Resume

Jon Burns
Mountain View, CA 94040
Phone 408-438-3149
E-mail jonburnsdrum@gmail.com

Web communications professional with strong values and a diverse blend of communications, project management, Web and video production experience and an emphasis on consulting, coaching and leadership.

Core Business Strengths

• Broad multidisciplinary communications experience across the technology, financial and music industries
• Extensive personal experience with Web 2.0 social media sites and tools
• Effective consulting, teaching and coaching skills
• Superb project management for web, video, print and multimedia
• Strong analytical and operational systems skills
• Unique perspective and powers of observation
• Expert interpersonal, written, verbal and presentation skills
• Outstanding event coordination for seminars, corporate meetings and trainings
• Ability to learn and implement new knowledge and skills quickly and effectively
• Technical skills: Sharepoint, MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher), Adobe Photoshop, HTML, Dreamweaver, EISI Profiles Professional, Mortgage Coach, HomeWorks, Calyx Point, iMovie, GarageBand, T-rax, ProTools, Windows Media Encoders, various audio-visual equipment

Professional Experience

Nov 2008 – present LSI Milpitas, CA
Intranet Manager
• Launched new Intranet to enhance employee productivity, knowledge, collaboration and community.
• Focused on driving collaborative execution with a strong team against the user-centered design strategy -- following best practices and the project plan -- on time and on budget. Specifically the drive to execution focused simultaneously on several key areas:

• Communication
• Deliverable tracking
• Governance definition
• Vendor management
• User training and support
• Analytics
• Project scoping

2005 – 2008 J&V Consulting San Jose, CA
Wealth Building Consultant and Marketer
• Marketed and delivered consulting services to clients interested in wealth building through real estate. (Further details below, see “Other Experience”)

1996 – 2005 AMD Sunnyvale, CA
Web & Video Producer
• Developed multi-media (Web, e-mail, print & video) communications strategies for Corporate Internal Communications to effectively connect strategic messages from executives to employees worldwide.
• Webmaster for Internal Communications: Managed the corporate intranet site to ensure usability, high-quality content, and brand compliance. Duties included oversight of daily intranet content updates, management of grassroots community of internal departmental webmasters of widely varying skill levels and perspectives.
• Worked directly with CEO, officers and senior VPs to produce compelling and effective internal communications deliverables, including employee meetings, videos, webcasts, and intranet sites.
• Award-winning video producer responsible for production and distribution of all corporate-level internal executive videos including large-scale employee meetings, CEO presentations, press conferences, satellite tie-in broadcasts, training material and webcasts. Large multi-site video CEO meetings with 300+ onsite employees would be linked via satellite and video conference to 300+ employees at worldwide locations, and webcast to all 14,000+ employees worldwide
• Managed technical administration of closed-circuit corporate TV network (AMD-TV) including proprietary software system upgrades, maintenance, creating and programming graphics, video and patching in live events such as press conferences, breaking news, CEO video messages, and other marketing pieces.
• Team leader and advisor on communications effectiveness measurement for management.
• Consulted on communications efforts in cross functional areas of the company on internal communication issues.
• Facilitator for “AMD Values” workshop, presenting content and leading small group activities though program designed to support alignment of employees with the corporate culture

Other Experience

Jan – Aug 2008 LWS San Jose , CA
Member Development Specialist
• Worked directly with the president and senior VPs of the company to develop the South Bay area market.
• Planned, marketed, organized and hosted financial planning and wealth building seminars for 25-40 prospects each month.
• Customized marketing systems for the region including marketing and advertising planning, execution and tracking.
• Continuously refined systems and reported results to optimize marketing cost-benefit ratio for the entire team.
• Qualified prospective members to determine appropriate fit for the company’s financial program.
• Developed and maintained positive member relations.
• Proactively mined member relationships for introductions to potential new members, creating the systems to monitor the new members’ progress through each stage of the membership process.

