Profile
More than 15 years experience product management and design of web and mobile platforms, APIs, developer and consumer software. Ability to identify successful new product opportunities, reinvigorate and grow product lines, set long-term strategy consistent with brand promise, and champion a product internally and externally. Strong technical skills combined with business acumen applied to identify the problems to be solved and work with all the constituents to plan and prioritize.
Bio
Michael Bierman was most recently Principal Product Manager for Developer Tools at Apigee which are defining the rapidly growing "api-economy". Prior to apigee, Bierman worked on products for mobile app developers at Nokia. He has many years of experience in native, embedded, and web software development tools and web technologies. He was the Senior Product Manager for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) at Adobe where he launched SVG and served as Senior Product Manager for the SVG Viewer and guided SVG authoring strategies in Adobe products. Before joining Adobe, Bierman was with Java marketing team at Sun Microsystems, and spent two years as a Product Manager at Microtec/Mentor Graphics working on compilers for embedded systems. Bierman was also Senior Product Manager at eBay.
Professional Highlights
Product Management
- Managed web developer products for Nokia covering 85% of the addressable developer market. Created first four generations of Nokia Web SDK with a team spread over three continents. These products were essential components of Nokia's industry-leading mobile developer offerings.
- Created eBay Blogs to enhance eBay’s renowned community and drive significant natural search traffic through community-created, persistent, rich content. Buyers and sellers used eBay Blogs to enhance their credibility, trustworthiness, and reputation while eBay enjoys increased time on site and transaction volumes.
- Redesigned eBay’s Product Description Pages to drive a $1.8M annual increase in transaction activity and significant increases in page views via natural search.
- Managed all phases of the product life cycle on time and within budget for the Adobe SVG Viewer, including market (MRD) and product requirement (PRD) documents and product integration with Adobe’s authoring tools and servers including Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive and Graphics Server.
- Developed a licensing and distribution strategy for Adobe SVG Viewer, including third-party distribution with partners such as RealNetworks, establishing more than 166 million seats (38% market penetration) installed over approximately 14 months.
- Turned 300 support contracts with non-standard terms worth more than $225M into three standard contracts to ensure Sun could meet the contractual obligations to its Java source licensees. Created royalty and support revenue forecasts.
- Led a cross-functional team to improve the out-of-box experience by simplifying the product installation, increasing customer satisfaction and converting more evaluations into purchases, and saving Microtec more than $250,000 annually.
- Created the prototype and requirements for Microtec’s first on-line documentation system which, increased usability and reduced the cost of documentation by 23%.
- Increased Microtec’s support renewal revenue by 15% in one year.
Evangelism
- Represented Adobe at conferences such as Seybold, Builder.com, and FlashForward. Awarded the Adobe Customer Briefing Center’s Quarterly Top Presenter and Speaker of the Year awards.
- Created an early adopter community to inform and inspire developers by communicating Adobe strategy, delivering announcements, and gathering requirements to establish Adobe’s product leadership.
- Managed staff of five to create and evolve a developer network including demos, whitepapers, and authoring guides to educate and inspire SVG technology adoption.
- Served as Adobe’s Marketing liaison to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) ensuring that Adobe’s messages were congruent with the W3C.
Employment
Apigee 2011 – 2012
Lead cross-product initiatives like Single Sign-On to consolidate eight unique user stores and experiences. Created developer tools such as Console which enable a developer to make an API request in minutes by providing an overview of all the API‘s methods, parameters, default and required values, contextual help, and authentication. Consoles include a social component: allowing developers to share their API requests and responses with other developers and support engineers via facebook, twitter or in blogs. Applied agile principals to achieve monthly release cycles that allowed for rapid innovation and predictability.
Nokia 2008 – 2011
Lead Product Manager, Web Tools
Managed Nokia’s first set of developer web tools starting from a blank slate. The Nokia Web SDK [video] included: Web SDK Simulator built with Qt WebKit; Nokia Designer, a rapid prototyping tool; Nokia Web Runtime plug-in for Eclipse, WRT extension for Adobe Dreamweaver and WRT plugin for Microsoft Visual Studio. These tools enabled the full life cycle of mobile application development, from concept and ideation to publishing. Challenges included aligning diverse and sometimes conflicting requirements and roadmaps for every device and most services in Nokia’s portfolio. An innovator in mobile web technology, Nokia was the first to ship a WebKit-based browser on mobile devices, beating Apple to market by two years.
Product Management and Design Consultant 2007 – 2008
Product definition, requirements development and roadmaps. Recommended changes to product usability, accessibility, and development processes for Assist Guide Information Services and other companies.
Habeas 2006 – 2007
Senior Product Manager
Conceived and launched new products that created a competitive advantage based on Adobe Flex, a Yahoo! Map mashup (patent pending). Developed a platform for a new line of business focused on advertising.
eBay 2005 – 2006
Senior Product Manager, Internet Marketing & Community
Launched new products, such as eBay Blogs and redesigned the Product Description pages, to enhance the eBay Community and maximize natural search traffic and decrease eBay’s paid search expenditure.
Product Management Consultant 2001 – 2005
Consulted for a number of companies on a variety of product management and marketing areas including: Adobe, BEA, enScaler, Ideaburst, Open Design Alliance, and Software Mechanics.
Adobe 1999 – 2001
Senior Product Manager And Evangelist
Managed the Adobe SVG Viewer, a browser plug-in similar to Flash. As SVG Evangelist, influenced the Creative Suite-SVG authoring features and created a vibrant developer community. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is the W3C’s XML-based language for scriptable 2D vector graphics that enables data-driven graphics for web, mobile and print, and is now supported natively in all popular web browsers.
Sun Microsystems, Java Software 1997 – 1999
Product Manager, Java Source Licensee Engineering
Managed an engineering services product and provided customer relations and advocacy by serving as the liaison among the engineering, legal, and sales organizations.
Microtec, A Mentor Graphics Company 1995 – 1997
Project Manager Marketing
Managed a compiler and IDE product, introduced new licensing programs, and served as Lead Auditor for ISO 9000 registration for Microtec’s Integrated Development Environments (IDE) and a Real-Time OS.
Globetrotter Software, A Macrovision Corporation 1994 – 1995
Training/Technical Support
Developed and delivered course materials, provided end user and developer support, and produced and edited end-user and developer manuals and marketing materials for Globetrotter’s license-management products for enterprise and software publishers.
Sun Microsystems, SunPro Developer Tools 1990 – 1994
Product Manager for compiler licensing, served as the FrameMaker Guru and developed tools and scripts for document development for Sun's AnswerBook documentation, a display Postscript-based hypertext system; a precursor to the web and PDF and technical editor for developer documentation.
Education, Certifications, Publications, and Awards
- Certified ScrumMaster, cPrime 2011
- U.S. Patent Pending 60/950,102 “Method and Apparatus For Visualizing and Optimizing Message Transfer in Reputation Networks,” Bierman et al., July 16, 2007
- Bachelor of Arts; California State University, Northridge
- Dean’s List for Computer Forensics coursework/ Computer Science Program, College of San Mateo 2004
- Mediation Certification, California Community Dispute Resolution
- CTM Award; ToastMasters International
- Cagle, Kurt, foreword by Bierman, Michael; SVG Programming. Berkeley: Apress, July 2002
- Award for Excellence, Society for Technical Communication Style Guide 1994
- ISO 9000 Lead Auditor Certification
- Adobe Customer Briefing Center’s Quarterly Top Presenter and Speaker of the Year awards 2001
Activities
- Founder: www.AdobeAlumni.com AdobeAlumni on LinkedIn
- Moderator: Software Product Marketing Discussion