George Woolley is our talented Product Owner who's been with Wattle for nearly five years. Moving up from QA, George now spearheads our product roadmap and development of our Membership Experience Platform, MemEx. His wealth of knowledge makes him ideally suited to create engaging experiences that bring value to our clients.
Hello George!
With nearly five years at Wattle, George has steadily risen the ranks from QA Tester to his current key role as Product Owner. He heads up the product roadmap and development of our Membership Experience Platform, MemEx, working closely with stakeholders to shape engaging experiences that meet client needs. George's breadth of knowledge across roles, passion for problem-solving, and commitment to understanding user needs make him invaluable in building products that deliver true value for organisations and their members. His insights and technical know-how are crucial as we continue enhancing our offerings to redefine the member experience.
I'm George, the MemEx Product Owner here at Wattle. I work with the MemEx product team to shape our membership technology offerings by prioritising features and enhancements. I'm also involved in discovery sessions and run workshops with clients on the MemEx portal and website. It's all about understanding user needs and aligning the MemEx platform to them.
I started out in QA and testing - I had a fantastic gig as a game’s tester at Microsoft straight out of university! From there, I moved up to QA Lead at a digital agency, tried a brief stint in project management, worked at a Wattle competitor for about a year, and then saw a role at Wattle as a QA Tester, so moved here. I was in QA for about three years when David Abraham, Wattle’s CEO, approached me about working on the MemEx product team. I've been in that role for a couple of years now, and I absolutely love it. My experience across roles gives me great insight into the full spectrum of product development.
I love the problem-solving aspect and seeing how our work impacts membership organisations and their members in real life. Building an engaging MemEx portal or website that gets members engaging and interacting more is incredibly rewarding. And, of course, working with our super-talented developers - they're the best around. They are incredible. I also do a lot of work with the Royal Osteoporosis Society; I have a dedicated day for them to make their offering the best we can, which is particularly rewarding.
It can be busy, but I make sure to switch off and recharge outside work hours. Balance is so important.
Reach and retention are big ones - making sure members are engaged and being able to reach audiences. Building in personalisation and community helps, as does optimising UX across devices.
Focusing on UX and engagement in our website builds and portals help keep members interested and interact with organisations long-term.
We're investing heavily in our MemEx member portal right now. We've got a really stable, powerful MemEx CRM (Dynamics 365) platform and MemEx Web (Umbraco CMS) editor, so we wanted an equally strong portal offering. We've got some cool features coming up to enhance our networking capabilities so members can interact with each other more. Things like messaging within the portal are vital to improving engagement. We're also focusing heavily on improving the mobile portal experience.
Camping trips in my temperamental camper van, taking the dog on adventures, paddle boarding and surfing when I can, a bit of drumming with my band - you know, the usual!
When the team went to The Wave surfing - that was such a fun day and bonding experience! Although Andrew Vance, our Chief Commercial Officer, breaking his chair and secretly switching it with someone else's was hilarious.
