about 4 hours of “basics” videos going over the core of the Product Owner role, including quizzes throughout. It was structured this way to ensure to maximize the 2 days of live instruction, and it worked very well. I was equally impressed with the design of the overall experience – Cohn and his Mountain Goat Software spent a considerable amount of time in the branding and technology for this and all of their products.

No exam?

At the lunch break during the first day of the course it dawned on me there was no mention of an exam following the course to earn the certification. During the Q&A at the end of the day I asked this “meta” question. A good discussion followed and Cohn went into great detail on it from his own experience – he was a founder of the Scrum Alliance, and he said for this role it is a challenge to create questions for such an exam, as he has tried himself. Cohn’s upfront and no-nonsense approach was also a selling point for me on training with him. The non-binding quizzes throughout the pre-course videos did help in reinforcing the materials.

Without an exam and by actively participating in the course, this is the only qualification for the CSPO certification. Where I felt it was a little anticlimactic, I have decided it will be up to me to challenge myself as a Product Owner and always quiz myself. But what a better challenge for Scrum Alliance to develop an exam for this certification!

Next Steps and Kudos

I am looking forward to my continued journey with Scrum, the better way to do things – just ask Elon Musk! I have been asked my employer to help emphasize and further the Product Owner role, and I am up to the task. I also welcome your questions on Scrum in general. If you are thinking of studying for it as I did, I highly recommend the course from Mike Cohn. Thanks to him, Stacey Ackerman of the Agile Mentors community and the numerous classmates I had from around the area and the world who made the CSPO course a memorable experience.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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I wonder how often domain names are taught at the university level.

This thought was in the back of my mind as I developed and gave a guest lecture in the Fall of 2020 to students of Dr. Sara Steffes Hanses at the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh on consulting. I have had the honor to present to her classes in the past to share my wisdom and lessons learned over the years as a consultant – and how I think as a consultant even when I work for a firm. Where this lecture was virtual, my plan was to deliver it with the same enthusiasm as I have in the past.

The class I gave the guest lecture to is part of a program called Interactive Web Management, or IWM. It is a unique hybrid of business, technology, marketing and journalism, and students in the IWM program get a well-rounded education and experience across all that encompasses a Web site today. Especially in today’s world of hyper-specialization I see this program as a great way to offer the big picture, and allow graduates to choose their specialty or specialties.

Timing for my class was around the first meeting students have with their “clients,” non-profit or university organizations for whom they will consult to, which is the basis of their semester work. As I have given this guest lecture before, there are many elements that are continued. That being said, I fully re-evaluate it based on my own experience and the marketplace since the last lecture.

This is also why I introduced “extras” a few years ago – topics that were not core to the lecture but related and important nonetheless. For one of my extras this time, I chose domain names. If you have read anything else I have written here at The Hot Iron, you know I work a lot with domain names and have opinions and advice on them. I decided to cover domain names as an “extra” as many may have some familiarity with them, but not all aspects.

Two slides were dedicated to domain names, as you can see from the presentation linked and embedded. Where the bullet points were brief, there was a lot of substance I spoke to. As an introduction, I reaffirmed likely to all what a domain name is and how you can use it. I also talked about the selection of a name, giving an example of how one friend and former client, Foresight Childproofing, came up with their primary domain name, ChildProofHome.com. I then concluded this with talking about the various top-level domains, or TLDs, available, and recommended people have a great experience with working with domain names at Name.com.

As the first slide focused on registering a new, available domain name, I could have stopped there and felt good about the knowledge I shared. However I decided to go deeper and explore with them the world of the domain name aftermarket – when a domain name you desire is already registered and is available for registration at a premium price from a broker. I feel if people know very little about domain names in general, they are completely clueless about the aftermarket. Here I described what it is, and shared stories of how I acquired domain names from the aftermarket for clients in the past. I also recommended they explore DomainMarket.com, a larger and reputable marketplace.

I have shared the slides to my guest lecture here for all to review and “leverage” for their own use on SlideShare, whether for work, academia or personal use.