June 2005 – Dec 2007 California Star Properties, Inc. Campbell, CA
Wealth Building Consultant
• Worked directly with the president and founder of the company to develop the local real estate and mortgage market
• Planned, marketed, organized and facilitated real estate investment and wealth building seminars for 25-40 prospects each month.
• Consulted with clients on asset optimization, equity management, and wealth empowerment.
• Provided strategies to clients for increasing their net worth, growing their assets and reallocating cash flow.
• Guided intrepid home buyers and budding real estate investors through the process of finding, financing and buying their home or investment property.
• Negotiated on behalf of clients in transactions with buyers, sellers and lender
• Oversaw the details of each client transaction

Mar 2005 – Mar 2008 Birch Green Park Homeowners Association Mountain View, CA
Treasurer and Member of Board of Directors & Social Committee Chairperson
• Treasurer fiduciary duties included annual budgeting, ongoing tracking income and expenses against budget, approval of expenses to vendors and service contractors, annual reserve study review.
• Memo writing and presentations to homeowners with regards to the association’s finances
• Participation at monthly board meetings in addressing homeowner concerns as they relate to the financial health of the HOA
• Organized, publicized and hosted monthly social events for the community designed to foster general positive relations and goodwill among neighbors in the community.



1997 – 2004 Andalusia Mountain View, CA
Manager and Drummer
Management responsibilities included:
• Promotion and Publicity - Planned and executed promotional and publicity campaigns, wrote and distributed press releases, radio promotions and distribution, developed relationships with contacts in music industry as well as music journalists.
• Booking and Tour Management – Planned, booked, executed tours for 100+ live performances locally and across the country, developed and maintained positive relationships with bookers, promoters and venue managers nationally.
• Production Management – Planned and executed the recording, mixing, mastering and replication of 4 releases of the band’s recordings.
• Resale Management – Arranged resale agreements with both online and brick and mortar vendors.

Education

1997-1999 San Jose State University San Jose, CA
MBA
• Corporate cohort program with AMD, National Semiconductor, HP and Motorola

1989-1994 San Jose State University San Jose, CA

BA – Radio, Television & Film
• Radio-Television-Film, cum laude
• Major GPA: 4.0
• Minor: Public Relations
• Received faculty invitation to Honors Program
• Wagner scholarship recipient

1985-1989 Bellarmine College Preparatory San Jose, CA

Fun Stuff
Life-long musician and songwriter
Former college radio on-air and production talent
Semi-experienced Mountain Biker
World-weary traveler
Husband of my beautiful wife of 12 years; father of the cutest two-year-old girl in the world
Eldest brother of six

References available upon request, or check out my LinkedIn Recommendations here

Writing Sample: "Living the Brand"

I wrote the following article as part of a larger effort to stimulate interest, understanding and support among AMD employees with regards to the company's brand strategy. The story was published in print (newsletter) and online (Intranet) for all AMD employees.


Living the AMD brand everyday, in every action

"Branding is not an initiative, it's a way of doing business." —Hector Ruiz

The barista hands the paper coffee cup, with the familiar round green logo on the side, across the counter to an eager customer. The customer knows that the café latte he's about to drink will taste the same as the one he bought at the Starbucks in San Francisco a week earlier, or the one from the Starbucks he visited while traveling on business in Tokyo last month.

In fact, without even thinking about it, he knows that anywhere in the world, if he sees that familiar round logo, his café latte will taste just as good as the last one, and he is willing to pay a little more for that assurance. And that little extra goes straight to Starbucks' bottom line and increases the value of the company. Here's the reason: the brand. And it's more than the name, the logo, or the coffee itself, that establishes the brand for the world's largest coffeehouse chain.

One of the world's renowned advertising copywriters and ad agency founder David Ogilvy defines brand as "the intangible sum of a product's attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it's advertised."

Although product brands, slogans, logos, trademarks, and advertising campaigns contribute to and are reflective of the brand, they alone do not establish or define the corporate brand. A corporate brand represents the feelings, perceptions, and beliefs that people have about a company. A successful brand is one that brings to mind positive, relevant, and distinctive images and attributes.

Like many Fortune 500 companies, AMD is refocusing its corporate brand to help ensure its continued success, and in turn, the success of its partners and customers. The rollout is the result of the AMD Brand Task Force's efforts, utilizing input from AMDers worldwide and from leading market research.

