A big change for Imagethief

Regular readers will have noticed that I’ve been a bit below-the-horizon the last few weeks. Sorry about that. There are two main reasons. First, my father was here for three weeks so I spent a fair amount of time with him and the rest of my family, on a trip to Xi’an among other things. Second, I started a new job last Monday, and that has kept me more than a little busy.

The job is a big deal, at least by my standards. I’m going to be running North Asia PR for Motorola’s mobile device division. “North Asia” in this case means mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan plus South Korea. The mobile device industry is in one of the most exciting periods in its history, and greater China and Korea are fascinating and influential markets. Motorola is also at a great stage right now, so I’m pretty excited about the whole thing. The office is in Wangjing, which means some commute re-engineering, but that seems a pretty small price to pay for what looks like being a very interesting gig.

Sharp-eyed readers will note that I’ve named my employer on the blog, something that I never did in my old job. The reason I never named my old employer was simply that I wanted to keep my opinions on this personal blog as separate from them as possible. Anybody with a mastery of Google or a LinkedIn or Facebook connection with me could see who my employer was, so it’s no big secret. For the record, it was Burson-Marsteller, and I’d like to thank them for six great years, all the support they gave me while I worked there, and for indulging of my idiosyncrasies. It’s a great company and I’ll always be proud of my time there. I’m very glad to have left on friendly terms.

I felt that with the change of employers it was a good opportunity to take a more transparent approach with the blog. So Motorola is named in the short introduction in the right-side column as well as in the “About Imagethief” page. This remains a personal blog and the opinions expressed here remain my own and are not necessarily those of my employer. If you want to attribute something from Imagethief to me in a mainstream article, you should contact me for attribution details.

Despite the usual disclaimers, I will have to change the blog a bit. Consultants have a certain license to–how shall I put this?– shoot off their mouths. In-house people need to be a bit more cautious, especially when it comes to sensitive issues, which I’ve historically been willing to embrace. So I intend to keep writing Imagethief, but I’ll be feeling my way for a while. Drop me a line and let me know how it’s going.

Will