There is no question, Adam is a motivated individual. While stuck in Philly he launches a monster post titled "The Product Management Manifesto." Here it is:

Product management is the function of serving as a proxy to a defined set of markets (or market segments), in order to be able to ensure appropriate product creation, and ongoing product health and quality for those markets throughout a product's entire lifecycle, until end of life.

I like this but the language needs a tweak. My take on this...

Product Managers represent the voice of their existing markets ensuring accurate problem definition and solution facilitation for the sole purpose of sustainable product evolution.

I like to keep things short. At first I didn't like the phrase "solution facilitation" but if you look at some of the resources for "strategic planning facilitation" it fits.

Scott, never at a loss for words, has replied with this.

Product Managers understand markets and the problems faced in those markets. Product managers choose the problems to solve, prioritize those problems, and communicate this knowledge to the people who build solutions. Product managers engage customers and learn from them, continuously improving their products, as long as it is valuable enough. Product management is the job of being a product manager.

I think this the same as I what I said, just less directly. My only major concern with this is Product Managers engage the market - there is danger in only listening to the customer. You end up with faster horses.

Anyway, my two cents. One thing for certain, we need a better mechanism for building this than cross-blogging.