Telling the stories of products in South East Asia
Hi everyone, my name is Colin Pal and in my maiden post, I’d like to talk about Product Un(censored) as a product, its role within the product ecosystem and what I’m hoping to achieve.
In the beginning…
Some of you will be familiar with the story of how I started PM Huddle, a meet up group for the Product Management community in Malaysia after years of searching for one unsuccessfully. I am extremely proud to say that after 4 years, we are still going on strong with the current organising committee of Jeremy Ong, Chin Wye Jin and myself.
However, while PM Huddle serves the needs of the product community in Malaysia, one need that kept coming up in these meets and other product communities in and around the region was the lack of Asian centric stories and experiences. I’m super privileged to be part of the regional product collective Product Tonic and I’ve been thinking about how to amplify those past learnings to a wider audience. Even more than that, I also wanted to find a way that future learnings from around the region could be easily shared. This had been on my mind for more than 2 years but I never got around to doing it until now.
After getting laid off due to the Covid-19 pandemic in April 2020, I decided (amongst many other things) that it was finally time to get off my butt and get this show on the road.
The Vision…
When trying to get this off the ground, there were a few things that I was very sure of:
- It was going to focus on South East Asia (SEA, as opposed to greater Asia) — I grew up, studied and thus far, spent my entire working career here. It made sense to have a product passion project focused in my own backyard. Perhaps one day it will expand, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
- I wanted to tell the stories — I’m not thinking of creating any specific study syllabus or anything great at this point; just relatable and conversational content
- Start small — I really do not know where this will take me and how much effort I’ll be able to invest, so always best to start with an MVP. I have a whole backlog of things I want to do, but let’s validate this as an idea first.
Next, it was time to think of a name.
Product Un(censored)…
Coming up with a name was the most difficult part. Previously, I had considered and even purchased the domain www.producting.co, but I never did anything with it and it lapsed. This turned out to be a good thing because as time passed, the name producting did not sound as cool anymore. So when I started doing this in earnest, I was forced to think of a new name, and out of that, Product Un(censored) was born.
The name Product Un(censored) really resonated with me because it reflects that kind of product I want to create; conversational, relational content which is candid, honest and not sugar coated. Basically, uncensored. The best part, the domain www.productuncensored.com was available, and cheap!
What’s next?
So, I have finally gotten this project off the ground. What’s next? For starters, I’ll be sharing some of my previous conversations where I’ve discussed product in Asia and AsiaPac, and I’ve got some content I’m prepping up my sleeve, so stay tuned!
Colin | Product Un(censored)
