no.stupid.answers

A word or two from the point of view of a proud Product Manager - yours truly.

On Friday, we wrapped up the 4-day Web 2.0 Expo in New York City. Denise (Graphic Designer), Suzanne (Community Coordinator) and I attended various sessions throughout the week, focusing mainly on community and UI design, but also listening in on the odd session about company and work flow organization.

I, for one, have this stuff coming out of my ears. I’m even dreaming about feeds, friending and unusual mobile devices. But we got a lot out of it.

We should be really proud of what we’ve accomplished with WikiAnswers. Our sandbox method and our tight involvement with the community impressed many people involved in startups and not-so-startups in similar adolescent stages. We’re doing so much right already that at some of the sessions, instead of asking questions, we were able to offer insight.

That said, there’s still a lot to do. It was interesting to hear how the leaders of other web-based community products have chosen to approach issues we deal with every day, like feature requests, the phase 1 rut, out-of-control discussion pages, slow release cycles, user ranking, and so on. We came away from the conference with some very specific takeaways, which I hope will make our sites even richer.

Finally, Dan - our lead Prod Ops guy - and I had the opportunity to show off Answers.com and WikiAnswers at our booth in the expo hall. There was a lot of positive interest, and people loved the reference/community package. And as always… they were astounded that these sites are free.

It was a great week, and one that put WikiAnswers into a lot of perspective for me. I look forward to putting our ideas into action!