oct17.com Blog

Vivu and CBS

Time to update the Ole Blog here with two major pieces of employment news.

• Saloni works at Vivu. It happened by slow degrees; first a get-to-know-you meeting with the CEO, then some follow-up discussions on the direction of the startup, and before you know it she’s printing business cards for the whole company including one for herself that says, “Director of Marketing.” Vivu is definitely in startup mode: barely a dozen people, still fervently pitching investors for capital, staff meetings on Sunday mornings. She’s thrilled, I’m thrilled, and a video-streaming startup makes a nice complement to my new employer…
• CNET’s being acquired by CBS. Starting in (roughly) July, I’ll work for the giant media company that’s the home of “Wheel of Fortune” and “CSI” (and CBS Sports, too, David). This is a huge relief and a presumed release from the sneaky barbarians at the gate of JANA. For CNET, I think this opens up huge advertiser opportunities in categories where CBS is a major player and CNET is not. For me personally, this means some fantastic opportunities to expand BNET onto radio and possibly TV, while learning something about those media. Hey, I made the jump from print to online more than 10 years ago; time to learn some new tricks.

Hopefully no more job updates for a while. It’s been a busy month!

Millennials? Oh, my.

We’ve been working on a editorial package at work about the new management issues around those born after 1980 — the so-called “millennials.” I take all groupthink descriptions of a generation with a grain of salt, since I remember the silly stuff propounded about Generation X. Still and all, I do wonder about those crazy kids and their rock-and-roll music. It’s hard not to look for differences.

UPDATE: Did an interview with MarketWatch Radio on May 16 about this topic. The big takeaway (subject to Steve Potisk’s editing) is that the millennials respect leadership not position. And this tends to piss people off. BNET blogger Sean Silverthorne has a post about the resulting unhappy Generation X workers that has really struck a chord.