Macklemore and Ryan Lewis create a video on an epic scale for their new song Can’t Hold Us. The video is audacious. It’s grand. It’s glorious.

No one makes rap videos on this scale anymore. Except maybe certain KPop artists. This video reminds me of something Bad Boy would put out in the late 90s. Not content wise, but in the level of ambition.

I am so proud of my city right now! The Macklemore and Ryan Lewis video ends as Macklemore mounts a supremely large “The Heist” flag on the Space Needle. You can’t ‘hold down for your town’ much harder then that.

Enjoy the video and post your thoughts below.

Hit Boy is determined not to be a flash in the pan beatmaker. With more then 24 months of chart topping hits he has maintained a strong output and lived up to his golden boy status.

In this clip he breaks down the process of how he made Beyonce’s “Going Down.” A song more trill then most Bey records.

What is your favorite hit boy produced track?

Justin Timberlake tears the house down performing live on the Jimmy Falon show. He hits most of my favorite JT songs. ‘Like I Live You,’ ‘Senorita,’ ‘My Love,’ and ‘Cry Me a River.’

It has been a little while since my last post. Many have asked me for an update on my job search and life in San Francisco.

I am still on the job search, and getting closer every day. Still learning as much as I can about my industry. Still expanding my network.

I have found some very good networking resources on meetup.com. Yesterday I attended an event called Best Practices in Startup Product Management organized by  StartUP Product Talks SF. The speaker was a professional named Dan Olson who has worked in product management for companies such as Intuit, Friendstar, and and consulted for companies such as Boxnet and yousend.com.

It was an excellent talk and he diffinetly showed his expertise on the industry. You can tell he has fought the battles as a PM and grown and learn from his experiences.

I want to share some take aways from his presentation. If you want to check out his slides head to slideshire.com. (This link is not the exact presention but contains almost all the same content.) The actual video is listed on the bottom of the page.

1. What is a product managers role? He defines product management as the person who is ultimately responsible for a successful product. Simple as that. You have no one to blame but yourself if the product is not a successes so you should be ready to do what it takes.

2. The best product managers are ‘ninjas.’ Why are good product managers Ninjas? Because PMs are self sufficiant, use a wide array of skills, and they need to know a lot to fill in the gaps.

Part of Dan Olson's presentation

3. Metrics must support product development to identify a need in a marketplace and test the solution that your company is proposing.   Here is a slide from Dan’s presentation that visually represents different opportunity lanscapes. The sweet spot for a new product is when the importance of the product to the user is high + satisfaction with current alternative is low.

4. Lastly how does one measure the success of a new product iteration? The answer is if your test users do not voice an objection.

Or said another way the absence of a complaint is sometimes the only affirmation you’ll get that your product has improved from the last version. Addition by subtraction.

Live footage of the actual presentation Dan Olson gave on June 13th.

An addictive YouTube show called “Seniors React” has hit the scene over the last 3 months, from the new channel Stillcosmo. The show hosts a cast of wily senior citizens, with an outrageous star that goes by the name of “Swag Coach,” an alias that was given to him by the followers.The show is entertaining, hilarious and provacative. A feat hard to imagine with a cast that’s 55+ in age. Seniors React pushes the limits and isn’t affraid to be outspoken towards anything whether it’s sex, drugs or Kim Kardashian. It’s unbelievably amusing how a channel full of grandparents could be so rebellious, that I find myself giggling even as I write this.

Yesterday, the gossip recently got juicier after a popular YouTube channel called TheFineBros, decided to block all of stillcosmo’s videos on the grounds of copyright infringement, as they prepare themselves to launch their own Seniors React series.

As the finebros look to control the playing field before they release their first seniors react episode, I shake my head at the poor sportsmanship of the Finebros for robbing the YouTube community from the brilliance of stillcosmo’s channel. Just because the Finebros have a large channel that brings them in a lot of money, doesn’t mean they have a monopoly over the react series.

Especially one’s that come out before theirs!

What do you think of all this?

After my last meeting with Jason, the product manager from a web analytics company, I felt a bit rudderless. Going into the meeting I thought that I had nailed down my desired job title which gave me a sense of direction in my job pursuit. However the more he talked about product management (specifically in the context of software) the less appealing it became.

This was a setback for sure, but not a deterrence to reaching my goal of working in San Francisco as part of a team helping developing fun products that would one day reach a storefront.

Lucky for me I knew a creative visionary living in San Francisco who I could call on to give me some perspective. Patrick is a force in the design world whose high profile clients include Daft Punk, Microsoft, HTC, Paper’s Fifty Three, and relevant to our background together, Chima Designs.

Patrick’s valuable advice was to get involved in some fun startups, learn a bunch, build a resume and a reputation and take this to any company or design firm in the city to land my dream job.

His words took a lot of pressure off of me to “make the leap” right away to the big leagues.

Last Saturday I grabbed some coffee with Jason Evanish (@evanish) a bright, dare i say wise, product manager from KISSmetrics (think of a supercharged version of google analytics giving you better information about user experience). Jason Shen, who is also a superstart but I have yet to meet, hooked the meeting up after learning about my interest in product management.

