It's an ad from the Xbox One launch campaign last November, but I'm still seeing it pop up on TV here and there. And every time I do, I get a tingle of excitement unlike anything I've experienced - not to be, like, a corporate shill or anything.
You see, that moment at 1:10 of the video is OUR APP. And not just any part of OUR APP but a feature I owned from start to finish as PM for both Voice and Notifications. "Xbox Answer" was an unruly and imperfect baby, but it was my baby dammit!
Now I must caveat, I've worked on a lot of software, and of course nobody ever does anything single-handedly. There are loads of people behind that moment at 1:10 of which I am a lowly small part. If I wanted to get all impostor syndrome on it I could essentially shirk responsibility for the feature entirely seeing as I didn't write any code myself or have the initial idea for Xbox Global Voice Commands.
But I still feel a huge sense of pride to see something that my colleagues and I worked so closely on, up there on such a huge stage. This ad has been on heavy rotation. I am hard pressed to think of anything I've ever done which has been in front of as many eyes.
That's saying something, since I have shipped quite a few products - some of them AAA games with large marketing spend - and have been playing music in the public eye for much longer than I've been making software. This little notification pop-up in an Xbox One ad may be the biggest thing I've ever done.
Of course, I gushed about that to my colleagues who had worked on Skype for Windows 8 and got some condescending pats on the head. Reach is relative :)
Still, getting to make things that are useful and having a lot of people use them is the reason product people like me do what we do. So reach feels good, man. What's the "biggest" thing you've ever done? And how do you (relatively, in terms of reach, engagement or even meaning) define big anyway?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI think it's pretty fucking awesome that something you worked on was up on center stage, that's a pretty cool thing to see something like that go through. I always knew you were capable but you know, WOW. Skype for XBOX One is pretty cool and I have been impressed with your end of the call when we do actually Skype.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you've been enjoying the Skype on Xbox calls! Even in Beta with the over-zooming camera and echo - we've still got lots of work to do :)
DeleteThe deleted part of your comment is actually exactly what I was trying to get at - how do we judge what is "kind of a big deal"? "Big deal" being a completely subjective assessment, to be sure - what's important to each of us and gives our life or work value is wildly different, and usually has very little to do with the amount of fame and number of eyeballs on it :p
It interests me because analyzing various types of value metrics is what I do for a living, and it's really easy with things like reach (connected/active users, number of impressions) but when it comes to engagement and how meaningful something is, it can be very difficult to gauge quantitatively. The wedding one is a very cool one - I think it's amazing that you've played such a pivotal role in one of the most important events in people's lives! That's "big".