writingsamples_rswilkins
TRANSCRIPT
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Widely known as a data CPE vendor, Ambit will be demonstrating its new technological expertise by showcasing its Transport Gateway and IPSTB.Ambit has developed its own DLNA stack, with a Flash DLNA client to discover clients and other services advertised. Ambit will demonstrate how DLNA can be integrated with Cable Modems and the IP STB for channel changing and EPG using DLNA2.0 standards. Since Ambit has developed the core software for the IP STB, they now have the ability to generate more revenue for the operator while providing more applications to the customers, along with saving the consumer money. The IP STB is a “Green” device, with a revolutionary cooling system, bringing the energy consumption down to a low 35KWhr/Year. Using DLNA as the base, Ambit will show the MSO community how content distri-bution and home networking can be secure, easy to deploy, and profitable.
This was a promotional piece published in Broadband Gear Report to intro-duce the cable industry community to new technolgy that Ambit Microsystems had developed.
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Ambit will be in the Big Easy this year participat-ing in the 2008 National Show in New Orleans! We welcome you to join us on the show floor May 18th- 20th at SUITE# ES-46. If you would like to arrange a meeting ahead of time, please contact your Account Manager or email Richard Wilkins at [email protected].
It has already been a very busy year at Ambit and we’d like you to come see all the progress we’ve made. We’ll be showcasing the Digital Entertainment Gate-way; the next generation of whole-home networking, sharing, integration and entertainment! And with DOCSIS 3.0 taking the industry by storm, we’re de-lighted to highlight our DOCSIS 3.0-based product line. Finally, we’re moving full steam ahead with new Tru2Way and IP Set-Top Boxes. Take a sneak peek at what we’ll be introducing in the coming months.
Of course, these are just some of the things we hope to share with you. We hope you’ll join us at SUITE # ES-46 and experience what’s happening inside Ambit.Sincerely,
Richard WilkinsMarketing and Communications ManagerAmbit Microsystems
This copy was published in a newsletter that was regularly distributed to Ambit’s customer database.
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Dear Ambit Team,Many of you, if not all of you, have heard about our rebranding initiative. This is a very big change for us and a great opportunity to give our customers what they have been wanting from us for some time: the real Ambit. As it would so happen, the real Ambit would have a new name.We’ve known for some time that we would need to change our company name from Ambit to something else. This presented an opportunity to do it right. We now had the opportunity to hire a professional branding company that would help us find a name that suited us, which reflected our corporate culture, our way of doing business in a way that would make other companies take notice. Of course with every opportunity there is risk. We were putting the future of our company in the hands of people we didn’t know. This was a leap of faith none of us had ever taken before. From a list of a hundred brand-ing companies, we settled on WOW, a branding company in Vancouver, British Colum-bia.We began working with WOW in November of 2007. Over the course of the following months, we developed a relationship with WOW. We provided them with information about who we were, who we thought we were, who we wanted to be. And they gathered information from our customers about who they thought we were, who they hoped we would be. The work continued through the autumn of 2008.In November of 2008 we were presented with our new name and saw it for the first time in the context our customers would see it.
The attached PDF file is a brief document to help you answer questions that you and our customers might have about the new Brand. There is a link to a video presentation you should see as soon as possible. Due to licensing issues, the video link will remain active only until Monday, January 12th 2009. Do not play this video in any public forum, it is for Ambit Employees ONLY.I am confident that you will be excited about what you see but I must ask that you use discretion in speaking to anyone outside of Ambit about the new brand. We are still planning and preparing many components for the actual launch of the brand that is scheduled for the beginning of March 2009.
Let’s make it easy,
Richard WilkinsMarketing and CommunicationsAmbit Microsystems
The Re-Branding Team needed to communicate to the people of Ambit Microsystems what was happening to their company and how to address the most highly anticipated questions they would be asked by curious clients, friends, other employees, and family members. This letter and a Rebranding FAQ sheet was distributed to every employee.
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Ambit Signs Purchase Agreement with Comcast for DOCSIS® 3.0 Cable Modems(this sounds like we’re buying modems from Comcast)
Comcast signs purchase agreement for Ambit DOCSIS3.0 Cable Modems(not quite as direct as “Comcast buys Ambit DOCSIS 3.0 Cable modems”, but there’s no confusion over what is taking place.)