Deconstructing Educating on Domain Names

There’s no time like the present for a teaching moment. As a guest lecturer, it is your role to contribute something unique to the class – whether it’s a unique topic or point-of-view. Bringing a heightened awareness of domain names to this class was my way of offering both. Did it resonate with the students? I can’t say for sure, as most had their cameras off.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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It was 14 years ago today that I fulfilled a singular goal – to launch a blog site before the end of that year 2006. I did so with my first post titled “hello world” in homage to the typical phrase a programmer would display when working in a new computer language. I did it. Goal achieved. Yea me!

It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I wrote my first “real” post on the topic of giving a job reference to a recruiter and the blog took flight from there. Sure, there were gaps and restarts, and we arrive here today with this being the 947th post.

Over the years, but not every year, I wrote similar anniversary posts like this one, as I believe such milestones should be celebrated. If you’re so inclined, you can find links to them all on the Archives page.

In closing there’s not much to deconstruct, overanalyze or predict. I have been working on much more thoughtful posts as compared to at least what’s come out over the last month. I am looking forward to those, as well as whatever else comes to mind to keep with the theme here of striking the iron while it is hot.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Several years ago I “got into” writing. Granted, I was blogging here at The Hot Iron for over a decade at that point. Even with a body of work – some of it even beyond the world of business and technology – I never considered myself a “writer” per se. Visiting the Lit Fest in Chicago and taking it all in for the first time, a mere few blocks from my then home, was the boost I needed. Where I haven’t published yet beyond this Web site, I have expanded on what I write here, and have in various stages pieces in need of time to finish and submit for possible publishing.

That is if you don’t count some short stories I have submitted recently. And the emphasis here is on short – as in 53 words short. On and off for the last year I have submitted entries for the monthly 53-Word Short Story contest by Press 53, a fiction and poetry publishing house in North Carolina. I discovered this when looking for writing contests for one of my kids, who at one point was interested in such contests then later wasn’t. However I got bitten by this serial unique challenge.

For August’s contest, the writing prompt was to write about “Sunday.” That’s it, that’s all they give you, and it is up to your creativity – and brevity – to craft something unique and prize-winning. As you can tell by the title of this post I did not win, and as a result my prose will not be published in one of their journals.

But as words must be free, I share “Any Given” with you here:

"While awaiting our lobsters to brighten, we slurped steamers – simmered in Harpoon IPA, from the same Portsmouth dock as the crustaceans. Aptly accompanying our ocean harvest was corn on-the-cob, homemade potato salad and more of said IPA.

Ten o’clock may seem early for such a feast, but there’s only three hours till kick-off."

The preceding is a true story, as annually we would have a lobster bake during one week’s tailgating before a New England Patriots home game back in the day.

If you’re so inclined you can read the winning entry here, learn about this month’s contest and how you too can compete with me for the fame and glory of a very, very short story.

Deconstructing Short Story Writing

Writing can take many forms. What I originally saw as business and technology writing was in reality story writing, and upon that realization it opened and expanded my mind to what else I could write. But I will save an in-depth deconstruction for another time – just get out there and write!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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It was 10 years ago this week that several mobile phone enthusiasts from across the US gathered at a beach house to create a video for a specific device. What was commonplace back then is perhaps unusual now. I’d like to tell the story of the making of this video and a time when the world was a little different from now.

The scene was Sunset Beach in Huntington Beach, California. The place was a rented, multi-story beach house with an amazing view of the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island. Myself and several others converged from across the country on Friday night, and a number of others from Southern California joined us the next morning. This was all under the careful orchestration of WOMWorld/Nokia, which was the name of Nokia’s word of mouth (aka WOM) marketing program run by 1000heads, a global word of mouth agency. The trio who were our hosts and managed the weekend’s events from 1000heads were from London.

The task, if we chose to accept it, was to make a promotional video for the newly released Nokia E73 Mode mobile device, which was exclusively being offered through T-Mobile in the US. The device, as shown here, had a full keyboard and ran the Symbian operating system. It was similar to the E71 and E72, the latter I already owned. The name “Mode” came from the ability where you could switch between different modes, such as work and personal, and have a different screen setup and layout, as well as separate email accounts in each mode. Where today we may setup separate screens with like app icons, at the time it was an innovative idea. The full QWERTY keyboard was a nice feature as well, something not seen these days with the move to “black slab” devices.