"The AMD brand is an asset that demands management," said Bob Kennedy, director of corporate branding. "If it is ignored, then it is open to be controlled by those who do not share AMD's goals, particularly our competitors. While market research shows AMD enjoys product familiarity among members of its target markets, AMD as a company does not. This lack of familiarity with AMD creates a barrier to bringing new products to market successfully."

What does a refocused brand mean for AMDers? "First, it means that AMD has a clarified brand that speaks in a unified voice worldwide so that business strategies, marketing and sales efforts work in sync to add value and complement each other," said Bob. "It also means that AMD now has a set of tools and guidelines that will help build up the strength of its brand, and every AMDer needs to contribute to this effort."

The success of the refocused brand depends on AMDers worldwide. Each employee is a brand ambassador. The AMD brand is reflected by employees' words and deeds, whether they are interfacing with customers, vendors, partners, communities, or the public in general. Even in social situations, once an employee is known as an AMDer, his or her words and actions reflect, in part, on the AMD brand, and what he or she says about the company can contribute to or detract from the success of the AMD brand.

One of the most visible and tangible results of AMD brand management is seen in AMD's latest communication campaigns, marketing collateral and sales materials. In general, the materials are people-focused, to express the determined, strong and passionate way in which AMD products engage users and empower them to lead more productive lives. Further brand unification is achieved by the use of selective typefaces across all materials. Some recent examples include the 2001 Annual Report, sales collateral used in support of the AMD Athlon™ XP processor and this issue of Dialog. Additionally, positioning statements and brand attributes (see sidebar) used in these efforts lend support to the verbal communication of the AMD
brand.

"Brand is more than just 'look and feel,'" said Bob. "It's about people's actions everyday." With the branding guidelines in place, the Brand Task Force has established a "Living the Brand" team, to evaluate how the many facets of AMD's operations align with the brand and will make recommendations accordingly. Comparing AMD activities with the brand to ensure alignment is an effort that will continue for years to come. "AMDers should keep in mind that building the strength of the AMD brand in this way is a long-term commitment and will take time to gain
momentum," Bob said.

An online brand "book" is now available at http://amdonline/brand. "Employees should familiarize themselves with the positioning statements and brand attributes that are available on the Web site and keep these ideas in mind in everything that they do," Bob said.

In the coming months, AMD Internal Communications will continually communicate information on branding efforts and "Living the Brand" actions.

Writing Sample: "AMDme"

I wrote the following article as an introductory piece the company's newly launched (at the time) advertising campaign. Since the campaign was somewhat esoteric in nature, it was important for Internal Communications to educate employees on the ad strategy in addition to stimulating interest, understanding and support for the ad campaign. The story was published in print (newsletter) and online (Intranet) for all AMD employees.

"AMD me" reaches out to Tech-Savvy Pathfinders

Chances are you know at least one. Expert, aficionado, connoisseur are some of the words you might use to describe them. They are the kinds of people you go to before you make a decision on an important purchase. Be it a PC, cell phone, digital camera or any number of electronic gadgets, these folks know what's good and what's bad, what to look for and what to avoid, and they always seem to know a lot more than you do about what you're about to buy.

They are people from all walks of life that you count on for this kind of advice. Without them, you might feel like you are groping around for a light switch in a dark room. They are people who seek out and understand the latest and greatest technologies before most people do. They are the "tech-savvy pathfinders," and they are here to find the light switch and turn it on for you.

A "tech-savvy pathfinder," or TSP, might not think of himself or herself as such, but that is the name that McCann-Erickson, AMD's advertising agency, came up with to describe the audience that the new "AMD me" campaign is targeting. As part of the overall effort to build AMD's relevant and differentiated global brand, "AMD me" launched worldwide in more than 15 countries on Sept. 16 with a print and Web advertising campaign that should ultimately garner more than 285 million impressions worldwide in 2002.

Already industry pundits are weighing in on the "AMD me" campaign. An article by Jack Aaronson of Customer Relationship Marketing Strategies cited the Web portion of the "AMD me" campaign as a best-practices example. For a direct link to the full story, click here.

