Outsourcing the Editorial Content of a Magazine

Seems like these days everything is being outsourced - which is not a bad thing by the way. I was recently on the homepage of CSCMP's Supply Chain Quarterly magazine and upon looking at the editorial staff page I noticed some friendly names, including Mitch Mac Donald, Peter Bradley and John Johnson, who also happen to be the editorial team at DC Velocity, which they probably should disclose, to both showcase their expertise and to be open with the readers of the Quarterly.

I couldn't find anything connecting the two magazine's together, except for some banner ads. But aside from that it makes perfect sense to me. Mitch and team probably have tons of great content, so why not reach the massive audience of CSCMP with their keen insights on all things that are supply chain. The only challenge will be to keep the content unique for each publication, but knowing these guys fairly well I can't imagine that being a problem. If this is a new endeavor best of luck, if it's not sorry for not noticing sooner.

Ex-IBMers Finding Success at Motorola

Yesterday, Motorola announced that Stu Reed and Rita Lane were being promoted to president of Motorola's Mobile Devices business and the lead of the Integrated Supply Chain organization, respectively. Both of them are former IBMers and while I never had the chance to work with Rita, I did have the opportunity to work on several projects with Stu. His wit, humor and intelligence are part of the key's to his success and it's great to see that he is succeeding at Motorola a company that is in need of a turnaround, much like the one Stu was involved in at IBM in the early 90's. Which is also probably one of the reasons Ed Zaner, CEO, Motorola wanted him in the first place more than two years ago.

It's particularly satisfying for me as a communications professional to see Stu's use, via his PR team, of some of the IBM messages in the announcement. For example, Greg Brown's quote reads, " Stu has established our global supply chain organization and transformed it into a competitive advantage." That's a compelling statement, that many businesses today are still struggling with today and one that we also promoted heavily during our own supply chain transformation. I wish them both continued success.