Allow me to share the end result of this, the Nokia E73 Mode video that was created, and if you don’t see it embedded below you can click here to watch it.

You can also read here my preview blog post as well as my recap of the weekend, both of which needed some recent editing as many links in the original posts no longer work.

Why even do this?

Many of you reading and learning of this for the first time may be wondering, why? Why fly people out and create such a video? Aren’t there other or better ways to promote the phone? Where these are of course valid questions, I’d like to provide some context and opinion, and not simply to justify a weekend away at a beach house.

Back in 2008, at the height of its reign as the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile devices, as well as the early days of social media, Nokia engaged with 1000heads on WOMWorld/Nokia. One of its main focuses was to get devices in the hands of mobile enthusiasts to evaluate and eventually promote online in the form of blog posts, YouTube videos and social media. This was an evaluation program – people were lent a device and had to return it, and no devices were given away. By managing it this way, there was no implied quid pro quo that you got a new phone for free and had to say nice things about it. In addition to the lend program, WOMWorld/Nokia held amazing events and activities around the world to connect with mobile enthusiasts.

This is how I got engaged with the program. In 2008 I was invited to Nokia OpenLab, a weekend retreat in Helsinki, Finland, just outside of Nokia’s headquarters in Espoo, where about 3 dozen people convened from all over the world to discuss connectiveness and technology, among other things. Previously I had not had heard about WOMWorld/Nokia but had blogged quite a bit here about mobile technology. Because of this – and to this day nobody told me specifically but I suspect it’s why – I was invited. Following this amazing weekend, I remained and engaged with the program and the people. I wrote several posts of devices I evaluated here, and participated in virtual events as well. Then, almost 2 years after OpenLab, I was invited to the E73 Mode Beach House, as 1000heads was to produce a video for T-Mobile in this style rather than the mobile carrier having a typical commercial created. Where I don’t know if the commercial was ever broadcasted on TV, it did get good traffic when it was posted on T-Mobile’s YouTube channel back then – this version above is from WOMWorld/Nokia’s still-active YouTube channel.

What a difference a few months makes

Where a lot has happened in the mobile device and social media landscape since this event 10 years ago, most of what change the direction happened within mere months from that August 2010 weekend.

A few months after the beach house weekend, WOMWorld/Nokia invited me to Berlin, Germany to attend the Microsoft TechEd Europe conference. Nokia had a booth there, and the big Nokia news was the E7 device, a “black slab” device with a full slide-out keyboard and HDMI output – all unique features in the marketplace. As no surprise at the conference was the strong presence of the Windows Phone, which by this point was far behind Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. Little did I know that within a few months, Nokia would partner with Microsoft to create devices running Windows Phone, and phase out its Symbian and MeeGo operating systems. Making a long story short from there, it was the beginning of the end of Nokia mobile devices as they were known not to mention their world dominance, and with it went the WOMWorld/Nokia program. Where its Web site is long-gone as well, you can still find it on the Wayback Machine. Today in 2020, Nokia’s business is more in connectivity hardware and it licenses its brand to a manufacturer of Android devices.

This time was also the early stages of social media. It was celebrated as something new and unique and where many were on it, many were not. The opportunity to connect and communicate with people of like interests – or not – around the world was enticing and something I advocated for. But a lot has changed since then, and new channels and volumes of new people are using them, and the feel is not the same for me. I have long been off of Facebook and other social platforms and have even reduced my Twitter usage to a minimum. I am still holding out on LinkedIn to remain a professional business platform. All is not completely gone, however, as 1000heads is still going strong, connecting brands and their customers around the globe with their unique programs and experiences.

Deconstructing the E73 Mode Beach Party 10 Years Later

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. Where the excitement and energy of the WOMWorld/Nokia program and the connection with hundreds if not thousands of people around the globe has gone away, what transpired with these events and people should still be remembered.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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