McCann-Erickson identified publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Popular Science, BusinessWeek and PC World and Web sites such as CNET, Tom's Hardware, Ziff Davis Network and Anandtech as the best outlets to reach tech-savvy pathfinders and increase their familiarity with AMD. Since a TSP can be of any age, income, geography or education level, the "AMD me" advertisements will be seen in these top outlets, in addition to IT-oriented publications such as CIO, eWeek and Computerworld and will appear in different languages such as French, Swedish, Spanish, Russian, and Japanese, to name a few. The ads feature TSPs presenting a challenge to get more out of technology, and then answer that challenge with the phrase: "AMD me." For
complete details on where and when the ads will run, visit amdonline/news/advertising.

Maximizing the advertising investment

So why is AMD targeting this particular audience? The answer boils down to issues of influence and leverage. AMD's advertising budget for the campaign is relatively small in comparison to its chief competitor.

This basic financial limitation forces AMD to find a craftier way to ignite demand with end-users. And by effectively targeting a group of people who can influence the purchase of many others, AMD actually increases the effectiveness of the campaign by the factor of as many people that act on their advice. This process of influencing product purchase maximizes the return on the investment of AMD's advertising dollars.

Investing in tough times

But these are tough times, you might be thinking, why are we spending this kind of money when we are in cost-containment?

"This is the kind of thing where you go to sleep at night, take a deep breath, and think about it really hard," said Hector Ruiz at the October "Breakfast with Hector" meeting in Austin. "Our brand is incredibly important. We must educate and create the brand that truly reflects what AMD is all about and what we are going to be. So, even though at a modest and somewhat modulated effort, we intend to continue the brand campaign."

"We all must look for ways to decrease spending and increase efficiencies," said Bob Kennedy, director of Corporate Branding. "We will continue with strategic programs such as branding and advertising, which are critical to our long-term success. However, in the coming months, these efforts may be concentrated on fewer areas. These efforts position AMD for success when times get better and are part of the foundation for the company that we want to be going forward."

What's next?

The first phase of the campaign is now complete, and phase two began in the second half of October with ads targeted at the desktop and mobile markets. This will continue in support of the launch of AMD Athlon™ 64 and AMD Opteron™ processors in the first half of 2003, when AMDers can expect to see new ads supporting the most important product launch in AMD's history.

Writing Sample: "Germans in America"

One of my earliest corporate writing efforts, and a reflection of the culture of AMD in a few ways. Of course the obvious "global culture" challenges are inherent to the story, but also this was a piece that was my idea to introduce some of the newly minted German employees to the American employee audience, and it was an idea that was welcomed by the management. Since many of these Germans were from the somewhat recently disintegrated East Germany, I was personally curious to know more about their experience of working and living in America, and thought other employees would be as well, and my editors agreed.

In addition, I was also eager to combat the counter-productive cross-site competitiveness and control issues that had plagued the Sunnyvale and Austin production efforts at that time. I felt that by shining a little light on the similarities and differences of the people, and subtly reminding everyone that we are all on the same team, the "not-invented-here" attitude might be assuaged. Over time it became clear that this attitude diminished, and the German fab wen to be the company's flagship plant, and I like to think my efforts and my writing played a part in that.

The story was published in print (newsletter) and online (Intranet) for all AMD employees.


Fab 30 employees enjoy training in America

First of two parts

"These are our star hours," said Andreas Kalz of Fab 30 Learning & Development, "our big chance."

For Andreas and his compatriots from Fab 30, the opportunity to be a part of the startup of a semiconductor fabrication plant is more than a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. "Now we can make a Saxony-Silicon Valley," Andreas said.

Although Fab 30 is still under construction, a group of German technicians is already training to make the most of the plant's potential. Five wafer fab technicians (WFTs) and five manufacturing technicians (MTs) arrived at the Sunnyvale Submicron Development Center last summer to begin an extensive stateside training program. A second and third wave arrived in the fall, and are currently scheduled to remain in Sunnyvale until May, when they will return to Dresden to move tools into Fab 30.

Intensive training

The WFTs and MTs are going through an intense indoctrination into the mindset and methods of AMD. "They'll be going through equipment and culture training, basically learning the AMD ways of being a WFT and MT," said Eric Choh, Fab 30 Operations manager.

For Fab 30 technician Carsten Baude of Lieberwerda, Germany, his AMD experience is a chance to fully utilize the skills that his education provided. Carsten previously worked for a company that manufactured safety equipment for large supermarkets and felt that his skills, as an electronics engineer, were being underutilized. "You can't do what you're supposed to do," he said.

Working for AMD is his big chance to do what he wants to do, and also work for a company where there is potential for advancement that might not be as readily available in other, more established companies in Germany. He is now training in the SDC's chemical polishing area.

Joining Carsten on the SDC polish team is Dirk Rudolph, who said landing a job with an American semiconductor firm setting up shop in his hometown was "like a light at the end of the tunnel." Rudolph said he expects his life will change for the better since, having recently graduated with an engineering degree, he previously was concerned about getting work in his field. "I am a new engineer, and new engineers need to work, to stay current.

"Otherwise," he said with a shrug, "it's not good."

"It is the most exciting project going on in Europe right now," said Karsten Wieczorek, an integration engineer who has spent time in both Austin's and Sunnyvale's Logic Technology Development groups. "It is like pioneering. AMD has always had to fight and work very hard for success. Now to be a part of that in bringing up a fab in Germany is very exciting."

"No one is a stranger"

Coming to America has offered a few surprises to the Germans. "I was surprised by the many people from other countries (in Silicon Valley). It is like no one is a stranger, because everyone is from somewhere else," said Carsten.

"So far there have been no disappointments," said Karsten. "It seems that the only constant in America is change, so we may be disappointed or annoyed by the slower pace of others (when we return to Germany)."

Dirk said he appreciated the team culture of the SDC, and how the polish team rotated turns for leading meetings and taking minutes. When it comes to be his turn, he said, "OK, then the next meeting will be in German."

Andreas said AMD will bring many changes to his home. The corporate sponsorships of events, donations to schools, and community meetings to address concerns with the fab's construction and startup have gone a long way to help the local people accept their new neighbor, he said.

"In the west of Germany, people hesitate to allow new factories. There are ways with German laws for them to stop things from happening," said Karsten. But in the case of Fab 30, he said, everything has stayed "pretty much on schedule."

U.S. exciting, challenging for Fab 30 employees

Second of two parts

For the many German citizens hired to staff AMD's Fab 30 in Dresden, the prospect of coming to America to train in AMD's Submicron Development Center is an exciting one. But according to some of the Germans currently in training in the SDC, this excitement is coupled with the challenge, confusion and sometimes amusement that arises when one is immersed in a new and different culture.

Culture shock

"I see things that remind me of home and it makes me feel comfortable because they are not so different," said Dirk Rudolph, currently training in the SDC's CMP (chemical mechanical polish) group. "Like at home, there is a lot of focus on production, and here it is no different.

"But then, I leave work, go to the store, and there are so many people waiting to buy their food," he said with a shrug. "And everyone's relaxed; no one's in a hurry, it's great."

"I like how people relate to each other in a very comfortable way," said Andreas Kalz of Fab 30 Learning and Development.

Dirk agrees that communication styles are more relaxed, but says the American style sometimes slips into "beating around the bush," which differs from that of most people in Germany, which is quite direct.

"It is probably just different interpretations of what is polite," said engineer Karsten Wieczorek. "I think maybe (Americans) are less direct (for fear of being) rude."

Living in America

Being assigned to AMD's American sites for an extended period of time allows the Germans to enjoy some of the experiences that the country has to offer.

Over the Thanksgiving break, Andreas took his family on a "Great American Road Trip," to the Grand Canyon.

"I was amazed by the dimensions of it," Andreas said. "The Grand Canyon is longer than the former German Democratic Republic. And this was only one small place in America."

Karsten said he was amazed by how friendly Americans are, especially in Austin. "At first, they were so nice, I thought they were kidding me. But when I realized they weren't kidding, I made some new friends!"

"I miss mama's meals," said Dirk in his best and most impressive American accent. "And biergartens. I want to go somewhere to have a good German beer--not in a plastic cup, a real glass, please--and sit outside. But, I will enjoy my time in America now because in the future (when Fab 30 is on-line), if we visit America, there won't be so many weekends to spend."

Freedom

Coming to America was also not without some expectations, many based on perceptions prevalent in the world today.

"I thought America would be a place of unlimited freedom," said Andreas. "However, this is not the case. In some cases yes, but in others some bureaucracies are worse than in Germany."

On the one hand, Andreas cited, renting an apartment is fairly simple: Fill out a piece of paper or two, pick up your key and "then we are home."

On the other hand, Andreas was faced with a bureaucratic quagmire when trying to enroll his young daughter in the California public school system. "It was unbelievable, the things we had to do just to send my daughter to school. In Germany, you just go."

American driving

Driving, that most American of activities, was one topic that drew many comments from the visiting Germans.

"One thing I've noticed is that it is as if everything is constructed for cars and not for people," said Karsten. "Everything is to make the car comfortable."

"The traffic is incredible," said Andreas. "The many lanes on highways and on city streets are unbelievable. In eastern Germany all city streets are only two lanes."

"The drivers are very forgiving compared to in Germany," continued Karsten. He said many drivers would not be able to get away with many of the things they get away with in America, or there would definitely be an accident.

Global cultures

The Deutschlanders attended classes in an attempt to prepare themselves for these American experiences before they left Germany.

"We had some training about culture differences before we left," said Karsten. "But I think that maybe it doesn't matter so much that there are differences, but that we see what they are and just appreciate it because it's interesting."

Intranet Screen Shot: Home Page

Click on the screen shot above to see it larger in a new window. This is the corporate Intranet homepage that I designed, built, deployed and maintained as AMD Intranet webmaster. It served as the desktop standard homepage for all employees and was the first page they saw each day when launching their browser.

There are a couple of different elements to the page that were standard across the site, and evident of the user-centered design principles in action:

1. Navigation bar that included most visited site links AND the two most popular web tools, the search engine and the online phonebook. So in addition to providing links to the most popular hub pages on every page, (home, news, forms, departments, and amd.com) employees could also accomplish their most common online activities from anywhere on the site.

2. Standardized navigation menus (right below the search fields) that provide links to the sub-sites and pages, and offer a preview of the "bread crumbing" format that users would see on content pages. An example of the menus is below (click on it to see it bigger):


The content areas of the page were wire-framed into 5 different sections:

1. "Features"- Left hand rail of the page, this area is used to feature new or important sites on the intranet. Optimally these links would be featured for about a week, sometimes two depending on availability of new content. Required to feature a graphical element as well as a short blurb describing the site and its importance.

2. "What's New" - the main content area of the page, was populated by stories, announcements or links of importance and provided by the Internal Communications editorial staff. The articles would consist of messages and announcements from the CEO or other officers, product features and stories and employee features. New stories were required on a daily basis, and with an optimal target or three stories with a max of four, each story would be on the home page no more than 3-4 business days. Stories would still be accessible from the main "news" page, accessible via the "More" or "News" links.

3. "Press Releases" - Pretty self-explanatory, all press releases would be posted here as they happened and the content would cycle out based on how prolific the PR team was feeling that week.

4. "Stock Chart" - this was a "real-time/20 min delay" feed we paid a third party vendor to provide a quick and easy glance at how the stock fared in the market that day. Was very popular among employees, who very conscientious about letting me know when the feed was broken (i.e. I would get flooded with calls and emails about it within minutes).

5. "Key Resources" - yes I intentionally put something called "key resources" in a section of the page that eye-tracking usability studies have shown is the least often looked at area of any page. Why would I do such a thing? Because it was a political compromise. These sites are those that higher ups in the company insisted needed home page visibility AT ALL TIMES, despite that our guidelines, best practices, and usability studies might say otherwise. So I used this area of the home page to make powerful people happy without occupying the more valuable real estate of the home page. Shhhh don't tell them. ;-)

Intranet Screen Shot: News Page

Again, click on the image above to see it larger.

This is the news page where the Internal Communication content lived on a permanent basis. Users could also access archival stories from this page as well. The content areas of the page were organized into the following sections:

1. "Top Stories" - These were the the most important stories as determined by the editorial staff for the internal audience's focus. This area was a feature area and each story lived in one of the following sections for archival purposes.

