Last Thursday we
had lots of TV and radio interviews because of NetApp’s #1 ranking
in Fortune’s “Best Companies To Work For” list.
I don’t have much
experience on TV, so I asked the interviewer to explain the rules to me. Should
I try to give a whole speech, or sound bites, or what? He said that we would
just chat on camera for a couple of minutes, and he would edit it down back at
the station. “The whole bit,” he said, “will be one minute and fifteen seconds,
and we’ll be interviewing you and two other people, so try not to talk too long.”
The interviewer from the next TV station was more blunt: “We’ll probably edit you down to seven seconds, so just keep it really short, will you?” We chatted for a while, and at the end he said, “Wow—you were really good!” I was feeling all proud of myself, but then he cut me down to size: “For you, maybe eight seconds.”
By the end of the day I had done three TV stations, two magazines, and two newspapers.
Next morning, dark and early, my wife woke me up by hitting me with the telephone. “Phone… radio… for you…” she explained.
An annoyingly chipper woman said, “Hello, this is KGO Radio! Is this Dave Hitz? We’d like to interview you about a great place to work for the morning news with co-anchors Ed Baxter and Jennifer Jones. Can you do it?” My throat seized and I grunted a little bit before managing to ask, “What time is it?”
“Oh, don’t worry she replied. It’s five-fifteen now, but the interview isn’t till six-fifteen, so you’ve got some time. Will you do it? Great, we’ll call you back at this number. Talk to you later!”
Two cups of coffee later, I got to add live radio to the TV, magazine, and newspaper interviews.
It was interesting to see how broadcast news gets created: they zoomed in, did their job quickly and efficiently, and then disappeared again.
Congratulations, Dave, that is very impressive. I was wondering if you could give me some advice on our NAS storage purchases.
We run a complete Netapp shop, and some of our Linux administrators are bringing in Red Hat to replace our NAS filers. They are claiming huge savings, and I am saying this isn't true, that Red Hat has no value add. Will you be OEM'ing their new storage software on your boxes?
Posted by: Renata Borge | January 31, 2009 at 08:10 AM
We are asked to select a company described in Fortune, Forbes or other business publication and I chose your company because I've read it is ranked as the best comp to work for. We are given some questions and some of them I can't find them on your home page. I hope you can supply me some answers. Can I ask about your business strategy? Not really the details coz am sure you'll not just say it to anybody. Can you give me some strategic info system appropriate for you business. How do you maximize the use of the web? I will appreciate any information you can give that will help me in my case study. Thank you in advance.
Posted by: Gene Tongol | March 07, 2009 at 02:36 AM
We are asked to select a company described in Fortune, Forbes or other business publication and I chose your company because I've read it is ranked as the best comp to work for. We are given some questions and some of them I can't find them on your home page. I hope you can supply me some answers. Can I ask about your business strategy? Not really the details coz am sure you'll not just say it to anybody. Can you give me some strategic info system appropriate for you business. How do you maximize the use of the web? I will appreciate any information you can give that will help me in my case study. Thank you in advance.
Posted by: Gene Tongol | March 07, 2009 at 03:03 AM