Open Mind, Insert Thought

It took me a while to start this post, but I’m ready now. If you take a look at the timeline in the blog, you can see I’ve been more or less silent for about 6 months. That span was my time at Zynga as VP of Product Management. A difficult experience to put into words, but I finally found something to which I can liken it – being the head of product there was like being one of Siouxsie’s guitarists.

Siouxsie and the Banshees were one of my favorite bands when I was a young goth in Colorado (oh, who am I kidding with the “were,” I’m listening to them right now – they’re wonderful). If you don’t know the tumultuous history of the band, they started off as groupies for the Sex Pistols, borrowed instruments from friends and jammed on stage for minutes on end, and finally realized they could make a go of music. The core of the band was the drummer (Budgie, later to be Siouxsie’s husband), the bassist (Steven Severin), and Siouxsie. Then there were the guitarists. They just couldn’t keep them. It’s not that any of them were untalented (each of them was), and it’s not necessarily that the band wasn’t quality. It was probably the personalities – those who have seen Siouxsie on stage know what a diva she is, and Severin is an acknowledgede egomaniac. The chemistry worked for the three core members to some workable degree, but they churned through guitarists. The churning got so bad that once they lost a guitarist mid-tour. Robert Smith stepped in and finished the tour with them, and then a while later went into the studio with them and recorded Hyeana. Good album, and Smith’s temperament might have been a great fit, but you can still feel that tension between Smith’s vision and Siouxsie/Severin’s style.

And so it went with me. I was the latest guitarist to Zynga’s Siouxsie and the Banshees. The Zynga band is not necessarily a bad group play and work with, but they’re definitely not right for me. It was a culture clash from day one, though I can say with confidence that I jumped in and earnestly tried to make it work. But I didn’t end up doing things they way they wanted me to, nor could I do things the way I wanted to. Classic “creative differences,” as they say in the business of media. And, so, I did the thing that I thought was right – I helped put together a team that *did* do things the Zynga way and handed it off. And, like one of Siouxsie’s guitarists, I set my sights on the next gig.

Here’s hoping I’m Robert Smith and not one of those other guys of whom you’ve never heard.