Ben Barden
I'm Ben - a product manager who's also worked as an engineer and Agile coach. I've worked across several industries, startups and scale-ups alike, and my strength is bringing clarity to messy situations.
I'm pragmatic about what's a "drop everything" moment versus what can wait, and I like balancing forward-looking work with the day-to-day stuff that keeps things running. Having built products from scratch as an engineer, I care about clean UX and plain English, and translating technical detail for stakeholders comes naturally.
What I'm working on
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Product Notes
my product management Substack
Weekly notes on product management, written from real-world experience. Covers the everyday judgment calls - influence without authority, outcomes over outputs, when to trust AI and when to put it down - that don't make it into the frameworks.
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GFD Music
my music website
Three artist names, three sounds - upbeat and funky as GFD, late-night dance and trance under Castles of the Underground, and imaginary videogame music as Roads to Atlantis. Each release has quick links to all the major streaming sites, including Spotify and YouTube Music.
Latest albums (Spotify): Anthems ยท Echoes of Explorers
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Protribe
a better way to network
Professional networking has a problem: you connect, then the process stops there. Protribe is communities built around what you actually do, with low-effort events that keep connections alive instead of forgotten.
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Switch Scores
find the best Switch games
Ranking the Nintendo Switch library. A review aggregator with clean categorisation and discovery built in, and shovelware filtered out so what's left is worth browsing.
