Chinese Hanzi Mnemonics #9: 手 and Mickey Mouse's glove

Today's Hanzi is 手(Shǒu) that means "Hand".

The way I remember it is by figuring that the three strokes on the right are fingers, the three strokes on the left are the 3 joints you have on your hand and the vertical one is for the thumb that is opposite to your other fingers.

But really? Only 4 fingers? Just remember Mickey Mouse has only 4 because Disney said it was easier to draw and my mnemonics are all about drawing so why would we want to put 5? :D

Even better, the three left strokes are also pictured in the Mickey's glove, so for 手, just think of Mickey Mouse and you are good :)

Chinese Hanzi Mnemonics #8: 女,子,好

Today, 3 hanzi for the price of 1!

•  女 (Nǚ) means woman: think of a pregnant woman
• 子 (zi) means child: think of a baby in its cover
• 好 (hǎo) means good, fine: a woman and her child together is good, right?

Even easier is to associate all these 3 hanzi and meanings with famous representations of Saint Mary and baby Jesus such as the following ones (a classical one and a chinese one :))

 

THE big difference between Product Management and Project Management

The Product Manager checking whether the Project Manager builds the castle he asked for. 

Here in France (maybe in your country too), product management is often confused with project management mainly because there is the word management in both. In addition to that, in software companies where the Agile Scrum methodology is used, the product owner is a kind of hybrid making the distinction even more complex.

Please note, that I am not saying that one is better than the other. We need both and it is important to really understand what they mean.

In France, management often implies managing a team (even if no hierarchical ties exists). The relationships involved in product management do not seem to be understood as managing a product team whereas a project team is often clearly identified.

As a reminder, the product manager is responsible for defining the right product to sell, at the right price, at the right time, at the right place and at the right cost to ensure his business is profitable.

On the other side, the project manager is responsible for producing the defined product, at the agreed time by using the agreed resources.

The main difference I see between product management and project management is that the first one is strategical while the latter is tactical.

That has several consequences:

• 1 Product can contain several projects. 1 Project is in one product (most of the time).
• Product is about outwards success (company vs rest of the world). Project is about inwards success (within the company)
• Product management is central. Project management is peripheral.
• Product manager conceive and plan. Project management execute that plan.

What do you think?

Chinese Hanzi Mnemonics #7: 飞(Fēi)/Fly(in the air)

To remember the hanzi 飞(fēi) that means "to fly", I try to picture a kind of goose/chicken.

Pretty obvious, isn't it?

Day-to-day Product Management #2: 2 months after launching an iPhone game

Since the last month post on this topic, I did 2 actions for promoting the iphone app I developed:

• ask people I knew to provide feedback on the game on the App Store: The game is now 5 stars and has 3 comments.
• put some links (5) on French news websites comments section for relevant articles and relevant audience

The impact is very limited since in one month I got only 11 more downloads :(

For the coming month I will try the following advertising platforms and let you know about the results:

-Facebook ads

-Google Ads

-iAds

Chinese Hanzi Mnemonics #6: 电 (Benjamin Franklin involved :))

Today's Hanzi mnemonic is for 电(Diàn) that means electricity.

Look how the 电 hanzi looks like a kite. To associate it with electricity, just remember how the famous Benjamin Franklin's experiment turned out.

Chinese Hanzi Mnemonics #5: 车(Chē)/car

Day-to-day Product Management #1: 1 month after launching an iPhone game

Today, I want to share with you my day-to-day experiences on distributing an iphone app.

In my previous product management roles at HTC, distributing and advertising mobile apps was handled by dedicated marketing teams. Therefore I want to enhance this part of marketing skills , the P of promotion :).

In order to do that, I chose to do a very soft launch (almost secret one!) to have a reference point of what happens when you only share the link with your friends on Facebook and talk about it around a beer.

As you will see in a bit, there is no free lunch and miracle did not happen!

Firstly, I chose to do a copycat of the successful Flappy bird game because from a product perspective, millions of users have shown interest in it and copycats have been downloaded thousands of time. So why not use it as a basis and add a funny twist to it?

As a French, I have been amused by the affair our President had earlier this year and I used this funny story as a basis for the game.

So after developing the game, I pushed it in iTunes Connect, which is the tool you need for publishing your apps on the App Store. Once released officially on the 29th of May 2014, I shared the link on several channels (and did again after a minor update on the 13th of June 2014):

• 2nd of June 2014: 
• Twitter share:

Look! I scored 0 points in Flappy President! http://t.co/S80PZmoPDG pic.twitter.com/q39mmNWbNu
— PA Antonini (@pierreantoine) June 2, 2014

• Facebook share:

                                     

• 11th of June 2014: I posted a brief article on the game on this blog and shared the article on Google+ account (but who cares, no one uses Google+ ;))
• 13th of June 2014: I asked for help on Facebook for translating the game description for iTunes

• 16th of June 2014: I shared a score on Twitter

Look! I scored 11 points in Flappy Prez! http://t.co/S80PZmoPDG pic.twitter.com/5D5E950wUp
— PA Antonini (@pierreantoine) June 16, 2014

19th of June 2014: I share updated version on Twitter and Facebook

Iphone4 bug solved https://t.co/tlLuIIIXhX
— PA Antonini (@pierreantoine) June 19, 2014

To help you visualize my network, I mainly use Facebook (around 500 friends) and I am not a big fan of Twitter (around 150 followers and use it mainly as news feed for tech and entrepreneurship).

So what are the results? Wait for it.... a stunning 123 downloads in one month!!! Youhou!!!

As you can see on the graph, main downloads are around the 13th of June 2014 (when I asked for help on Facebook on this project).

It appears that sharing update on the new version had very low effect (if any) on the 19th of June and after. Since then I have not communicated at all on the app.

So with this, it appears that with no clear promotion strategy, nothing really happens!

From this point on, I need now to test several other channels to measure their ROIs and see whether I can reach the 10K target :)!

So the plan is (and you will soon see the reports):

• Facebook ads
• Google ads (since it's a mobile app, not sure it really makes sense)
• Links in newspapers and forums
• Landing page for the app with a well-formated SEO
• iAd campaigns
• Linkedin share

Stay tuned, more to come soon!!

--Pierre-Antoine Antonini

Chinese Mnemonics #4: 唱 (chàn:to sing)

Today's mnemonics is the one for 唱 (pronounced chàn and meaning to sing)

As you can see, the 3 squares can make you think of 3 open mouths. That's convenient because when you sing you have the mouth wide open but why 3 mouth and why 2 with tongues in the middle (you see them, right?) and 1 without?

My personal way of remembering it is to use St-Augustine's quote: "To sing is to pray twice".
So now, I have one mouth wide open on the left that is for "to sing" and two mouths with tongue on the right that come closer to talk twice and in our case "to pray twice"

Chinese Hanzi Mnemonics #3: 人(rén:person)/大(dà:big/tall)

Today, 2 simple hanzi:

The first one 人 (rén) means a person, people. The first time you see it, you may think directly of a man walking from left to right (without arms, don't ask me why :)).

The second one 大(dà) means big,tall. For me, it's like someone telling you the story of his fishing party and telling how "big" was the fish he caught by extending the arms : "Look, this was an enormous fish, I promise, Big like that!!!"