Nick Bouton

Ever found yourself staring blankly at your 🖥, unsure where to start on a creative work project? Recently I shared a new Copilot tip with my fellow Customer Experience PMs at MSFT: using Copilot to develop an adoption asset for a new feature. The results were so impressive that I'm excited to share them with you! Copilot wasn’t just a time-saver (it shaved four hours off my usual workflow)— it was a creativity booster. Here's how I leveraged Copilot to elevate my ✍: ✅ 1. Groundwork: I began by gathering relevant content to ensure Copilot stayed true to our product's branding & facts. Prompt: Help me find documents (files, emails & chats) that contain information about <specific topic> that could be used as sources of input for an <adoption asset> I need to create ✅ 2. Brainstorming: Copilot helped me brainstorm compelling subject lines that connect emotionally with the audience. - Start by giving Copilot a specific role in your prompt - Define role at beginning of prompt, Copilot executes instructions in order.   Prompt: Act as a marketing copywriter and generate a list of 5 headlines for an <adoption asset > to help <e.g., announce the launch of new product>. The headline should compel <target audience > to read on, so they <how you want to appeal to reader emotionally>. ✅ 3. Drafting: I set specific guidelines for the output, from structure to style, ensuring the content was impactful and precise. - Be specific about the elements you want included in the asset - Specify information sources. Type ‘/’ in the text input area to quickly reference files and/or people. -  Check for accuracy Prompt: Act as a marketing copywriter and help me draft an engaging and informative <adoption asset > targeted at <audience>. The goal is to <e.g., announce the launch of new product>. The adoption asset should catch the reader's attention, inform them about <e.g., the availability of new feature/product>, and inspire them to <e.g., start using it today>. Include the following elements: ·      An introduction that captures attention and introduces <new product> ·      An overview of key features and benefits. ·      Instructions on how users can get started ·      A call to action that <e.g., encourages use> Use the information from </name of file> to help you write the email. The tone should be <e.g., professional yet inviting>. ✅ 4. Refining: We then simplified technical jargon and explored various tones and headings to better resonate with our audience. Prompt: Condense this complex information into a succinct, engaging summary focusing on [specific aspect] ✅ 5. Final review: Promoting Copilot to 'editor-in-chief', I ensured the final draft was inclusive, engaging, and polished. Prompt: As a copy editor, please review this text and provide suggestions for making it more inclusive and engaging.  Provide feedback on how to enhance its impact. Imagine what you could achieve with the extra time gained!

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We're looking for a senior-staff PM now at Honeycomb, who will drive and own a multi-year vision for a net-new, permanent and significant expansion of Honeycomb's product surface area: https://lnkd.in/g2sM_TfC I’ve sat in this role for 3.5 years now, on and off, so you’ll be inheriting a lot of my regretful decisions. But I’m here to help you navigate that! It involves big data (for real), deep OSS involvement, lots of customers who love the product, and a great team to boot. If you like the idea of thinking through how you’ll turn 10M events per second into 100k, without breaking the bank, and making it as semi-automatic as possible, without losing signal on that data, and building a compelling UI that lets people build and monitor this stuff, this might be up your alley! Wanna talk with tons of customers and spicy sales engineers who have to sometimes commit code crimes to make stuff work, and then tell you about it? Wanna make painful prioritization decisions? Wanna find a way to execute on a multi-year vision and not get lost along the way? Click the link above. Wanna eat shit in front of a customer whose exact set of constraints violates every tradeoff decision you made? And then go back to them 4 months later with the good news that you’ve fixed it all? Come say hi! Wanna try to wrap your head around someone's perceived notions of how observability works, and find creative ways to reorient their worldview? Hi hello please apply. Wanna get deeply involved in the #opentelemetry community, become a core contributor, attend lots of community events, and be continuously infused with customer problems and feedback and also overall industry directions? You know what to do. Wanna work with a very product-minded engineering team who will push you to get stuff done? Wanna be a part of a group that is usually fast, usually right on the first go of things, and isn't afraid to try things and maybe pull them back if they're not working? Wanna have fun too? Clicky clicky.

