Tag Archives: work

Saying Goodbye

My ID photo from my first day of work in 1998 - the other on my last day in the office in 2015.
My ID photo from my first day of work in 1998 – the other on my last day in the office in 2015.

I’m belatedly adding this announcement I posted to Facebook last week on Trotz.com for posterity – who knows when Facebook is going to go belly up?!? In all seriousness, I was both humbled and honored by nearly 100  friends, coworkers and family far and near taking time to lend words of support. I think you dearly for all your blessings.

So last week I said goodbye to my workplace of 18 years. While it may be hard to believe so much time has passed, these photos certainly suggest otherwise. What’s next? I’m equally excited about not only taking a little time off but also the opportunity ahead. Here is the note I sent to my colleagues earlier today: 

As many of you already know, my 18 years at Turner are coming to an end.

What I will miss the most are the people of Turner. Not that new project or product – but the other human beings it’s been my honor to work alongside for so many years.

It has been a pleasure to have lived, loved and learned new things every day of my years spent at Turner. I think back to my job interview in 1997 – with much more hair, and much darker hair at that, talking to Jim Walton about how the internet was going to change media as we know it.

Strategies change, business headwinds ebb and flow, but with the kind of people I’ve had the pleasure of working with at Turner, a job becomes more than a job – it becomes a passion. And for having that opportunity, I am forever thankful.

I am looking forward to future adventures, and feel certain that our paths will intersect again.

In the interim, I can be contacted at joey.trotz@gmail.com.

All the best,

Joey Trotz

CNN Re-Born

cnn relaunch
Yes, the day is finally here.

After over 18 months of work amounting to literally thousands of staff hours, the CNN.com site has been reborn in full embracement of modern web content and technology approaches. After an extensive beta, the site has now replaced the prior version of CNN.com which had essentially never had this extensive and end-to-end redesign in it’s nearly 12-year-long history.

And yes, the site looks lovely on the iPhone too.

And here’s what the blogosphere has to say about it

A slideshow of these images can be found here, or click on a thumbnail below.
troy, greg, heather...dermot, lori, karen, alaymitch & susan conferkurt, mark and simitmitch, susan & ramonicamanagementdueling laptopsteamgroup shotsandy and troydavid & heathersam and troygreg & iphonecnn relaunch on iphonewhewsimitthe moment of truthcnn relaunch on iphone

CNN 2.0

CNN Beta

It’s been a busy few days for us at Turner Broadcasting. Today, CNN.com took the wraps off a beta preview of their new design coming on July 1st (as reported earlier). Full disclosure – I work for Turner Broadcasting, and my ad services team has worked extensively on this project, but the views herein are my own. But as one blog put it:

Something strikes me as… different. I can’t quite put my finger on it. It looks cleaner. Brighter. Cleaner. Grayer. Whiter. Redder. Bluer. Nicer.

The blogs seem to have welcomed the new video treatment (no popup player, and now in Flash!), the Amazon-like ‘We Recommended’ feature, the intelligent use of Ajax, the tabbed presentation in stories highlighting multimedia elements and even, daresay it, the cleaner ad presentation. Some comments do opine for the ability to embed videos on user sites, however. I do think the new site embraces the spirit of Web 2.0, emphasizing the blogosphere on every story (via Sphere) and utilizing Topix for local coverage. Another very cool feature are the new Hot Topics pages, which are being autogenerated for pretty much any story, personality or subject you might dream up; here are a few examples: tuberculosis, Lindsay Lohan, Vioxx, and George W. Bush. As an added bonus, all of these are also available as RSS feeds, huzzah!

As with Gametap 3.0 that launched yesterday, my team has been working on the advertising portions of this project for many months. I’m encouraged to read in some blogs that the ads are less obtrusive, and on the technology side, we’ve really broken what I believe is new ground with some of the underlying approaches, especially around the new video players.

Please do check it out, and be sure to add your comments – there is a handy ‘+Feedback’ link on most pages, and the site wants to hear your opinion. More coverage of the beta can be found here.