For Your Reading: Articles for Product Coalition Writers
As we work together to make product learning accessible, we invite you to read these articles to learn more about what we do.
By Jay Stansell and Tremis Skeete, for Product Coalition
We all want to learn how to be better product people. Perhaps it’s why you decided to become a writer, because writing usually motivates one to learn more about things. That’s why writing with learning in mind can be an effective tool for your education.
It’s also why through your own writing — you’re probably the type who wants to learn, better.
So if you’re a writer who submitted an article to us, and you feel that what you’ve read here so far applies to you — then welcome to Product Coalition.
We are a community of volunteers.
Many of our readers don’t realise that Product Coalition is a volunteer-run organisation, and it takes hundreds of hours and dollars a month to keep the lights on.
With this is mind we continuously think about opportunity costs, because writing for Product Coalition means you’re not doing something else.
We also believe that it’s our job to not only make sure our readers get value from content we publish. That’s why we want to make sure that as both a reader and contributing writer, your time and investment in engaging with educational material is getting a better than average return.
How We Approve and Publish Articles
You’ve noticed the change in our approach to how we approve and publish articles. It’s because as a learning organisation, we’ve reached a point where we could no longer approve material unless it adheres to certain standards of quality.
Despite having a small team of volunteers who work hard to review, approve and publish content that has genuine educational value — Product Coalition today has been largely a one-person endeavor until I came aboard as Executive Editor.
For years, generous writers like you have supported Jay and Product Coalition with materials and insights. And for a time, without exception, we accepted all that content for the sake of growing the community — but we wish we could say that by doing so, it didn’t come with a cost.
Blogs, websites and other online properties as you’re aware, are going through challenges as they seek innovative ways to generate value. The challenge is most organisations want to publish content without careful examination, and call this activity a strategy designed to generate value.
But in reality, the impact is these organisations generate more noise as opposed to information that matters. We view this approach as a short-term strategy to gaining followers, but having lots of followers doesn’t guarantee success. Ultimately, this kind of strategy is just not sustainable.
Product Coalition strives to adopt a different strategy. We choose to define a standard of value, genuine readers and writers will support.
Our goal is to be the kind of learning community that’s viewed as a source of quality product management education, while at the same time, delicately experiment with ways to monetize our offerings.
While receiving free content is great, as you can imagine, it does come with opportunity and monetary costs, and at times that can be problematic for our organisation.
That’s why as a result, there comes a time where we have to evolve, and we can no longer subscribe to the idea of accepting as is, any and every article we receive. This was the impetus that led Jay to write the Product Coalition Community Publishing Values.
With the values, it’s not a way of saying that we no longer accept materials from certain writers. To you, the writer, you can still contribute any kind of product management story you wish. We just now ask that you consider our values when you produce your material.
We have also produced for you, our writers, other forms of material for your reading. We hope this information works well for you, and we look forward to receiving submissions from you in the near future.
Product Coalition Community Publishing Values.
At Product Coalition we feel that a great article is the kind that helps you to clearly understand concepts, experiences and lessons learned in the product development field. Essentially, a great educational article that’s designed to give readers access to knowledge and tools in order to get things done.
Whether a writer submits an article about product development fundamentals or more complex subjects — we welcome articles that demonstrate how product development concepts can be used in practical and definitive ways.
Articles don’t need to show that one knows everything about a subject. They just need to help readers by showing how to get things done and be better product professionals.
Before we publish an article…
Here are guidelines regarding what we look for in an article.
In other words, these examples of content are the reasons why we may not hit “publish” or may unpublish an article. [Read more]
Community Learning — Not Brand Marketing.
Online learning communities are only as good as the quality of the knowledge shared among it’s members, so when one says that we learn best when we’re part of a group — they must accept that we also learn best when we have access to quality information.
Another truth about these communities is that to thrive, each community needs to earn the confidence and loyalty of its members.