Some take aways from our conversation.

1. The vision I had of product management, and I don’t know exactly what influenced this vision, is not what it REALLY is. Will elaborate below.
2. San Francisco’s tech culture makes it easy to get almost anyone’s time. Apparently this comes from a tradition of mentoring. Everyone who has “made it” in the Bay at some point received advice at a time where they couldn’t offer anything back. Good news for me because I have little to offer anyone immediately. However I see these blogs entries as way to share something and hopeful someone take something away.
3. “If you want advice, ask for a job. If you want a job, ask for advice.” Jason adopted this from a saying in the startup community. It reasons if you want money from someone and ask them for it there likely to offer only advice, however when your agenda is ostensibly just advice they may actually surprise you with an investment.

Meeting Jason was useful to shatter my picture of what a product manager is. Going into the meeting I thought  PM functioned like a conductor of a ship. Ensuring the product stayed on the track, on time, and maintaining QC.

While this is a part of the product manager’s role this description leaves a lot of flesh on the bone. It also doesn’t acknowledge the vastly roles played by software product managers and those who manage physical ones (which maybe we could call hardware).

In the Bay Area most of the jobs for product managers center around developing and releasing web and software products.

In his book Inspired: How to Create Products Customer’s Love, Marty Cagan identifies the first role of the product manager as to, “discover a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible.”

After this phase the product manager clearly defines the product so the design and engineering teams can make it a reality. The PM takes a firm stance on what gets included into the immediate software build. Any ad hoc features, no matter how cool or useful, delay development and add unwanted complexity.

I don’t want to bore you with anything too technical here, I just wanted to briefly define the role of a product manager in the web and software world. Learning exactly what a product manager does in this role I was faced with a question.

Did I come to San Francisco to do this type of work?

“NO”

But now I know what I have to do.

I have to find another way to define the role I am pursuing out here in San Francisco because “product manager” or my favorite, “creative product manager” isn’t it. It probably only confuses those who I talk to in a position to help me because it is too vague, toofuzzy, too imprecise.

My next objective is to find someone who does product management for physical goods in the Bay and have a sit down with them to see how their role differs from PM in software. And lastly learn if this is the work I am after.

If you know any product managers for physical products in the Bay Area please have them contact me on twitter @oodlesofudo or email me at udoka@oodlesofudo.com.

If you have any other questions about my journey so far or any ideas you want me to explore in my next blog post please contact me about that too.

I don’t normally get too personal on my blog. But moving to a new city to pursue your dreams merits a little reflection.

I am here. I am living in San Francisco. The decision to move and my arrival into the city happened in one week. There is a good chance that if I had given it any more time I would have stayed in Seattle. Luckily my rational mind couldn’t keep up with my forward motion and I avoided being talked off the ledge.

I had many convincing reasons not to move. I was leaving my hometown of Seattle, an awesome place in itself. A city containing friends, my family, and plenty of comfortable familiarity (do you know how hard it is to learn a different public transportation system?).

On top of all of that and truthfully greater than all of that, I was leaving a very happy situation with my girlfriend of a year 1 and a half.

And for what? Well a promise.

The promise of moving to San Francisco to reach my dreams was to strong to ignore. I came here to pursue my new career path of creative product management and in 3-5 years becoming a creative director of a brand. My experience launching a new product and a new company showed me what hard work and faith could create.

It also spoke to my lifelong passion of building something out of nothing, and than dropping it on the world’s doorstep. There is nothing more mystical and eternal to me than being in a space with other creative people and fusing your brains together.

Reaching, failing, harnessing, dreaming, and transcending (excuse the warm and fuzzy language).

The truth is back when I was producing music everyday  my favorite part part of the process was the collaboration. Being a studio with another person and not knowing what they will bring to the mix, and not knowing what their contribution will in turn bring out of you. The 2 + 2 = 5 effect.

So im out here man, and I know it is where I am supposed to be. I am meeting contacts faster in my first 7 days here than I did in a Seattle year.

Heres to  following your dreams. If your in San Francisco reading this get at my at @OodlesOfUdo and lets create something big!

Where has Mannie Fresh been lately? Where is Mystikal been lately? Well the answer to both is coming into focus. In this video the two formerly bright stars connect and the results look electric!

Mannie Fresh and Mystikal have a spontaneous listening session in Mannie’s coup. Mannie has reportedly been contributing to the upcoming G.O.O.D. Music collaboration album. And Mystikal is signed to Cash Money and working on his next project.

UPDATE Here is some of the fruits of their labor. Heat!

Da Internz who produced one of the biggest records of 2011, Big Seans “Dance A$$”, take you into their studio and reveal how the track was made.

Who are Da Internz? Well you might have to start paying attention. This scrappy Chicago based production group are on the come up.

Today Rihanna released the remix to “Birthday Cake” with Chris Brown which features Da Internz production with co. production by The Dream.

via the LRG Life Files