Dancer Test

Are you left-brained or right-brained? Supposedly, your brain lateralization determines how you view this animation.

Some people see her rotating clockwise. Others see her rotating counter-clockwise. Some see her unpredictably changing the direction of her rotation.

Supposedly, people who see clockwise rotation are right brained. People who see counter-clockwise rotation are left brained.

I originally came across this animation here.

Brand Tags

If you haven't already seen Seth Godin's blog entry on it and checked out Brand Tags, take a look now.

A brand is not just a name or a logo. It's a set of associations imprinted in the mind of a customer. At the Brand Tags site, you can say what various popular brands mean to you. You can also see what words other people have associated with brand names. Best of all, you can view a set of these "brand tags" and guess the associated brand name.

What Dimensions Are Best for a Logo?

You're choosing a logo for your company. In all likelihood, you either:

1. Have some creative folks on your team design it.
2. Hire a creative marketing firm to design it.

Then, of course, your team sits down, reviews a bunch of candidate logos, and each one of you spews out a bunch of thoroughly unscientific, personal opinions about which one is "better".

Fans of this blog know (because I have beaten them over the head with it) that the best logos are blank slates (where the non-name portion of the logo conveys little or nothing about your company or product). And you generally should choose a logo with a single color that is the opposite of a major competitor's.

But how tall, and how wide, should your logo be?

Al Ries tells us logotype should fit your eyes: 1 unit high and 2 1/4 units wide.

ProductCampAustin

You may have heard of BarCamp, informal conferences in which developers meet to share ideas about technologies, tools, and practices.

Spurred by Paul Young (of Product Beautiful fame), a group of product managers in Austin is organizing ProductCampAustin, which is a similar event for product managers.

WHAT: ProductCampAustin
WHEN: June 14, 2008
WHERE: St. Edwards University's Professional Education Center (PEC)
9420 Research Blvd
Echelon III Building
Austin, Texas 78759

Sponsors include Pragmatic Marketing, NetStreams, AIPMM, and AustinPMM Forum, Seilevel, and Austin Ventures.

There are two ways you can get more info or get involved:

1. Go to the wiki (collaborative web site) and sign up as a participant.
2. Join the planning group on Google.

Everyone interested in product management, marketing, and development processes is invited, but we encourage attendees to participate (volunteer for setup/teardown, speak, lead a roundtable, set up wifi, etc.) in some fashion.