All Pumped Up From the Sony Business Conference
May 9, 2008 6:53pm
I’m just back in the office after being in Palm Desert, Calif. all week for the annual Sony Electronics Business Conference. It was the largest ever with more than 1,600 of our employees from across the U.S. and our locations in Mexico in attendance. For the people selected to attend, the event is extremely motivational. And for folks like myself who had a participatory role, this is even more the case.
Following a welcome dinner the day people arrived, the conference kicked off the next morning with my one-on-one interview before all the attendees with our global Chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer. As usual, Sir Howard was candid, charming and challenging. We covered the Blu-ray victory, Sony’s overall business performance, his focus on future growth and new business, the revitalization of our television business, the possibilities and challenges for OLED technology, the impact of "Sony United" leveraging the strengths of our technology and entertainment resources, the important contributions by the U.S. operations to Sony globally, the collaboration between teams in the U.S. and Japan, and his thoughts on leadership.
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Sony para el Dia de las Madres
May 6, 2008 11:56am
Ana Reyes is a communications specialist on our team here in San Diego. Ana’s family roots are deep in Mexico. Here at Sony, she focuses on the Hispanic market and media. Ana wanted to express how Sony products fit into her family’s activities, especially with Mother’s Day on the horizon. Here she writes this post in English and in Spanish.
Ana Reyes es una especialista en comunicaciones que trabaja en nuestro equipo de San Diego. Ana es de descendencia mexicana. En Sony, se dedica al mercado y los medios hispanos en los EE.UU. Ana quería compartir como los productos de Sony se incorporan en sus actividades familiares, especialmente ahora que se acerca el día de las madres. Lean sus ideas en ingles y espanol.
English: 
Unlike the U.S., in Mexico, “Dia de las Madres” (Mother’s Day) is celebrated on the same day every year, May 10. No matter where you may be in Mexico, May 10 is Mothers Day. After reading some of the comments from the “The Mother of all Bloggers,” I too want to share my experience as Dia de las Madres approaches.
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On the Road to Sony’s Business Conference
May 2, 2008 11:10am
Every year around this time, Sony Electronics holds an off-site, internal Business Conference. This year the event is being held in a very nice resort in the southern California desert.
It gives us an opportunity to review the prior year’s performance, while laying out the goals and direction for the year ahead. It also serves as a motivating event for more than 1,400 dedicated and passionate Sony employees who are selected to attend. They largely come from sales and marketing, but there will also be members from customer service, engineering, manufacturing, business development, HR, corporate planning and, yes, corporate communications.
Of course, there will be speeches, panels and presentations by our U.S. management team, along with host of award presentations for jobs well done over the course of the previous year. And we’ll have guests from around the world of Sony, including a top executive from Sony Pictures Entertainment and a global business head from Sony Corporation in Tokyo.
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Federal Government Should Trump States on E-Waste Solution
April 30, 2008 6:12pm
Rarely, if ever, do I let my political inclinations enter into my thinking and approach to working at Sony. But this week, I am tempted to do so here in this blog post.
In the spirit of full disclosure, you should know that I see less and less need in the 21st Century for onerous state laws that vary from one state to another, whether it be in regard to education, welfare, business or the environment. The concept of states rights may have been relevant in the days of James Madison when America was a loose confederation of states. But in today’s modern age of air travel, geographic mobility, economic co-dependence and the Internet, I believe the nation could make a lot of progress by going through some transformation in this area.
What brings this to mind at the moment is the issue of e-waste. With the nation’s digital television transition coming next year, coupled with America’s love affair with flat-panel TVs, there will be an increasing need to recycle old tube-based televisions. And in this respect, my company has created a national Sony Take Back Recycling Program, partnering with Waste Management to offer free recycling not only for televisions but for all branded Sony electronics products.
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At Sony it’s Actually Something about a “Tumble” and Digital Imaging
April 23, 2008 1:13pm
Last week, I passed along a behind-the-scenes video glimpse that was leaked on Gizmodo of a recent Sony television commercial shoot that appeared to be “Something about Nothing.” Well now, Kevin Berman, a senior marketing manager on our Corporate Marketing team is ready to lay it all out in a guest post. As you can see, he is one enthusiastic guy and quite jazzed about our latest campaign. Check it out.
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What it took to "Tumble"
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- 9 shoot days
- 12 locations
- 4 towns
- 2 mountains
- 20 tons of equipment
- 6 cameras
- 1 spidercam
- 1 lenny arm
- 1 50-foot Technocrane
- 62 crew members
- 30 computers
- 25 animators
- 90 cast members
- 200 hours of editing
- 2 helicopters
- 20 snowmobiles
- 600 feet of rope
- 6000 feet of elevation
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You may have seen or heard about Sony’s new “Tumble” commercials, where we supposedly shot “nothing." The truth is we did shoot something. We shot a lot, in fact. It’s just that we relied heavily on one of the world’s best CGI companies, The Mill, to bring it all to life. The concept of this tale is that Sony’s extensive knowledge of all things high-definition is evident in all the amazing HD products we bring to market. And as such, we show a professional HD camera fall off a mountain, but instead of the camera breaking, we see it transform into a series of other Sony high-definition products. Those products eventually land into the hands of various people in the town below. How we got from concept to final product was pretty interesting, so I thought I’d share a little of this unique experience with you.
When the advertising agency told me we’d have a nine-day shoot in order to produce the new “Tumble” commercials, the first thought that went through my head was about how I was going to break the news to my wife. "Honey … um … I gotta go out of town for … uh … two weeks. Yeah … uh. I’ll be in the … um … snow-capped mountains of Tahoe. Did I mention that I may not have good phone reception? Do you think these sunglasses still look good on me? Good luck with the kids."
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