My First Blog Post

My first blog entry – I really can’t believe I am doing this…damn my own team has shamed me into this!

I was fortunate enough to attend our recent Sales Conference for Oxygen Media in Miami Florida. I am told that this year was over the top and even though I can’t judge for sure this year (because it is my first time going at Oxygen Media), I felt the conference was great. Not only was the environmental element impressive (come on what’s wrong with the Mandarin Oriental in Miami Florida for Christ Sake, 82 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, 5 star spa resort, swimming pool, custom white sand beach, you get the picture, if not here’s the link).

I have to say it was a great time to bond with my colleagues from our Ad Sales department, Affiliate Sales department and Marketing (all teams). I was very impressed with not only the people in the departments but their shared vision and outcome. It got me to thinking about the teams I manage (IT and software development) and how we share a vision.

Both of my teams have this strength about sharing a vision and pulling for it but in distinctly different ways. In both cases it works equally well and it’s all about the commitment of the team and the leadership at the top. If either of those is out of whack it doesn’t work. The meetings with all the sales & marketing groups at Oxygen further convinced me that the outcome can be the same if both elements exist – commitment of the team and the leadership at the top.

Indeed my job now is to get my teams to work with these fantastic groups even more than they already do and advertise the product expertise that we have and how that can help sales and marketing at Oxygen. I was inspired by how all these teams work together and how I think we can help them by offering a superior product for them to sell and market.