This particular situation struck me as having parallels with our development of EditLive! and web based rich text editors in general.  At the highest level EditLive! is basically a word processor for the web.  It's got most of the features that you might find in Microsoft Word or Open Office with some tweaks to make them more applicable to web documents e.g. generating standards compliant HTML for starters.

At the outset this doesn't sound difficult, after all we've had many of these features in Microsoft Word, Open Office or even the browser (when it comes to rendering) for years.  Yet that apparent ease doesn't parallel with Ephox's experience in development.  We have been, and still are, developing EditLive! in its present form for 6 years now, since I started at Ephox in fact.  However, that's nothing compared with MS Office that's been around for over 20 years!  The features that we all take for granted in Microsoft Office are (mostly) well designed and the result of the significant levels of investment that you'd expect from Microsoft.  It's when you take a much closer look at the web standards and user behaviour that you start to realize how complex the task of creating a word processor is (cue the Formula 1 analogy).

As the product manager for EditLive! I've experienced this effect for several years now when defining the specifications for EditLive!.  Whether it's a specification for track changes, how specific keys work in various situations (e.g. "Enter" or "Tab") or even down to the level of how text renders on the screen each area has a surprising amount of detail to consider and nuances to implement.  For instance, in HTML try checking out the difference between PTs, PXs and EMs for fonts and did you know that PXs can be considered a relative measurement?

At Ephox we've put a lot of investment into these little things in the past because we believe the little things are important for authors.  The fact that the tab key indents a list in some cases and in others navigates a table or adds a table row - important.  The use of the Enter key to insert a paragraph in some cases, a <br> in others and in others still a list item - important.  The ability to resize every aspect of a table inline instead of via a dialog - important.  I could go on as there are many, many more of these small items that are important to all the web content creators out there.  However, the most important thing I think you could expect from a rich text editor is that it, and the team behind it, realize the importance of all these little items.

Creating a word processor is much more difficult than it seems just like driving a Formula 1 car and the most important thing in both cases is attention to detail.  In the coming months you'll see that attention to detail coming through yet again in our latest release of EditLive!.  We've been paying attention to rendering, to font sizes, to keyboard behaviour and many other areas.  I'm confident it will be another fantastic release and if you'd like a sneak peek, just head over to LiveWorks!'s Early Access Release and check the latest in EditLive! 6.4 out for yourself.  Improvements to date have focused on CSS rendering for floats and getting sizing correct for different units and there's more to come.

Since the introduction of the major new functionality of the 6.0 release we’ve been working on performance.  “Performance, but EditLive! is a Java applet!?” I hear you say.  That’s right, we’ve been finding some great new ways to get Java to stand up and perform.  And performing it is.  I now routinely experience EditLive! load times of less than 3 seconds!  That’s less than most JavaScript based editors out there (BTW that’s because of the number of HTTP requests they perform). 

In the EditLive! 6.Performance releases (that’s 6.1, 6.2 and 6.Next) we’ve incorporated a whole range of caching routines that people can take advantage of, particularly with 6.1 and 6.2.  In order to take advantage of these things you will have to make some code changes to your integrations, but they are minor and if you have any questions check out the information on LiveWorks! or get in touch with our ever-helpful support team.

As always, we’re running all these improvements on our internal systems as part of our commitment to continual testing.  The performance improvements are outstanding, of course I’m somewhat biased as the EditLive! Product Manager, so please, check out the improvements for yourself.

We’ve also incorporated the new Inline Editing functionality of EditLive! with our EditLive! for ILWCM integration and we’re getting rave reviews from those who’ve rolled it out.  In particular we’ve had a major client shift from using IBM’s JavaScript-based editor to EditLive! and they’ve cut their page load times from over 30 seconds to 3.

The engineering team has definitely pulled some rabbits out of their collective hats and they’re not done yet.  EditLive! 6.Next will contain more improvements.  At this stage I’m not going to spoil the surprise, but I think there will be many out there who appreciate it.

So check out the latest release of EditLive! and experience just how fast Java can be.  Also stay tuned for what’s coming up in the next few months, there are some exciting improvements just around the corner.

Hire young people.  Staff enjoy working in a young company.  No one says, “Wow, I work in a company with lots of old people”.  Young people are flexible and have no baggage or pre-conceived ideas - they are cheaper and they grow with the business.

Scott Farquhar, BRW July - September 2007

Now if you’ve read some of my previous articles you’ll know I’m a fan of what Atlassian is doing, both with their software and for Australian IT.  I’ve met their team on a few occasions and their company culture is something to be envied.  But, while I know quotes can often be taken out of context, I couldn’t help but get a little upset at Scott’s quote.