Ambit and Comcast sign DOCSIS 3.0 purchase agreement(does not divulge any power positions)
11/1/2008 – Denver, CO: Ambit Microsystems announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Comcast, the nation’s leading provider of entertainment, information and communications products and services, for the purchase of DOC-SIS 3.0 Cable Modems, one of Ambit’s newest products. Ambit’s DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem delivers higher Internet connection speeds of up to 160 Mbps. using channel bonding technology. Four upstream and down-stream channels can be virtually bonded allowing operators to deliver higher speed services to subscribers of up to 160Mbps downstream and 120Mbps upstream. The addition of IPv6 support greatly expands the number of Internet addresses that operators may use. Ambit’s DOCSIS 3.0 Modem simultaneously supports DOCSIS 1.x, 2.0, and the new 3.0 features.
“Comcast continues to be an integral part of the vision and direction for Ambit and we are excited to receive this initial order from them,” said Ambit President, Maria Popo. “The increased speeds and capabilities provided by DOCSIS 3.0 will change and enhance the way people use the Internet, providing a network capable of delivering personalized content anytime, anywhere.” For more information about the Ambit DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem, visit the Prod-ucts section of the Ambit website. http://www.ambitbroadband.com/na/index.php/products/product-overview/
Here my assignment was to develop copy for a press release announcing a business agreement be-tween two cable industry companies. I had to be mindful of the nature of the relationship between the two companies and careful to keep the press release balanced in terms of which company was more “important”. You can see the attention to detail involved in drafting the headline for the press release:
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“Abdul is a wrestler with arms like trees. I’m guessing a solid, well placed punch from him would knock me out...”
Nick, Puma, Aquino and I are already in the cage warming up. A few other guys join us on the mat and finish putting their gear on. We all know what we’re here to do today; today is Sparring Day. Today we practice what we’ve been learning all week and a sparring session is where the rubber meets the road.
I run in place for a couple minutes and do some shadow boxing to get my muscles warmed up. I secure my head gear, shove a mouthguard in my mouth and finish putting my gloves on. Someone sticks a CD in the CD player and the DropKick Murphys set the mood. Nick, Puma and Aquino have been training with Sen-sei Brian Wright for several years now. Aquino has been groomed into a professional MMA fighter, Puma has won his amateur MMA bouts, and Nick gave up his Homecom-ing King crown to represent the gym at a Kyokushin Karate Tournament last year. He took home a First Place trophy by delivering a very decisive knock out to his opponent.
Sensei is on the mat now and gives us instructions. We part-ner up and try to listen to him over the music. I’m a little nervous about getting hit by the guy I’m partnered up with. Abdul is a wrestler with arms like trees. I’m guessing a solid, well placed punch from him would knock me out. We’re given instructions to start out using hands only, practicing basic punching combinations. We’re to focus on “flow” and “rhythm”. After a couple rounds of that, we’ll be allowed to add kicks to the mix. The round-timer rings and we begin moving on the mat...
This is an exerpt from a piece I did documenting a sparring session at a popular fighter’s gym in Asbury Park:
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Any kid that grew up in rural Readington Township knows the sound of a hot air balloon flying overhead. Though there was a lot of farmland around Three Bridges, not every kid had a large field nearby where a balloon could land like we had.
My house was on Case Avenue in the town of Three Bridges. We had acres and acres of golden fields that stretched from our back fence as a far as the eye could see. As far as I knew, when the sun came up in the morning, it came up for us and only us.
I was told that our house was built by the infamous Mr. Case, a bootlegger during the 1920’s. I think you can imagine how this little tidbit of knowledge fueled the imaginations of neighbor-hood kids.
Me and my pals would dig for hours in the field behind my house looking for old glass bottles, gun cartridges, human bones, and chests of forgotten bootleg money. We found a few old bottles and that, of course, spurred us on. We dug huge pits out in those fields. We were country kids and had nothing to do for fun besides smoking cigarettes and running through the woods. So, we dug with our bare hands and with sticks. We dug into the dark brown earth and it smelled like wet wool, gangsters and rusting metal. We would toil for hours to find one piece of one bottle. We’d make guesses at what was in the bottle, “Whiskey! Rum! Blood!”
Our archeological work was occasionally interrupted by long battles between ourselves and “the coppers” but everything stopped when we heard the sound of a hot air balloon. It was the sound of a god arriving and we ran, crashing through the fields, bursting out of the trees, our eyes scanning the sky for the source of that amazing fiery sound.
“We dug into the dark brown earth and it smelled like wet wool, gangsters and rusting metal...”
Here is an example of creative non-fiction:
