The Magic of Automox: Emily Pace on Building Smarter IT Tools

Summary

In this episode of IT Insiders, Maddie Regis speaks with Emily Pace, a Senior Product Manager at Automox. Emily shares her career journey, her role in product management, and the collaborative environment at Automox that fosters innovation. They discuss current projects, the importance of customer feedback, and Emily's advice for IT professionals. The conversation concludes with a fun game about real and fake products, showcasing Emily's quick thinking and humor.

Transcript

Maddie Regis: 

Hey everyone, this is Maddie Regis, Paid Media Manager at Automox and welcome back to another episode of IT Insiders. That is Automox's podcast that introduces you to the people behind the product. So it is November, this month is all about being thankful, Thanksgiving and whatnot. So we are thinking and talking with someone at Automox that makes IT pro lives easier. That is Emily Pace, she is a senior product manager on our product team and she's

part of the people who have gotten our product to where it is. And that helps a lot of IT pros. So thanks for joining us, Emily.

Emily Pace: 

Of course, thank you for having me. Glad to be here.

Maddie Regis: 

Yeah, so let's just get right into it. Tell me a little bit about your career background and then I always ask on this podcast the name that you would give Automox if it wasn't called Automox.

Emily Pace: 

All right, sure. So I've been in a product role or a flavor of a product role for the last 13 years or so. I actually grew up thinking I'd be a lawyer or in the medical field, but randomly ended up at an engineering camp up at CU Boulder in high school where I participated in different activities around engineering. I was just drawn into that problem solving and those tangible solutions you can create and then kind of hold in your hand.

No one in my family had been in that field. So it was like a whole different world opened up having that exposure. So fast forward to after college, started my career at a government contractor as a systems engineer, but had some really great mentors that were invested in me and exposed me to a lot of different opportunities in the tech space. And again, just felt that draw or sense of purpose and product management and bridging that gap between technical teams and customers and just everything in between.

so from there, I went to a startup, had really great opportunities there, learned a lot. We ended up getting acquired. and I didn't really like, I didn't feel like that was really the right place for me at the time. And so I was given a great opportunity to grow and join a really solid product team here at Automox and I've been here for the last almost three years now, three years in January. let's see. Okay. If Automox wasn't called Automox, that's a hard question. I feel like a lot of pressure.

so I'm a big Harry Potter fan. so get out, draw inspiration there. maybe call us like Patronus or something. So essentially the Patronus, know, as a magical guardian and you can summon it as a form of protection, right? So it may not come out as an animal form you'd expect for yourself, but it comes out as a positive force nonetheless. So in my mind, Automox is meant to make your life easier and protect your environments.

protect your endpoints from attacks and ensures that you're in the healthiest state possible. So we may not deliver features as you envision them in your mind, but they do solve your problems.

Maddie Regis: 

Yeah, I love that. I'm also a huge Harry Potter nerd, so I might be biased, but that's probably one of my favorite answers, because it is really accurate. mean, that is what the product does. So I love that.

Emily Pace: 

Awesome, love fellow Harry Potter fans.

Maddie Regis: 

Cool. So, you know, we talked a little bit about your career background. Now let's get into your current role at Automox. How are you involved in developing, maintaining all of the different elements of our product?

Emily Pace: 

Sure. So as you said, I'm a Senior Product Manager on the product team. I work under Jason Kikta and Brandon Shopp with my cohort, Steph Rizzuto, who you may recognize the name from our other podcast that we have called Product Talk. So if you haven't checked it out before, check it out. really good. Got some good stuff in there. But as PMs here at Automox Steph and I

We wear a lot of hats. Product management in general is kind of a multifaceted career that can mean different responsibilities at different organizations. So here we act as both a product manager and a product owner. So we work essentially from start to finish on a feature. We work with product leadership, engineering leadership, product design, and program management to determine a prioritized list of new features.

new integrations, new technologies that we want to deliver, gathering user feedback and doing competitive analysis that supports our larger vision and where we want to move in the market as a company. We then take these features through a process. And I'm going to stay really brief and high level. So basically, we take a feature, we create requirements for it. From there, we work with our product design team, who then does more competitive analysis and creates wireframes.

And then together we interview users and customers for usability testing on the designs. We go back and iterate on requirements and designs from that usability feedback. And then we deep dive with engineering, who does technical design specifications for each project. Once everything's been solutioned at a really high level, signed off internally, we create epics and stories for the development teams, and then we work with them throughout the development lifecycle.

We then work with both the technical documentation team and product marketing team to ensure we communicate appropriately to customers and make sure they have what they need to use these features. We also engage with other departments like AXU course designers and CSMs who customers engage with on a daily basis just to ensure they have visibility into our roadmap and project statuses, as well as support the CSM team on customer calls to communicate feature development.

present designs for features that customers are invested in, gather general feedback or feedback related to features that we have early access on. And so the beautiful thing about product management is that we get to interact a lot with different teams in our days where we rarely look the same. So keeps it fresh.

Maddie Regis: 

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's a lot. I'm sure that is just barely scratching the surface of, you know, everything that you guys are taking care of. But also love all that customer involvement. I mean, I think that's really important and that's for sure something that you guys stress. So it's cool to hear the different stages and how customers are kind of involved throughout.

Emily Pace: 

Yeah, we're definitely customer focused and I could be here all day talking to you about it, but you have more important things to do so.

Maddie Regis: 

I love it. I'm all ears, but obviously we do unfortunately have a time limit for the podcast. So we'll have to the next question, which you might be able to talk a little bit more about that. So what's been your like biggest win or sort of favorite project that you've been on since you've been on the product team at Automox?

Emily Pace: 

Sure. That's a really good question. And I'm going to kind of cheat your question and say it's currently in progress. We've done a lot of really great things while I've been here. And I've been a part of some really cool projects. For example, the Redesign Dashboard, the Redesign Policy Results Report. So some really exciting things. But for me, Jason and Brandon have done a really, really good job at creating an environment where we have some room to innovate.

And we have a small team and a long list of features and a lot of work. But I was given some room to try and come up with some ways to solve some of our problems customers face today in a bigger way. Like, how can we solve a lot of problems with one project or two projects? And so we know our reporting is not as optimal as it could be. So I came up with a handful of ideas, presented them to Brandon and Jason. They left a couple of them, which is good. Two out of six is great.

and they thought that we could really solve some of the problems we see today and they were actually prioritized. So I'm currently working with the product design team to get wireframes and requirements in place and engineering involvement to determine feasibility of them. But if it comes to fruition like we think it will, it's gonna be huge for customers and I'd be remiss to say that the wind wouldn't just be mine. you know, it starts with an environment where ideas can be heard. Jason and Brandon have really cultivated that and my counterpart Steph.

who's always great to collaborate with, bounce ideas off of. And of course, we'd be nowhere without our amazing product design team, program management team, engineering team. We have a really strong team in R &D full of people truly invested in the success of each other and our product. And this one would be all of ours. So I think 2025 is going to be really exciting. And so I think the biggest win is yet to come. Kind of doesn't answer your question, but I think this is good. This is good.

Maddie Regis: 

Yeah.

No, it does. love it. think that's super exciting. I'm looking forward to, obviously we get a little bit of insight over in marketing on what you guys are working on. But yeah, it sounds like next year is gonna be a big year for the product. So everyone listening, keep an eye out for product updates, our product roadmap. And yeah, I'll be super, super interested to see how that all goes.

Emily Pace: 

Yeah, same.

Maddie Regis: 

Okay, cool. So let's wrap it up here with one last question. Then of course we'll jump to our game. But if you had one piece of advice for IT professionals, what would it be based off of your experience with developing a product like this?

Emily Pace: 

That is also a really good question. You've got a lot of good questions today. I feel like the biggest thing is don't be afraid to be innovative and don't forget to collaborate. You know, all these things, everything can be learned, but sometimes it takes thinking outside of the box to push forward. And the stronger the team you surround yourself with, the bigger the win. So I feel like I thought about that and I feel like those are the two biggest things that have really gotten me to where I am today.

Maddie Regis: 

For sure, yeah, I'm a big advocate for big teams that are super collaborative, super creative. I just think it makes everyday better coming to work and no matter what you're doing. And yeah, think it just makes it that much more satisfying when everyone comes together and achieves something.

Emily Pace: 

Absolutely. We've got a really great team, so it's fun.

Maddie Regis: 

Yeah, I love that. All right, well, let's jump to our game. So obviously you are on the product team. So I had to do something around products. So I've got a list of products. I'll read each one out one at a time. And you have to tell me if you think it's a real or a fake product. And obviously there is a correct answer. But I found some ones that are kind of funky. Couple pieces of software, couple of real life products that you can hold in your hand.

So the first product is a yodeling pickle.

Emily Pace: 

A yodeling pickle

be a thing because why wouldn't it? Sounds pretty cool and I feel like people have these sitting on their desks.

Maddie Regis: 

You are 100% right, it is real and it's exactly what you're thinking of. It's like a little plastic pickle. It's got a button, you press it and it yodels. So I thought that one was pretty funny. Might be a good Christmas gag gift for people. Yeah. Okay, the next one is a Baby Cry translator software.

Emily Pace: 

That's stocking stuffer for sure.

Okay, baby cry translators software. I am going to say that is not a product yet. I don't know. That's an interesting one. I would love to. it is? Why didn't I know about this?

Maddie Regis: 

It is real. Yeah, however, I think the efficacy of the translation is maybe a little bit questionable. So I think, you know, it's something that exists. How accurate it is, I'm not sure. You know, I mean, I don't know that we could ever ask a baby, like, this what you meant? So.

Emily Pace: 

I know I have two little boys and I would have loved to know why they were crying at three in the morning when they weren't hungry and they didn't have a stomachache. So I I need to research that some more.

Maddie Regis: 

Right?

Yeah, for sure. I'll send you the link after on where I found that. Okay. And the next one is pumpkin drawing software.

Emily Pace: 

Yeah, absolutely.

pumpkin drawing software. Okay, I feel like that is real, but it may be fake because the last one was real, but I'm gonna go with real because that sounds pretty cool for carving pumpkins in Halloween.

Maddie Regis: 

So that one is technically fake, but there are some apps that you can use that basically take whatever kind of photo you wanna use and then carve into your pumpkin, that is something that exists. So that one, I feel like is 50-50. You kinda had it there where you're like, could be real, could be fake.

Emily Pace: 

Okay.

Those are hard.

Maddie Regis: 

Yeah, I try to make them tricky. you know, sometimes you guys on the technical side, I try to make these tricky and you're just like on top of it. So you're helping me win even though you're not getting them all right. All right. The last one is a coffee temperature app.

Emily Pace: 

Well, great.

Coffee temperature app. So like it scans the temperature of your coffee. Interesting. I'm gonna...

I'm gonna go with not a product? I feel like I'm torn. Maybe it is, I'll go with it is.

Maddie Regis: 

It is, you're right. It's actually part of, I've got one right here. There are these like self-warming mugs. Yeah, and so there's an app that goes with that. And I think maybe there's some in development that are, you know, they'll tell you like, what's the correct temperature for this like dark roast or light roast of coffee, that kind of thing. So yeah, that is, that is a real thing. Yeah. All right. Well, you did great, Emily. Thank you so much for indulging me in that little game.

Emily Pace: 

Okay.

interesting.

Awesome!

Maddie Regis: 

And thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate all the insights.

Emily Pace: 

Of course, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure to be here with you today.

Maddie Regis: 

Awesome. All right, well, everyone listening, thanks so much for joining us and keep an out for new Autonomous IT podcasts every Tuesday and Thursday. And we'll see you back here soon.