For nearly two decades, Orange (formerly France Telecom) has had an outpost in Silicon Valley. But until I joined the company in 2014, Orange Silicon Valley (as it is known), did not have a public digital presence save its startup accelerator Orange Fab.
My role at Orange was multi-faceted and centered on not only planning and producing a public-facing website for the organization, but also working with internal analysts to produce a weekly newsletter that would be distributed to Orange's executive team around Silicon Valley's latest news, providing assistance for events, and also external communications.
My role at Orange was multi-faceted and centered on not only planning and producing a public-facing website for the organization, but also working with internal analysts to produce a weekly newsletter that would be distributed to Orange's executive team around Silicon Valley's latest news, providing assistance for events, and also external communications.
introducing orangesv.com
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In order to showcase the various capabilities and opportunities Orange Silicon Valley had to offer, my purview was to establish a website that would be separate from the more well-known Orange Fab accelerator -- the latter was centered on just the program, not the organization. I crafted a functional specification document detailing what we wanted in a website and included input from relevant stakeholders.
After compiling a Request for Proposal, I solicited bids from several design agencies and upon selecting Kanopi Studios from the mix, engaged in project management, overseeing design and development of wireframes, layouts, and build-out. |
The outcome was OrangeSV.com, a WordPress-powered website that listed not only details about the programs Orange Silicon Valley offered, but also upcoming events, a photo gallery, and blog. Nearly all of the content featured on the first iteration of the website was copy written by myself.
During my tenure, maintenance of the site included working with analysts to secure bylines for our blog, keeping photos and event listings fresh and relevant, along with posting PDF copies of the latest reports. |
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"the gazette" and special reports |
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Every week, Orange Silicon Valley distributed an internal newsletter dubbed "The Gazette" which offered executives a summary of the latest technology news from Silicon Valley. My role was akin to that of an Editor-in-Chief where I wrangled analysts and other colleagues to submit articles for inclusion. Each issue featured between 40 to 60 articles around a host of topics that interested Orange, such as Internet of Things, telecommunications, marketing, mergers and acquisitions, and more.
In 2015, I was tasked with modernizing the interface in which analysts published their thoughts. Working with an external developer, I drew up plans for new functionality that would match our workflow and would also integrate with how the Gazette was distributed each week. The premise was that this updated Gazette system would allow us to collect more information about each company that we could reference later on, akin to a Customer Relationship Management platform. On occasion, I'd also produce special reports around major tech events that would be used to brief Orange executives. Some of these reports covered financial earnings releases by AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, along with news from events put on by Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google, and the latest developments around Net Neutrality by the Federal Communications Commission. |
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orange institute
Orange Institute was a biannual event where executives from Orange and other partner companies would visit different countries to better understand the markets there. In the summer of 2015, this week-long conference was to be held in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles. In my capacity, I assisted with speaker programming, leveraging my network to not only gain commitments from Halo Neuroscience, Slack, GitHub, Silicon Valley Bank, and Autodesk, but moderated multiple panels and sessions.
As we were wrapping up that edition of Orange Institute, I was instrumental in helping plan for the fall version which would be held in Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York. During a reconnaissance visit, I secured commitments from Vice Media, General Assembly, and other companies to speak at the event. contributed bylines and news releasesOne other significant responsibility that I had was ghostwriting articles on behalf of the Orange Silicon Valley chief executive and assisting analysts with getting their bylines placed in media outlets. In one instance, I worked alongside the Orange Silicon Valley CEO to generate an article around his framework of "The New, the Now, and the Next", and also a prediction around digital tech trends in 2015.
When Orange's Gigabit Studio opened in 2015, I assisted one of the analysts in producing an article on the state of gigabit internet, not only helping to strategize and edit his work, but assisting our outside PR firm to place it with TechCrunch. |