I’d like to introduce you to springpad’s Community Manager. She’s totally in love with springpad, but has promised to put that aside for you – our community of users. Oh right, her name is Katin (that’s me)!

Up until now I was the Product Manager for springpad, but have always felt that building a product that truly addresses a user’s wishes & needs is really more about focusing on the user than on the product itself.  Then, at BlogHer Boston last week Sarah Dopp asked me, “So, are you the Community Manager?” – After hearing myself stumble through a hesitant reply, I decided that it’s time to declare my focus… So I say it now with confidence and excitement. Yes, I am the Community Manager.

So, what’s that mean? Mainly, I’ll be listening. Listening to you talk about your lives, your work & your passions. Then I’ll figure out how springpad can help. Our goal is to build a product that is simple, elegant & above all useful – something that helps real people get things done & organize their lives.

In fact, let’s start now. Tell me what is bugging you today, what’s rolling around in the back of your mind. What tasks, appointments, projects, parties, trips, plans are stressing you out? Check out the current version of springpad, then tell me how YOU imagine it being useful in your life. I’ll do my best to make sure we build the features you need.

Find me on twitter, at thesimpleme, or on Get Satisfaction. Send me a message from the “Give Feedback” button in springpad, via email (feedback AT springpartners DOT com), or just by commenting on this post. Basically, find me wherever you want to.

Kristen from mommyneedsacocktail.com at BlogHer ‘08

Hi, I’m Katin, a Segment Manager at Spring Partners. My job is to understand our target customers – their needs and wants – so that I can be sure we are building a product that they will love. To this end, I attended BlogHer ’08 in San Francisco this past weekend. It would be putting it lightly to say that I learned a ton.

Quick Recap:
A swarming mass of lady bloggers (and a few fellas) descended on the Westin in SF for a 3-day event focused on all things blog, featuring informative sessions, interesting keynotes addresses, stimulating panels, fun social events and tons of schwag! Each session was “live blogged” – check out the notes. Many attendees ”live tweeted” the sessions – it was pretty awesome to have so many conversations going at once! Some of the best: @ccarfi (blog), @gwenbell (blog), @wiredprworks (site).

Why did I attend BlogHer ‘08?
BlogHer is a great organization, not just because of all of the alignment they are creating in their community, but also because bloghers are gifted at reaching the masses of ‘regular’ people out there, not just the techie elite that we are so used to hearing from.

My goals in attending the convention included building a network of bloggers, beginning to learn what’s important to them, and test-running the springpad offering to them. Oh, and I also wanted to learn some new tricks for our blog, thesimpleme.

Bloggers are awesome:
At BlogHer, I identified two main groups of bloggers. First there are those who write about their own lives, their personal experiences and perspectives, and the things for which they hold much passion. I found this group to be really interesting, and not only for their desire & ability to share their innermost thoughts with the larger world; They often straddle the line between whimsy & heart-wrench, and somehow do it with a ton of class. The second group are those bloggers who aim to create useful content & advice for readers to consume, regardless of whether they come from a more traditional journalism background or are the lucky part of our population that grew up with the web. This group was equally compelling, mostly due to their laser-sharp focus on quality.

Feedback on the product we’re building, springpad:
When I described both the springpad concept and a few tangible uses of the web app, the responses were mixed, from “I totally need that!” to “What does it do again?” to “Oooh, I could be a life expert.” Generally, though, I walked away from BlogHer with the sense that we are on the right track:

• Bloggers are just like regular people – some use the internet for everything & some still only use it for smaller tasks. We are targeting those users who are not only comfortable with the web, but also expect a lot from it.
• It’s important that we build a product for the typical web user, not the uber-tech geek.
• Life is hectic, and many of us need help organizing it. Our tool has got to immediately provide that help.
• There are lots of people putting great advice on the web and lots of people out there looking for it. We will try to bring those people together.
• Many of us are comfortable living our lives online, but we’ve got a growing desire to make it personal, secure and even more useful. Our product will be all three!
• I’ve got to find a way to be more succinct in my explanation of springpad & its uses.

I’ll be writing more on these topics in the weeks to come.

Best moment of the weekend:
The BlogHer Community Keynote – On Friday night 21 bloggers stood at the front of the ballroom & read their posts. The writing was superb & the delivery even better. The crowd went from teary eyes to roaring laughter. It then hit me that this is what BlogHer is all about – it was such a unifying moment for all of us in the room. Oh, and then there was the session with Dooce!

I truly appreciated the opportunity to attend BlogHer, to join this community and to meet so many amazing women! (I’ll be in touch) Would love to hear your comments on the conference or my observations.

Over the past several years, we’ve all used the Web to get things done and to create, consume and share information and advice. We’ve actively engaged in a wide variety of user-generated activities that’s fueled the explosive growth of social networks, new technologies and fundamentally new ways of interacting with each other.

However, our “social me” – as others including Loic LeMeur have described and visualized it – continues to evolve and fragment, it becomes ever more time consuming and impossible to keep up without making some choices:

The recipe is quite simple (isn’t it always), but the execution much harder. Let go. Let me repeat that. Just let it go. I see Twitter, Friendfeed, and all these other sites as rivers of information, anecdotes, posts, friends. I tap in whenever I feel like it, join the conversation. But I leave when I need to get back to real life. Alexander van Elsas

At the same time, our lives become more complex and demanding and we increasingly have to focus on personal productivity. And while today’s Web world has something for everyone – the problem is, we’re not everyone… you’re you and I’m me. We each have a unique profile and unique needs, and the best way to harness all that the Web has to offer is by helping each of us get things done in the context of our own lives.

And that’s what Spring Partners is all about – using the power of the web to help make each of our lives easier.