For Product Coalition, our members are our blog readers, podcast listeners, and contributing writers. They rely on our commitment to a beneficial experience for all, so to win their confidence — we publish materials with at least three conditions in mind:
1. It must satisfy reader expectations i.e. no clickbait, sensationalism, vague communication or misdirection
2. It must be definitive in how concepts and information are explained
3. It must provide real value i.e. the material must help readers imagine how and why they can take action, and then, use that mindset to practice and apply what they‘ve read
This is where our contributing writers (aka “community writers” or “contributors”) are key to achieving our goals. [Read more]
Reporters and Educators — Not Pundits and Commentators
To those who don’t know, a journalist is someone who writes and delivers stories to the public i.e. everyone. And since it’s part of their job to deliver stories, by definition, journalists are storytellers.
The role of a journalist historically has been expanded into many categories, but for this article, we focus on the following:
“Reporters, educators, pundits, commentators.”
For this article, please also keep in mind:
When we say “reporters and educators” we describe them in comparable ways one would describe an “investigative reporter”.
When we say “pundits and commentators”, we see them as similar, because in reality they are the same. To distinguish between a reporter and a commentator — it’s like the difference between a “news reporter” and a “news presenter”.
And while the before mentioned are indeed storytellers, the stories they tell are tailored with agendas and goals in mind. [Read more]
Product Coalition is About Clarity.
There are countless examples we can share, but for all, the moral of the story is the same. As a product community, we’ve learned that while many product writers from around the world use the same English words — the choice of words and the manner they are articulated, mean different things to each person, depending on their preferred or situational context.
It’s like saying, when one product manager says “A very basic web page”, and another product manager says, “A web page with just HTML and text” — while they can mean the same thing, to other people, the two statements can mean something completely different.
Here’s another example. If an analyst says, “This is the basic idea”, and another analyst says, “This is the idea” — these statements mean the same thing, but the latter statement is more concise. If another analyst comes along and says, “This is the basic essential idea” or “Basically, this is the essential idea”, the statements also mean the same thing, except they’re not as concise, and there are two words in the statement that mean the same thing — “basic” and “essential”.
We usually see examples of word usage that’s comparable to the “basic and essential” scenario, from product writers where English is not their first language, which is understandable. It’s because in cases like this, they might not have learned that words like “basic” and “essential” mean the same thing, and you can use either word, and you don’t need to use them consecutively in the same phrase or sentence.
We also understand that sometimes words like “essential” and “basically” add flavor or color to your prose, but sometimes, when not used correctly, they get in the way of delivering a clear message to readers.
That is why, in regard to the example above, the best statements to use are, “The idea is…” or “This is the idea.”
These challenges are more than just about matters of proper narrative, word choice, sentence structure, grammar and spelling. This is about effective communication, comprehension, context, meaning, and clarity — all on an international stage. [Read more]
Let’s Educate Our Readers: The Medium Boost Program
One day I opened my Gmail and saw a message with the subject line, “Congratulations! Your story has been Boosted on Medium.” Intrigued by this line, I opened the message and read that one of my stories was selected for a “Boost.”
This was unexpected!
It’s encouraging to discover there are people at Medium.com who value my writing. To the people who made this “Boost” possible, thank you so much.
Why this story?
Naturally, I’m curious about exactly how they came across the story on the Product Coalition blog, and more importantly — what were the thoughts and feelings they had which made them consider it worthy for a “Boost.”
But then it occurred to me — I don’t really need the answers. I say this because, I know why I wrote the story.
I wrote it because, I felt a need to share with the world what I’d learned from my work experiences in regard to the distinctions between “Data” and “Insight.” I felt the need because, I didn’t come across these lessons in any other material. I wrote the story as a way to not only bring clarity to the topic — but also as a way to refine my understanding of the world and situations where the lessons originated.
I wrote the story to educate myself while hopefully educating others.
I wonder, did the people at Medium feel a similar way about the story when they read it? I’ll probably never get the answers, but what I can do is review the Medium Quality guidelines and extrapolate how they determined that my story be “Boosted” across the Medium network.
Let’s find out more about what makes for a “Boosted” story. [Read more]