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As a long-time Line 6 Helix user, I found this interview with its architect Eric Klein really interesting. Much good talk about user experience and usability. "If somebody tells you there's a problem with what you're offering them, they're almost always right. But if someone tries to give you a solution to that problem, they're almost always wrong." Chimes strongly with my experiences over the years. Address needs. Solve problems. Taking feature requests from users is how products can die.

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If you've ever had to deal with inconsistent UX, multiple generations of design systems, and the perpetual back and forth between UI and backend developers - there's hope, you are not alone. And let me just say it out loud - there's no "full stack" development - it is simply impossible for an engineer to stay up to date on all the development across JavaScript, frameworks, Node.js, Kubernetes, Java, etc. You either have deep and somewhat narrow, or broad and shallow. These problems are quite common for everyone who has inherited an existing product (which is like 99.9% of us). This blog post by Kyle Shevlin about building a tightly-enforced composable design system resonated with me. #UI #designsystem #react https://lnkd.in/gStEWHtC

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🚀 MosaicKB intelligent highlighting just got an update! We've been working to improve automatic highlighting in MosaicKB's collaborative Live Docs and Playbooks. We've now added the ability to automatically reveal related terms (e.g. "a11y" -> "accessibility") in documentation. 🔍 What it does: - Automatically highlights documented terms AND the aliases you define for those terms in your docs - Provides instant access to canonical definitions with a single click - Can be turned off when reading - Works seamlessly across Playbooks and Live Docs - Aliases span a variety of content - use it to highlight users' preferred names, alternative names for things, or an abbreviation for a documented organization name, for example. 🎯 Why we built it: - Terminology at organizations evolves over time and across team boundaries - We want to improve clarity and concept connectivity, even when non-canonical terms are used to reference ideas in documentation. 👀 See it in action: Check out our 10-second demo video showcasing how MosaicKB handles terms like "accessibility" and its alias "a11y". Whether you're dealing with technical terms, industry acronyms, or company-specific lingo, MosaicKB's new feature ensures everyone's on the same page. 👉 How are you managing jargon in your organization's documentation? Share your thoughts below, or sign up to join our beta testing group this fall - https://lnkd.in/gVrYWF3S #KnowledgeManagement #ProductUpdate #TechnicalWriting

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WAIT Are you telling me that now Shopify is using LLM's to make more simple the generation of GraphQL queries?? 😮 .dev Assistant gotta be one of the best features for developers from Shopify, you don't know how complicated it can be for someone to jump into GraphQL without previous knowledge (and the docs are not so easy to read for the beginners). This definitely will push a lot of new features and developments within stores! 🙌 🙌 🙌 This is an amazing way, and a very useful one too, of using LLM's instead of just adding a chat helper to your favorite instant messaging app 😅 Check a demo video from Shopify here! https://lnkd.in/eQcbUg2D #Shopify #ShopifyPlus #GraphQL #Storefront #APIs #LLM #FrontEnd #Learning #Lifehacks

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It'll never be this obvious, but when you're cooking without expert design, you and your engineers will end up JUST LIKE THIS. It's more subtle these days: Missed sprints Unforeseen edge cases Confused customers Broken promises Refund requests Bandaids everywhere Alarming churn Feature bloat Rabbit holing "Nobody gets it, maybe we need an onboarding tutorial!?" ^^ Don't end up in "Panic Land." Get design help now and get it from folks who have been shipping products and building businesses for over 2 decades. #productdesign #apps #SaaS #startupdesign #startups #UX #UI #Productmanagement

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🔧 Attention Developers! Sing-up for the Composable.com Masterclass, led by Orium experts David Azoulay and Danny Lake, for a deep dive into building headless commerce storefronts using Composable UI. This session will focus on practical implementation using Next.js and React, demonstrating how to efficiently architect and design dynamic, scalable commerce platforms. Perfect for developers, architects, and designers eager to enhance their skills with real-world applications. 🗓️ Register today and level up your ecommerce solutions. #DeveloperTraining #TechSkills #NextJS #ReactDevelopment

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What is the VMW pattern? In this article and video, I briefly explained the architecture I developed and the VMW pattern I used for those who are curious. Anyone interested can check it out. I’d be happy to answer any questions you may have. Video: https://lnkd.in/dN5Fz_gS Article: https://lnkd.in/d7z3TXS8 #flutter #dart #birikim

