By John
14 July 2008
7:48 am
In this post, I wanted to share with you some of the discussions from our recent 2008 Nortel Technical Conference. This annual conference, which we launched last year, brings together 300 of Nortel’s top engineers and designers from across company. They come together for five days – this year in Orlando, Florida – to network, share innovations, discuss the future, and to focus on some of our greatest opportunities and challenges.
Last year, the focus of the conference was on the atom chart (which I’ve talked about in other posts) and making it real within Nortel. Today, by and large, the company is focused on creating value at the centre of the atom chart, where the six domains of interest (wireline ...
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By John
16 June 2008
4:01 pm
In the last few weeks there has been a large volume of dialog around which technology should define the “core packet transport” of the Internet. Mostly that dialog has been focused on the ongoing debate between the MPLS technology camp and the Carrier Ethernet camp. If you are not familiar with this debate I have included (at the end of this post) some links from various trade and other web sites that show the level of passion and, in some cases, hostility in this dialog.
The reason I ...
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By John
4 June 2008
3:47 pm
Just a very quick post today, as I sit in the Toronto airport on the way to Washington. I do hope to use the flying time to finish a couple of blog entries I’ve started but haven’t had the time to finish.
In the meantime, I thought you might be interested in a blog entry that Andrew Willis of the Globe and Mail posted today, which you can find here. He offers his thoughts following a meeting that Mike Z, George Riedel, and I had with the Globe and Mail Editorial Board this morning.
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By John
27 May 2008
2:15 pm
You’ve heard me talk in previous posts about the value of the network shifting - becoming less about the ability to move bits and more about the ability to create a truly personalized, immersive communications experience. In this respect, “context” and “identity” are key areas of opportunity for innovation in the infrastructure space.
I’m pleased to share with you another guest blog from Nortel’s Visiting Fellow, Dr. Andrew Lippman, who offers his perspective on this topic. (Andy is one of the founding directors of the MIT Media Lab and is currently with Nortel as part of a year-long sabbatical.)
...
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By John
13 May 2008
6:54 pm
Location: Toronto
After a crazy few weeks of travel, including attending a trade conference in Northern Ireland, meeting UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Northern Ireland First Minister Ian Paisley, and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness – and a host of other activities – I am finally back in Canada for a few days.
Today Nortel held a media event in Toronto to discuss a project we initiated a few months ago with industry analyst firm IDC. In essence, we asked IDC to validate our thinking around if and how the hyperconnected world is emerging. The key take-away is that we were in fact correct in asserting that not only are people becoming more connected, but that a new identity ...
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By John
28 March 2008
6:42 pm
Location: Ottawa, Canada
One of the most significant challenges of being in the public eye and communicating to the press is the fact that headlines often fail to capture the true essence of the details, and often even the details are taken out of a broader context. That reality can certainly create significant confusion when complex topics are discussed. As a good example of this, yesterday I gave a talk at a Technology Executive Breakfast in Ottawa to discuss the progress we’ve been making against the transformation of R&D at Nortel. In this blog post, I would like to share some of that content. As you digest the details, though, I ask you to consider the headline “Nortel ...
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By John
13 March 2008
6:09 pm
Location: Ottawa, Canada
First of all, thanks to everyone for the spirited commentary. I appreciate your passion. Although many of the comments were “off-topic” (as Bob pointed out in #26), I think for the most part it was a worthwhile and interesting dialogue. Although realistically I cannot possibly respond to every input, I do want to offer a few comments and observations on some of the key themes that came through, so I’ve picked a few specific comments that I think capture the themes.
Theme 1 – “Stock Price Down, Nortel Bad”
Fred, #20, made an interesting statement that the CEO of Nortel is bullish about the company’s prospects (“Nortel has turned the corner,” “Nortel is a stronger company now”), yet the stock ...
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By John
6 March 2008
3:02 pm
Location: Ottawa, Canada
In recent months, many of you have commented on or asked questions about our marketing efforts, believing perhaps that we were not marketing our technology as aggressively as our competitors, and concerned that we were losing mind share opportunity.
Nortel Technical Journal
I will ask Lauren Flaherty, our Chief Marketing Officer, to do a post in the future to give you some insights into our progress in this area (which is impressive), but today I wanted to draw your attention to just two specific initiatives: one, the launch of our new advertising campaign and the other, the current issue of the Nortel Technical Journal.
New Advertising Campaign
About a month ago, ...
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By John
29 February 2008
6:09 pm
Location: Ottawa, Canada
Over the past year, some of the “non-technical” comments from many of you have been focused on what you consider to be the lack of visibility for Nortel in the public arena from a marketing and advertising perspective. My intent was to post a blog today about our new advertising campaign, but given the elephant that’s in the room – re: the visibility we actually did receive this week around our Q4/2007 financial results – I thought I’d offer some thoughts and perspectives and defer the advertising entry ‘til next week.
It’s pretty clear from the comments that many of you are very passionate about the business and about Nortel, and that’s a good thing. For those of ...
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By John
6 February 2008
4:01 pm
Location: On flight from Las Vegas to Boston
In response to some comments late last year and earlier this year about the slow pace of blog entries … for the record, I just want to let you know that I AM trying to pick up the pace a bit - just difficult sometimes with the day job. 
But, I think/hope I’m making progress. Here’s another one that posted today on Internet Evolution, which was created by some of the founders of Light Reading.
When will we have enough new building blocks to truly create something revolutionary in terms of what telecom can enable? Today, we are seeing new capabilities, technologies, and economic models emerging that are creating some interesting ...
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