2. "Corporate News" - These were non-product specific articles that, as you would expect, were more high-level or corporate in nature.

3. "Global Markets" - In an effort to emphasize the global nature of the company, Internal Communications had this section to focus on news and articles that were not U.S.-centric in natures. An ongoing point of discussion with this section, and this idea of inclusiveness, was "how do we give focus on it without making it seem "other" or "lesser".

4. "Product News" - This section is 'below the fold' and our of range of my screen shot, but is what it sounds like... product or product-team related stories.

5. "50x15" - At the upper left of the page we used this section to feature stories, links, and videos in support of the company's publicly stated initiative to help drive Internet connectivity to 50% of the world's population by the year 2015. Not sure how that's going so far...

6. "Sponsorships" - During the mid-2000s, AMD had a major push into corporate sponsorships of sports including Ferrari's Formula One racing team and also Lance Armstrong's USPS cycling team. This section was used to highlight the goings-on with that effort.

7. "AMD in the Community" - In this section we featured stories about how AMD and its employees were giving back to respective communities in which they lived and conducted business.

8. "Employee Feature" - At upper right, this was a monthly feature that focused on a key or just otherwise interesting person somewhere in the company. A couple different employees would be featured during the month so there was a new person featured from somewhere in the world every 2-3 weeks.

9. "Web casts" - Here we featured our latest and greatest video piece for internal consumption. As often as possible we would web cast new features not available on the web to the general public that featured AMD, as well as CEO communication videos, which I will detail a bit more in the next screen shot.

10. "Press Releases" - Yet another spot to feature press releases.

Intranet Screen Shot: Web casts

Click the image above to see it better in a new window.


In that screen shot we are watching one of the AMD product managers talk to the news media about AMD's processing power that went into the production of the second Star Wars trilogy. Windows video files were replicated to localized video servers globally for AMD employees to see. This was way before we had You Tube, and we were in no financial position to
put a lot of money into video bandwidth and infrastructure, so this was our homegrown solution.


The major regular production that was responsible for was the CEO's quarterly meeting with mangers. This was a large multi-site video meeting with 300+ onsite employees would be linked via satellite, and later -- and much less expensively, video conference to 300+ employees at worldwide locations, and then edited, encoded and webcast to all 14,000+ employees worldwide. The presentations slides were manually converted and time-synced to the video as well.

Click the image above to see it better in a new window. Unfortunately I am not at liberty to post the webcasts here since they were for an internal audience only.

Video Sample: Tribute to Jerry Sanders

AMD's founder and longtime CEO was being honored by the American Electronics Association for a lifetime achievement award. He wanted a piece that covered what he considered the key highlights of his career and that captured what he was all about... boiling a 30+ year tenure down to 11 minutes.

My role in this production was to procure existing video from an extensive library, develop the script and shot list and -- with the help of a production company --put the whole thing together to make our toughest customer very happy.

Video Sample: SDC Video Tour

The Sunnyvale Submircron Development Center is a leading R&D facility that was a popular destination for customer visits, which created an undue strain on personnel to provide personal tours. The facility director wanted a video tour to take visitors inside without having to actually take them inside, which, as the video illustrates, poses many logistical challenges.

This was an in-house production that I played clean-up on when my production partner left the company before it was completed. So while he developed the script and the shot list before his departure, I was left to mop up with some missing shots, all of the editing as well as the narration.

Video Sample: Happy Hands

Exercise video designed to help office and fab workers prevent repetitive motion injuries.

My role in this production was to help the Ergo team develop a script to effetively get their RMI injury prevention message across to SDC employees. Once the script was in place it was my role to bring the production to life and shoot, edit and perform as 'flying hands talent.'

Video Sample: Hit the Road Map

Motivational video parody of Ray Charles' "Hit the Road, Jack"... the R&D fab's thrust for the year was to absolutely hit the development road map... Wall Street was demanding it, and it was thus delivered.

Credits:

My production partner and I dreamed up the parody and the script. We farmed out most of the animations to a design house. 80% of the shooting was done by me, the rest by my partner, while I was responsible for coordinating the production schedules for participating employees and the vice presidents involved. I did all of the editing and sound as well. Music parody was produced by one of the in-house engineers.