At only 26 I’m a fully fledged, card carrying member of Gen Y.  Yet, I’ve had the invaluable opportunity of working with many older (I won’t call anyone old) people, at Ephox, Ephox’s partner organizations, other business connections and through my MBA.  Those older people have excellent ideas, are definitely flexible and can bring a wealth of experience to many situations.  Conversely I’ve met many younger people who can be stubborn, close minded and naive.

While it may sound cliched, I believe the kind of age that Scott is talking about is truly only a state of mind.  I don’t think anyone ever wants to be perceived as “old” and certainly not the kind of “old” that carries around baggage and a wealth of preconceptions.  However, I think there are many organizations out there who artificially “age” their employees.  Organizations whose culture kills innovation with processes and cost efficiencies.  Organizations who don’t support their employees and cannot see the value in suggestions from those at the coal face. 

If you want innovative people, if you want your people to be unafraid of baggage and to discard their pre-conceived ideas then you need to support them, whether they are young or old, through the culture of your company.  If you think I’m crazy then check out the work of Ricardo Semler at Semco and see what a huge difference a supportive company culture can make.  Whether the people in your organization are young or not-so-young, if your culture enables them to think freely and is supportive of continuous innovation and improvement then to me that is more of a recipe for success then hiring any number of young people.

Hire the best people, independent of their age.  Support those people and their ideas throughout your organization.  Listen to them and appreciate the perspectives and experience they bring whether they are young or old.  Encourage them to be flexible and to challenge preconceptions.  In return provide your staff with flexibility, understanding and challenge your own preconceptions.  Your business and it’s people will grow together.

Damien Fitzpatrick, Conceptual Clarity - August 2007

So now I was prepared for the debt, it was time to go out and get me some debt

Deal Directly with the Banks

Sorry to all the mortgage brokers out there but I found it much better to deal directly with the banks.  The impression that I got was that the brokers couldn’t offer me anything better than what the banks gave them to offer.  Unfortunately, the ones I spoke to, did not seem to be able to wheel and deal with the banks on my behalf.  So I took a few recommendations from the brokers, a few of my own and I went shopping.

Get the TOTAL Monthly Repayment (INCLUDING fees)

Now’s the time to check your research.  Note that some banks “avoid” publishing some comparison rates by using “extras” packages.  These can escape the comparison rates rules because they aren’t fees - they’re “extras”.  That doesn’t mean that they are bad loans, I have an extras package on my loan and it still worked out cheaper (as I wanted the features).  What you need to do is ask for the comparison rate that includes the extras package.  I found that not all banks have this instantly accessible…but they do have it if you ask for it. 

You should also be able to get a monthly repayments figure off the bank at this stage.  This will tell you exactly where you’re at and is the key to comparing the loans for you.  It will take into account your deposit, the value of the house, the mortgage insurance, the fees etc and wrap it up into the single number that’ll tell you if you can afford things or not!

Make Them Work for Your Business

So after doing all the other things here’s the bit where I got the best deal.  I made the banks work for my business.  While it might seem like they’re doing you a favour by lending you all that cash, I found that it was a very competitive market out there.  The banks are very eager to get your business.  I found that each lender had a loans officer and they were exceptionally helpful.  While this might seem counter intuitive, I received the best customer service experience by far with the major banks.  In the end it came down to two banks for us - the Commonwealth Bank and Westpac.

So what I did was play these final two banks against each other…remember, they WANT your business.  Each time I got an offer from one, I went back to the other with the offer and asked them to beat it.  I went through this a few times until finally, I had the best offer.  In fact, the offer was good enough that the competing bank advised me to go with it because they simply couldn’t do better (I love a bit of honesty in sales!).

The End

So you might notice I’ve not mentioned who our loan is with.  That’s intentional as the service I received from both of those final two lenders was outstanding and in the end, the difference for us was around $25/month.  Yes, one offer was better than the other, but it’s close enough that anyone reading this and employing the same techniques may get a different result…and who am I to stand in the way of competition.

Either way, I did manage to save over $100/month from the advertised rate.  It might not sound like much, but over 30 years that’s a lot of cash.

I hope the advice has been helpful to you, and good luck getting the best deal on your loan.

