About
Justin Meade
Nearly two decades deciding what gets built, in a domain where getting it wrong is expensive and obvious. Now working independently as Meade Advisory, from Brisbane.
When you engage Meade Advisory, you get me — not a firm that sends someone.
Background
I trained in geology and information technology at the University of Queensland and started in resource geology — field work, logging, and the spatial analysis behind it. That is where I learned what technical software is for, several years before I had any say in what went into it.
The move into product came through the companies that build for that industry. At Gemcom, then at Dassault Systèmes in the GEOVIA brand after its acquisition, and most recently as Head of Product Management at Deswik, I spent the better part of twenty years responsible for what got built, for whom, and at what price.
Mine planning software is an unforgiving place to learn this. The users are engineers who will tell you immediately and at length when a product does not match how the work is actually done, the sales cycles are long, the buyers are not the users, and the output has to satisfy reporting codes that leave no room for interpretation. Almost none of that is specific to mining. It is just product management with the excuses removed.
Two of those chapters ended in acquisition — Gemcom by Dassault Systèmes, and Deswik by Sandvik. Being the product leader through a transaction, and through the integration and rationalisation that follow, is a particular education, and a large part of what I now advise on.
Career, in order
Where this came from
Head of Product Management
Deswik · now part of Sandvik
Led product management for one of the most widely adopted mine planning and scheduling suites in the industry, through the company's growth and its acquisition by Sandvik.
Product leadership, GEOVIA
Dassault Systèmes
Product leadership inside a global platform business following the Gemcom acquisition — portfolio rationalisation, and the work of fitting a specialist product line into a much larger enterprise.
Product management
Gemcom Software International
Product management across the geology and mine planning product family, through to the company's acquisition by Dassault Systèmes.
Resource geology and spatial analysis
Resource sector · Queensland
Field geology, logging and GIS. The grounding that still decides how I read a product requirement.
How I work
What to expect
- A recommendation, not a menu of options for you to choose between
- Evidence for it, gathered from your customers rather than your assumptions
- An honest verdict when the answer is that the thing will not work
- Client names kept confidential, always, including yours
- No reseller agreements, referral fees or commissions with any vendor
Worth a conversation?
If any of that is close to a problem you currently have, get in touch.