My ambition is to make a significant, positive impact on the media industry, and society, through the use of technology for storytellers in both fact and fiction.
Currently I lead on Strategic Product Alignment at Reach (formerly Trinity Mirror), working across product and design teams to ensure a connected, coherent experience for journalism.
I’m also a mentor for the News Product Alliance Mentorship Network.
Previously I’ve spent over fifteen years working on award winning products at the BBC, Springer Nature, Siemens and Reach in a variety of roles, alongside teams both local and remote.
Read more about some of my previous work.
I’ve recruited and managed teams, set product visions, instigated and secured funding for projects, led major re-platforming initiatives, and provided expertise to many of the UK’s media and cultural giants.
I’ve worked directly with designers, developers, and other disciplines to keep digital product development running smoothly.
In 2019, I wrote Experiment Driven Product Development, published by Apress, to share my experiences and lessons learned about building digital products in ways that encourage teams to learn by doing, applying the framework of experimentation to get reliable, useful results. The book is available to order on apress.com or amazon.com.
I’m a firm believer in working in the open, sharing what I know, learning and collaborating with others.
In that spirit, I am blogging sporadically on this site, too.
Talk to me about:
- Digital Storytelling Experiences, Narrative Structures and Tools for Writers
- Continuous Hypothesis/Experiment-driven Product Development
- Information Architecture & Graph-Based Structured Data
Speaking and Writing:
Technical Co-Editor of Designing Connected Content: Plan and Model Digital Products for Today and Tomorrow (Peachpit Press).
Co-wrote A Manifesto for Structured Journalism with Jacqui Maher for BBC News Labs (available via Wayback Machine, originally from 2015)
Keynote speaker at World IA Day London 2016, on Information Architecture as a Creative Practice (YouTube link)
A Three Part Model for Understanding Stories (2016)
‘Building Webs of Discovery’ – a piece commissioned by Unthinkable Digital (2017)
Keynote speaker at World IA Day Manchester and Taxonomy Boot Camp, 2018 – ‘This is the Bad Place’
Author of Experiment Driven Product Development, published by Apress, 2019
Presented to Boye & Company’s Product Management peer group about Experiment Driven Product Development (2019)
Author of ‘Choosing the Product Development Method that works best for your team’, News Product Alliance (2022)
Endorsements:
“Paul represents the next wave of dynamic speakers on digital / internet culture.” Niko Vijayaratnam, former Head of Product for Platforms, Financial Times
“He embraces ambiguity and rises to the challenge of making sense of it…Brilliant guy and terrific team member.” Adam Powers, former Chief Experience Officer, Tribal Worldwide
“a passionate practitioner who considers the wider, and deeper, elements of user experience design.” Mike Atherton, Content Strategist, Facebook
“an individual truly capable at working at the bleeding edge of developments in online content and narrative.” Joanna Geary, former Director of Curation, Twitter
“a brilliant mix of talents in any newsroom.” Jacqui Maher, former Head of Interactive Journalism, Conde Nast International
Paul Rissen 