So here’s how I did it - note that these are just my experiences, it’s a wide and varied market out there so you may be able to do better than me…

Be a Knowledgable Consumer

The most important thing to remember is that while a mortgage does involve a lot of money, you have to approach it as you would any other big purchase.  Survey the market, work out what features you want in a home loan and go into the process with your eyes open.  When you’re doing this there are a few options to keep in mind:

• Decide on variable vs fixed vs split loans (I obviously went with the split because I like having a bet each way)
• Think about features like offset accounts, credit cards, redraw and accessibility to ATMs and branches.  Usually these cost extra but they might be worth it for you
• Be careful about honeymoon rates - look at what the rate returns to after the honey moon is over

As a consumer the most important thing you can be armed with is knowledge.  I found the Infochoice web site to be very useful here.

Look at Comparison Rates and Fees

You need to be able to compare apples with apples and that’s what comparison rates give you.  In Australia, by law, all the lenders have to publish comparison rates.  These rates wrap up all their fees, charges and costs into a single rate.  Comparison rates give you exactly that - the basis for which to compare one loan with another.

Talk to Multiple Lenders

It’s important that you talk to more than just a single broker or bank to get the best deal.  I talked to 4 brokers and a few banks during the time we were looking for a mortgage.  While most brokers were great, one was particularly pushy about getting our business and tried persuading us not to talk to anyone else through various selling approaches.  A few things that I found helped when talking to different lenders:

• Tell them that they are in a competitive situation - if they get stand-offish or try to tell you not to talk to anyone else then I would advise you talk to someone else
• Ask them directly for their best deal keeping in mind all the features you’ve decided on
• In the case of brokers make yourself aware of the commissions that they get for various loans.  While they always have to disclose commissions on the product you decide to go for (if you go with them) make sure you are aware of whether they get flat commissions independant of the loan you decide on - Mortgage Choice has this kind of policy 

By the time I had done all of the above I felt well and truly prepared for all the debt I was about to get into.  Stay tuned for Part II - The Loan

This caused me to think about all those other people that I rely on both in professional and personal capacities.  I couldn’t get through an average day without having to work with people and indeed rely on many of them.  As a knowledge worker it’s really people that enable me to achieve what I have to at work.  Despite this, sometimes I find it’s easy to forget those who enable me to do my job.

As I reflected on this I realized how much my success and even the success of Ephox depends on the relationships we have built over time.  There are people who I know I can call and indeed rely on to get something done, get it done to the best of their ability and get it done well.  After looking back on my experiences in laying the floor though, I began to wonder if we really recognize the importance of those every day relationships.   So a big thank you to all of you, whether you’re in the Ephox engineering team, a partner organization or even my father, I appreciate the help, and don’t let me forget how much you’ve helped me out.

Also, I can't help but give EditLive! a plug here, you'll note that I'm using a table for layout on that page and I must say that EditLive! made it really simple to put the pictures in and get a decent page up and running quickly.  Also, thanks to the guys in engineering for fixing collapsed borders in EditLive!.  It makes dealing with tables so much easier.

Actually, on second thoughts that definition doesn't sound half bad.  The step that I'm more likely to stumble on is the next question, which is almost invariably, "so what does the product manager actually do?"  For that answer I'm usually somewhat more glib and say something like "anything and everything" or "whatever's required".  However, with some new PMs coming on board at Ephox I feel compelled to work on developing a better definition.

I've been browsing around a bit today and so far I've come up with the excellent article on Ken Norton's blog entitled How to Hire a Product Manager (not that I'm encouraging anyone to start looking for my replacement).  Ken has done a nice job of summing up some of my experiences from product management and I think that this article serves as a good starting point for anyone looking for some insight on the questions about what a product manager actually does.  I can't point to one single thing that is more important than another in Ken's post so I guess my best advice is to get across them all if you're wanting to get into product management.  

In addition to the skills needed to get the job and the skills mentioned in Ken's post, I would like to add some of my own:

• Know your customers - This is an obvious one, but something I always like to remind myself of.  Over the years I've had the opportunity to meet quite a few of Ephox's clients in person and spoken to many hundreds more on the phone.  I'm still amazed at some of the insights that can be gotten when you take the time to sit down and talk with people.  There have been many ideas that ended up on the cutting room floor after a few in depth conversations and others that have been picked off the bottom of a pile of papers and implemented because it's more useful than anyone might think.  Above all things, remember that you are the voice of the customers in the development process.
• Know your customers (Part II) - There are some customers out there who will understand your product almost as well as you do, if not better - know these people.  They are some of the best people to field test new functionality with.  The good news is that these people usually aren't hard to find, they're the ones coming through with all the support requests.  If you don't know who those people are then go over and talk to the people in support because they'll know.
• Be your product's biggest fan - That might sound immodest but if you don't like it then no one else will.  If you don't believe in the things your product can do and the pain points it can address then you might as well give up now.  Yes, your product will have its flaws, they all do and you need to know them, but don't forget about the strengths, you'll need to know those too when it comes to talking with sales and marketing.