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Let's collectively say no to spamming each other, shall we? In EP 002, I chat with Software Engineering Manager, Laura Bélavoir, as she shares her journey from France to Canada, and Drupal to React. We worked together a couple of years back at Commure. She's now at Okta and in this episode we discuss hiring practices, learning Frontend Development, and interviewing preparation. The 24-minute episode drops this Saturday at 9 am PT, just like your Saturday Morning Cartoons back in the 90s 😀 P.S. Ben D. -- I meant to introduce you both months ago when we recorded this episode...🤷🏽‍♂️ and I am just now checking this off my backlog! ✅ ________ Hi, I'm Henry N., a Recruiting Manager and Jobseeker Podcaster. I crowdsource job search stories from guests on my podcast and turn them into custom Notion Playbooks at https://shorturl.at/HhRog // What's your job search story?

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Episode 2 is live! Laura Bélavoir gives tips on nailing the interview with Software Engineering Managers and learning new skills in tech. Link to our 30-minute episode in the comments. Enjoy!

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New Tutorial: Setting Up Templ Using Nix Flakes. I'm on a little side-quest to see if Go (and/or Rust) are a viable alternative to a NodeJS or PHP heavy stack for small-scope/heavy-traffic websites. While setting up Templ I figured this was a good topic for a Tutorial. P.S. Also peep the new cherry blossom theme! https://lnkd.in/gG8R2QuA

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What do we mean when we talk about "continuous performance monitoring"? It's all about creating guardrails to prevent #webperf / #ux regressions: 🟡 Performance budgets 🟡 Automated testing 🟡 Detailed diagnostics 🟡 Annotated test history Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gDX_9Zuf #pagespeed #sitespeed #webperformance

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How do you tackle technical debt? Every software company has technical debt, and the majority struggle to pay it back. After reading Shape Up, we've been trialing 8-week cycles of a 6-week build phase followed by a 2-week cool down. The cool down phase allows us to catch our breath and prepare for the next cycle. More importantly, it also allows us to focus on technical debt. The 2-week window gives us plenty of dedicated time to focus on large issues that will have significant benefits for future cycles.

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🌟 Exciting times ahead! Next week, my team at Shopify will be coming together to “burst" in-person. This will be my first time meeting the majority of these super humans in real life and I couldn’t be more thrilled. Shopify thrives as a remote organization, but the value of in-person connection cannot be overstated. Meeting face-to-face allows us to build deeper relationships, foster trust, and enhance collaboration in ways that virtual interactions sometimes fall short. It’s about those spontaneous conversations, the shared laughs, and the energy that comes from being in the same room together. These moments of in-person engagement are integral to creating a cohesive and motivated team and will propel us forward in the months to come. I feel very thankful that Shopify believes this as well and allows us to prioritize opportunities to gather. I’m looking forward to the shared brainstorming sessions, meals, and most importantly, the connections we’ll strengthen during this time together. See you in Toronto! 🚀🇨🇦🙌 #remotework #engineeringleadership #distributedteams #remotecollaboration

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Sanity's Winter Release is here! The team has been working so hard on these updates, we can’t wait for you to try them out. One of the best things about Sanity is that our engineers are always trying to make the product better—and our Winter Release is such an example of that. Oh, and we have lots of fun along the way. 🤠 Check out the not-so-boring release video below to get a taste of what we're shipping, why it's a game-changer, and why are co-founders are so much fun to work with. https://lnkd.in/g2GEm9Md

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I had an interesting discussion with folks from the Chrome and Firefox teams about React Server Components and how they affect the web performance at the Toronto Web Perf Meetup yesterday. The DCL event seems to happen when the last bit of HTML reaches the browser, which can be seconds later. Until that happens, no module or deferred scripts are going to be invoked. Having the browser paint the page before all suspended components load is definitely a good feature, but it doesn't change the fact that we need to deliver all data as fast as possible. All the deferred or module scripts won't load until DCL happens. Have this in mind when you're suspending your components. It's easy to think "it will reach the browser whenever it does" since the users will be able to interact with the website before that, but don't adopt that mindset.

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