About

Hello!  Welcome to my blog. I am Liza Wood and Sockets and Lightbulbs is about ideas on leadership and management in agile environments. I have over 15 years of experience in electronic manufacturing services, telecommunications and consumer electronics and I’m applying what I’ve learned from those industries to my current one:  video game development. While I am often mistaken for a big-company woman, I have worked at and run very small companies and most of my career was spent on product development teams. From these experiences, I have developed what I hope is seen as a human, collaborative, and pragmatic leadership style.

Since I joined the video game industry, mentioning my background in electronics manufacturing often results in comments about hardware and/or manufacturing being stable and predictable. Sometimes the response is simply a dismissive sound. Lately, I have been getting a similar response from my former industries when I mention that I am working in video games.  The effect is the same:  any further conversation and achieving a common understanding stops.  At this point in my career, I have spent ten years in hardware, seven years in game development and all dealing with software of all kinds.  During the telecommunications boom in the late 90s, electronics manufacturing was learning the lessons that  software development learned in the early ’00s and the video game industry is tackling today.  Therefore, I am in a unique position to bring forward these lessons and apply them in a new context. I have walked the walk, so this isn’t just talk.

If you are reading this blog to learn the inside secrets about the companies where I have worked, you will be disappointed.  I take the NDAs I have signed very seriously.