Giff Constable, The Best Product Person of 2010, is the subject of our first series of 2011. Over the coming weeks I will be sharing a Q&A session I had with Giff — and lending some insight into why Giff truly is The Best Product Person of 2010.

In part 1 of this series, I thought it would be good to start at the beginning and learn just how exactly Giff got to "here."

Getting to here…

> What key people helped shape you into the product manager you are today?

Jeremy Epstein (Trilogy and Ithority, mid-nineties) first introduced me to concepts of good Human-Computer Interface design, and of applying rigor to understanding the problem you want to solve. Chris Carella and Bernie Yee (Electric Sheep Company, latter-2000s) introduced me to the world of game design and useful practices like early paper testing. And over the last 18 months, authors like Eric Ries have helped me take lessons learned over 16 years and 10 products and advance them to a higher level of sophistication.

> How did you decide to become a product manager?

When I was getting close to graduating from college, I seemed to have three possible paths ahead of me: become a lawyer, go market toothpaste, or jump into tech and become an entrepreneur.  My passion lay with the third path, which meant learning how to make great products.

> What inspires you in your day-to-day work?

The desire to create something truly great, a highly self-competitive nature, and loyalty to my colleagues and team.

Stay Tuned

Over the next few weeks I will share more of my interview with Giff Constable, The Best Product Person of 2010, as well as other fascinating product people I met in this journey!

Subscribe now (click here) to make sure you don’t miss any part of this series exploring The Best Product Person of 2010, or any other of the upcoming product person interviews, as well as other insightful posts from The Product Guy.

Enjoy!

Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy