Tryphoon's Lair

Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles

Sweet and Sour...

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Work recently has me traveling left, right and center and after a couple of days at Microsoft last month, I am now spending a couple of days at Adobe, in San Francisco. Another place I could only dream of when living in Paris and building web sites by hand and knowing all of the shortcuts from Photoshop 3.0! Sweet!

Sour, because half way through our meetings, some sad news about another technology giant lost its charismatic leader, as Steve Jobs stepped down from his CEO role at Apple, bringing our meeting to a halt as we all reflected on the news...

And now, the CNN Center...

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Second part of my first visit to Atlanta as a Turner employee: The mighty CNN Center!

The place is huge and pretty impressive! Got lucky enough to get a quick "behind the scene" tour and I am even more impressed!

Will definitely need to get some in-depth visit of the place at some point...

I can see my old office from here!

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Well, it has been 12 years. 12 years of almost 24x7x365 dedication to the Mouse House! A long adventure that started some dark winter day in Paris, trying to land back on my feet while working for a couple of months as a contractor for Disney Online, thanks to my then business partner Christophe and his then girlfriend. These couple of months soon turned (for the better) into a full time gig and a move to London, starting anew in Britain, for what I thought was a "12 months max" project, before ideally moving to New York or back to France.

Eight years later, I was finally leaving the UK, but now working in the Media division of the Mouse, on my way to Los Angeles, with my British wife and my multi-passport daughter...

Four years later, the daughters count has reached 2 and shortly after having decided that it was actually a good idea to stick with the Mouse of another decade or 2, my career took a wrong turn and seemed to have reached a dead end at best...

Once again, when I was not really looking for a job (but just being extremely unhappy of mine at the time) a friend appeared from nowhere (see Sylvain in 1999, Keith in 2003), offered to apply for a position and I simply decided to run for it (the one bird in your hand...). To my biggest surprise, I was considered and then offered the role.

After much deliberation, second thoughts, guilt trips and more, I decided to embark on that new journey, close that 12+ years chapter and start a new one (literally) across the street, with Turner, part of the Time Warner group (formerly known as the Enemy),

The hardest part in that whole process: Explaining to my 2 baby girls that Daddy was no longer going to work for any of the Princesses (Cinderella, Belle, Sleeping Beauty, etc) or Hannah Montana...

So, I guess it is "Bye Bye Mickey", "Hello Looney Tunes and Scooby Doo"!

 

Offsite meeting at Universal City Walk

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Spent the day today at Universal City Walk for a team building / all hands exercise. 50% presentations, 50% bowling, 5% visit to Gamespot and a bonus 10% spent playing tourist for once there.
Plus points of the day: No death by PowerPoint! France beat England 2-1 at soccer and the game was displayed above our bowling lane... Sweet!