Interview with Jim Doe
by Louise Robertson, Intranet Communications

After almost 28 years with this company, Jim Doe calls himself a survivor. I spoke with Jim, who works in Global Technical Training, as part of the Net News series that recognizes employees for their achievements and contributions.

In September 1972, Jim began his career with the company as an Account Representative in Cleveland. Since then, he's served as Regional Technical Director and Regional Sales Manager among other responsibilities.

There were two pivotal times in his career. In 1980 the PC arrived and changed the strategy for networks and networking technologies forever.

In the early 1990's he decided to "convert knowledge to training." Thus he started a one-man show for Sales and Marketing training. Although it was first under Marketing, his training organization was then moved to John Smith's group. He's currently in charge of Global Technical Training and has a staff of 35 employees.

When weighing life goals and career goals, Jim puts his life goals first. He says, "I'm very successful in my life goals and moderately successful in my career goals." He even goes so far as to say he refuses to interrupt a life goal for a career goal.

His ideas about training involve presenting information in a different, understandable way. "You have to make training interesting. But you also have to take technical topics and make them simple and think of way to make the information stick," Jim said.

When I asked him for advice for other members of the UUNET community, he said, "In the absence of money, use creativity." Creative solutions he's used include distance learning, videos, using volunteer teachers, and delivering training with the Internet.

When asked about Jim's philosophy of "maximizing infusion rates of knowledge per unit of time," an employee who used to work with Jim said, "Yep, that sounds like Jim!" Jim likes to leave a crowd with a headache.