By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Fairport Convention’s great sing-along “Meet On the Ledge:”
Nortel Networks Corporation has announced
that Mike Zafirovski, Motorola, Inc. and Nortel have reached a settlement regarding the
lawsuit filed October 18, 2005 against incoming Nortel President and Chief
Executive Officer Mike Zafirovski.
“We worked in good faith to resolve this issue with Motorola and we are very
pleased with the successful outcome,” said Harry Pearce, chairman, Nortel Board
of Directors.
Zafirovski will begin his tenure as Nortel president and CEO, and director of
the Boards of the Company and Nortel Networks Limited, on November 15, 2005, as
originally planned and announced.
The crux of the problem was that when Zafirovski resigned
earlier this year as Motorola’s president and chief operating officer, he was
given millions of dollars in cash, stock and stock options to agree not to work
for a Motorola competitor for two years after leaving the company.
So when he agreed to work for Nortel, Motorola’s lawsuit
alleges, he violated various noncompete agreements, since his work with Nortel
would “inevitably” result in the use or disclosure of Motorola’s trade secrets.
The lawsuit sought among other relief, an injunction to
enjoin Zafirovski from rendering services to Nortel for two years, from
soliciting or hiring Motorola employees, and from using or disclosing Motorola’s
confidential information.
Zafirovski left Motorola at the beginning of the year after
being passed over for promotion to the top job there.
Under the terms of the settlement, which is subject to
confidentiality restrictions, there are no admissions by Zafirovski, Nortel or
Motorola of any violations of law, breaches of any agreements, or any other
improper conduct, which all parties deny.
The terms of the settlement provide that Zafirovski cannot disclose Motorola
trade secrets or confidential information, and Zafirovski and Nortel have
agreed for a specified period to refrain from hiring or recruiting Motorola
employees under certain circumstances.
The settlement also includes restrictions, until July 1,
2006, on Zafirovski’s communications with certain specified companies, some of
which are Nortel customers, and limitations on his ability to advise Nortel on
competitive strategy or analysis relative to Motorola for a defined period.
Zafirovski will also repay Motorola $11.5 million, which is
part of his separation payment from Motorola, and Nortel has agreed to fully
reimburse Zafirovski for this repayment. When this sort of thing happens in
European soccer it’s called a “transfer fee.”
...
Calypso Wireless, Inc., a vendor of
wireless telecommunications technology is announcing a purchase order for $16.2 million from South American distributor Inversiones CCS SA, for the delivery of
the Calypso C1250i Dual Mode WiFi-GSM-GPRS VoIP cellular phone, which runs on
Intel PXA series application processor and Microsoft WinCE 5.0 operating
system.
The cellular GSM service will be provided by Telefonica Moviles Movistar mobile
networks, a Telefonica subsidiary. Mobile carriers will offer new
functionalities and value added services to the mobile subscribers when using the
Calypso C1250i WiFi-GSM VoIP cellular phone and interconnecting with the WLL/WiFi
networks.
…
Cambridge, England-based TTP Communications plc has
announced that its subsidiary, TTPCom Ltd has entered into a partnership with Skyworks
Solutions, Inc., a provider of analogue, mixed signal and digital
semiconductors for mobile communications applications. Skyworks has licensed TTPCom’s digital cellular silicon intellectual
property and EDGE protocol software to develop its Lynx EDGE cellular
system product line, which delivers enhanced multimedia capabilities suitable
for mid to high tier handsets.
Skyworks has been offering complete handset systems since 1996. Building upon
its Helios RF and PA technologies, Skyworks offers system products that provide
all of the major hardware and software necessary to build a complete wireless
terminal. Skyworks delivers a pre-integrated protocol stack and advanced
multimedia framework on a GCF-compliant reference design that minimizes
development cycles for handset manufacturers.
…
AMD’s technology alliance with IBM’s gone
so well they’re extending it. AMD has announced it has broadened the scope of its technology alliance with IBM to
include early exploratory research of new transistor, interconnect,
lithography, and die-to-package connection technologies through 2011.
The agreement, according to AMD officials, “marks the first time a member of a
technology development alliance will work directly with IBM’s Research Division
on R&D, electronic materials, and basic feasibility studies three-to-five
years before commercialization.”
The extended duration of the alliance makes it one of the
longest IBM currently has with any of its semiconductor alliance associates.
…
Like most every business writer First CoffeeSM is
an aspiring novelist. Unfortunately most of us get caught in the sand trap of
being a “one day novelist,” as in “one day, I’ll write a novel.” And of course
we never do, as such activity doesn’t provide the steady paychecks work like
this does.
Enter NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.
For the past few Novembers, Chris Baty has supplied
would-be novelists with the one thing they’re usually missing to get a novel
written: A deadline.
Face it, much in this world wouldn’t happen without
deadlines. Novel writing is, as First CoffeeSM has found, one of
those things. His solution is simple yet effective: From November 1st to November 30th, you’ll simply
promise to produce 50,000 words of fiction. It might very well suck, if it’s
a first draft it will almost certainly suck, as noted marksman Ernest Hemingway
once said “The first draft of anything is shaving cream.”
Baty’s
idea is hey, you’ll have it done, then you can revise and improve to your heart’s
content. Hard to revise and polish and perfect a rough draft that doesn’t exist
in the first place. So November is the month to be ruthless to your life and
Just Get It Done. Let goods and kindred go – as Baty advises, “empower your
kids to drive themselves to school. Nothing instills character in a child like operating
a piece of heavy machinery.”
First CoffeeSM found out about it in San
Francisco a few weeks ago to attend Dreamforce ‘05. He met up with PR whiz
Andrew Pray, who over a beer or two said a friend worked at the San Francisco Chronicle, and somehow
mentioned, briefly and in passing, that she’d worked on a book on how to write
a novel in a month. First CoffeeSM’s ears perked up, there was a
Chronicle book store near the hotel, and exactly one copy of Baty’s book No Plot? No Problem! left.
First CoffeeSM bought it, read it on the plane back to Turkey, the light went
on, and now there’s a 1,667 word quota to fill each November day with
novelizing. 1,667 x 30 = 50,010.
What kind of novel is 50,000 words? It’s not War And Peace, but it is The Great Gatsby, Of Mice And Men, The Catcher
In The Rye, Brave New World, The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Not
embarrassing company.
The silly deadline and ridiculous emphasis on speed and
production derives from a solid human truth Baty’s hit on: The less time you
have to sit and obsess over details, the more chance you have of getting them
right. Or, as he says, you’ll be surprised how creative you can be when you
stop worrying about being creative.
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
content.
