kennedy collins
is trying to make useful things
After spending over a decade designing buildings, working in product management, growing startups, starting a small business, and consulting on product strategy with some of the nation's largest organizations, I've found myself back where I started: I want to make useful things.
I'm currently trying to do that by working as a product management & strategy consultant for Thoughtworks (where I am our Head of Product and Design for the North American Central Market), building that small business, running the small studio/consultancy &c. with my brother We are twins, which feels like a thing I should warn people about. , reading, writing, and talking to interesting people. As of Summer 2021, I'm not actively looking for new opportunities but if you're working on something and think I could help, I would love to hear about it.
some things i've made
The Road Warrior, a book about staying healthy and productive while traveling for work that I am writing with my brother. Currently out in its beta edition. We're interested in obtaining representation and publishing but have put that on the backburner due to the utter lack of business travel in light of the current global pandemic.
roadwarrior.blog, the companion blog to the book. Most of my writing lives here; also on hold.
Ohmcoach, a remote health and fitness coaching company. This and the Road Warrior book and blog comprise the small business I started. Ohmcoach is no more, but you can go poking around the internet archive if you want to see old versions of the homepage
Dose, a media company and creative studio. While much has changed since I left in 2016, I was the lead product manager on the initial version of Dose, growing it to more than fifty million monthly users and one million dollars in monthly revenue, and helping our parent company raise a twenty-five million dollar Series B.
Chi-text, a text interface for Chicago's open data and winner of the 2013 Lincoln Labs Open Data Hackathon. Unfortunately, you'll have to take my word for it. Lincoln Labs has made a number of changes to their site , and so there are no hard records (although if you really want proof I can probably dig up some old tweets).
get in touch
Inspired by Patrick McKenzie, this is a standing invitation: if you want to talk about making useful things, I want to talk to you.
You can email me at kennedy@ any domain I control Options include kennedycollins.com, ohmcoach.com, theroadwarriorbook.com, and roadwarrior.blog., and I really do enjoy getting email. I read everything I get, and I try my best to respond to as much as a I can.
I also live and work in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago, and end up in River North/the Loop/the West Loop once every week or two This used to be a note about the fact that I was out of town for work most weeks. Now it's a note about how I'm not really willing to meet strangers in person until the pandemic is over. But hey: let's drink coffee at our desks over Zoom! — if you would like to get a coffee in any of those neighborhoods and talk about software, writing, architecture, product management, or pretty much anything else, I'm buying. Email me.
I exist on various social media platforms as wellSuch as twitter and linkedin., but I strongly prefer email as a communication medium. So seriously, email me.