Finally, as someone who hopes he never stops learning, I would be interested in hearing from anyone else as to what they think is important for a product manager.  You'll find the comments field below…I'd love for you to use it.

I'm going to try and get back to posting every couple of days with something interesting, but before I get into that, here's a run down on what's been happening.

Role Changes

• The biggest news is that I'm no longer the EditLive! Product Manager, that title now goes to Rob (and he's doing a great job so far).  I am still at Ephox and I am still a product manager, only the products have changed.  I am now heading up our efforts with both IBM and a new initiative called E2.0.  For now I'm going to let that remain a mysterious code-word but you can be certain that there will be some more blog posts about that shortly.
• I'm also no longer in charge of non-IBM integrations with EditLive!.  That job now goes to Adrian.  This is an area where my attention was often lacking and I think that Adrian is going to do an excellent job.

Travel News

• I spent most of April in the USA talking with clients and attending conferences and came home with a suitcase full of shopping, great feedback on E2.0 and some interesting experiences in capital raising.  This time I was in the Bay Area for the whole time which made a nice change from my usually hectic travel schedules.
• I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium whilst there and I must say it was amazing.  If you're ever in the Bay Area and can take the drive from San Francisco down to Monterey then I highly recommend visiting.  A few tips though:
  • Visit during the week, it was incredibly crowded on the weekend
  • Don't go when it's raining

Business News

• I've spent some time recently helping out a few friends with some business ideas.  Now, I know from meeting a lot of people in "The Valley" that I'm no business guru, but I do like to help where I can.  This has really opened my eyes to a few things and I hope to have some interesting posts about that in the coming week or two.
• I attended the Web 2.0 Expo whilst in San Francisco and was a little awed at the level of attention various technologies were getting.  I was excited by some of the demonstrations I saw, while many others had me wondering if another bubble was emerging - I guess time will tell.
• After talking with clients and with many a representative of Enterprise 2.0 startups I was amazed at the growing dichotomy in business software between traditional and cautious approaches to business software and new, innovative and consumerized approaches. Both approaches certainly have benefits and both approaches have often vocal proponents and opponents.  We are certainly living in interesting times and I'm going to be very interested to see what level of success Enterprise 2.0 startups (Ephox included) are going to have amongst the traditional enterprise customers and vendors.  Whatever happens I'm more convinced than ever that it's going to be a fun ride for the next few years and I'm glad that I'm on board.

School News

• Finally I am back at university, taking a business law subject to get that much closer to finishing my MBA.  I've only had one class so far, but it appears that Australia's legal framework may not be quite as dry as I once thought.  Certainly having an interesting lecturer helps on that front so a heads up to Gavin Nicholson (unfortunately I couldn't find if Gavin has a blog, so I've just linked to his QUT staff profile).

Queensland is currently riding the wave of Australia's mineral boom, a great thing for the state's economy.  Here in sunny Queensland we have enormous coal, alluminum and other mineral reserves, all of which are adding to the economy, offering jobs and attracting investment in spades (excuse the pun).  However, there is bad news in the offing for some other industries, including IT.  I've heard that IT-related enrolements are significantly down in two of Queensland's key universities, the Queensland University of Technology and the University of Queensland.  They are down so much that QUT has dramatically reduced the size of its IT faculty and UQ is preparing to locate IT teaching at one of its secondary campuses outside of central Brisbane.

Further to this one of the Australian Fairfax papers recently published an article indicating that this is a national trend (it's quite an interesting article, so give it a read), with IT enrolements down at many east-coast universities.  For interest sake I also did a quick survey to see if jobs were also down, but they aren't.  A quick survey shows there are many jobs with IT staff of all kinds - from the help desk through to product management - in good demand all over Australia.

So there's not been a reduction in the number of IT jobs, nor does there appear to be a reduction in salaries, if anything they've increased.  Indeed as the flow-on effects of the economic boom kick in surely there will likely be more positions available with good salaries.  Though, from Ephox's experience in recruiting it is becoming harder to find the right people to fill IT positions and I expect that this is being felt throughout the industry. 

As an industry we should be asking ourselves how we can make this industry more attractive to young people seeking a career.  When I was at university I had never heard of product management and I never expected to be travelling the globe visiting clients, the industry has definitely delivered all I expected and then more.  We need to do a better job of articulating the opportunities within IT, the deversity of roles available and the fact that while the bubble burst, IT never went away and is a much needed part of business and our daily lives.