Our kickoff podcast for 2009 is a discussion with guest Kevin Matheny, self-described “E-business Architect & Open API guy for Best Buy” and founder of the innovative Best Buy Remix Developer Network effort.
Today’s hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Our discussion surrounded a variety of topics:
- How did the idea to open up the Best Buy catalog come about? What is the vision for Remix?
- How does it fit with broader plans or strategies of the corporation?
- Can you talk about how you came to select Mashery as your API delivery partner?
- What about higher level tools to increase access to the Remix API?
As you may have heard, a guy by the name of Keith Burtis (based in Buffalo, NY) was just hired to be community manager of the Remix program and is running the Twitter presence. During this podcast, we discussed the role of the community manager, what Keith is doing, and why it matters.
Links:
+ Blog: http://remix.bestbuy.com/blog
+ Twitter: http://twitter.com/bestbuyremix
+ Kevin’s article, Agile Software Development: Bridges to the Future in BusinessWeek.
+ Follow @kevinmatheny on Twitter here.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 57:46 — 39.7MB)
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:31 pm
I was wrong, I do not sound like Michigan J. Frog. I do sound like a guy with a bad head cold, though.
Thanks for the opportunity!
January 3rd, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Hey guys,
Great podcast. Really enjoyed hearing from Kevin and all the interesting work he is doing with Best Buy to get their data out there and help foster new experiences around that data.
I am one of the co-founders of Kallow, the site he mentioned seeing on Facebook. We are targeting those users who are confused by technology and electronics and just want something that will work.
We will certainly be looking into the Remix program more and seeing if it makes sense for our audience.
Thanks,
Caleb
Kallow.com
January 3rd, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Thanks for being on, Kevin! Caleb, Kallow.com looks pretty interesting. Where are you guys located?
Also, this is NOT Kevin Matheny:
January 3rd, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Hey Steve,
Jordan and I are in Miami actually. We make plenty of trips to Best Buy and Circuit City to demo products and see what people are playing with and interested in. Recently we have seen lots of regular people interested in the netbooks, they are having a hard time keeping them in stock!
We like the Acer Aspire one. but many are quite good.
Caleb
Kallow
January 4th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Hi Kevin – Throughly enjoyed this podcast, will probably have to listen twice.
Having been on the original BBY.com team in “99″, it’s interesting to hear what’s going on now and what hasn’t changed since the original planning meetings – customer centricity, better customer experiences, etc.. Back then it was encapsulated in the “best friend” metaphor.
The remix and APIs remind me somewhat of “stores-within-a-store” even though back then it was used with partners/manufactures and incorporated within the BBY site whereas now it would be individuals or third parties creating external mini-sites using the APIs. Will be interesting to see where all this goes and what gets created.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:10 am
Great podcast. I appreciate the time Kevin gave and you allowed for a very thorough understanding of the Remix concept. It is extremely exciting and I am sure it is going to be a huge success, even if it takes time for the general public to grasp it and acclimate themselves. This is very progressive-kudos to Kevin, kudos to Best Buy.