Chapter 19 Chapter Nineteen

The Maestro project marketing team had another meeting in the Corvette, and pretty much everyone was sitting in the same seats as they were last time, as if they had been assigned. But this time Tom Lundgren was there, not at the conference table, but in a chair in the back, with his back against the wall.And when Nora was about to announce the start of the meeting, Paul Camilleti, the CFO of Trion Corporation, walked in.In a black turtleneck over a dark gray blocky houndstooth jacket, he looks glamorous like a star out of the movie "Love Italiane."He sat down next to Tom Lundgren, and you could feel the whole room go quiet, as if someone had flipped a power switch and made everyone suddenly electrified.

Even Nora seemed a little nervous. "Okay," she said, "and now the meeting begins. It is my great honor to welcome Paolo Camilleti, our Chief Financial Officer, to this meeting—you are welcome, Paul." Camilleti lowered his head and hinted: Don't talk to me, I'm just here for a private visit, and I'm anonymous, so just treat me as an elephant in this room. "Who else will be in our meeting today? Who else will be on the conference call?" A voice came from the speaker of the phone: "Xiao Jian, Singapore branch." Then another voice said, "Mike Mottola, Brussels office."

"Very well," she said, "everyone is there, then." She looked excited and enthusiastic, though it was hard to say how much she was putting on a show for Tom Lundgren and Paul Camillette." Seems like it's time to look at market forecasts, do some deep analysis to see where we are. We all don't want to hear that cliché that we are a 'dying product', am I right? Maestro is by no means a dying product. A dead product. We’re not going to destroy the brand value that Trion has built on this line of products just to be different. I think everyone agrees on that.”

"Nora, I'm Ajian from Singapore." "Well, please tell me." "Uh... I have to say that Palm, Sony and Blackberry are putting some pressure on us, especially in the enterprise market. Pre-orders for the Maestro Deluxe seem to be slipping a bit in APAC." "Thank you, Jian," she quickly interrupted him, "Kimberly, how do you feel about this marketing channel?" Kimberly Ziegler wears horn-rimmed glasses and tousled curly hair.His face was pale, and he raised his head nervously: "I have to say that my opinion is very different from that of A Jian."

"Really? What's the difference?" "In fact, I've noticed the benefits of product differentiation. Our price point has an advantage over Blackberry or Sony devices with advanced messaging capabilities. Yes, our product is not as shiny as it used to be It's shiny, but this upgrade to the processor and the flash memory will add value to it. So I think we can sustain it, especially in the vertical market." A sycophant, I thought to myself. "Great," Nora said, beaming. "Great to hear your opinion. I'd love to hear your feedback on 'Gold Dust'—" She saw Chad hold up his index finger, "Chad , do you have anything to say?"

"I think maybe Adam has something on 'Gold Dust'." She turned to me: "That's great, let's hear it." She said it as if I had just volunteered to play the piano. "'Gold Dust'?" I said with a smile. "Is this still the last century? It's the wireless Betamax, as loud as New Coke, cold fusion, XFL football, and Yugo cars." Some laughed appreciatively, and Nora stared at me seriously. I continued: "We don't even think about adopting it because there is a huge compatibility problem. I mean, devices with 'gold dust' technology can only be connected with devices made by the same manufacturer, and there is no standard for it Code. Philips has been claiming that they will develop a new standardized 'gold dust' technology - ha, yeah, maybe when we all speak Esperanto!"

There was more laughter in the room, even though I noticed that almost half of the people were straight-faced.Tom Lundgren was looking at me with that funny smirk on his face, his right leg was bouncing up and down like a jackhammer. I got more and more excited: "I mean, what is the transmission speed of it, less than a megabit per second? It's pathetic slow, less than one-tenth of the transmission speed of WiFi. It's so old-fashioned. Not to mention how easily it can be tampered with - there is no security at all." Someone whispered: "That's right!" I couldn't recognize whose voice it was.Morden was all smiles; Phil Bucharin squinted at me, expressionless, wondering what he was thinking.And then I looked at Nora, and she was flushed, I mean, you could see a wave of red from her neck all the way up to her wide open eyes.

"Are you finished?" she said quickly. All of a sudden, I felt uneasy.This is not the reaction I expected, what's wrong?Am I talking too long? "Of course." I replied cautiously. An Indian-looking guy sitting across from me said, "Why are we talking again? Nora, I thought you had the final say on this last week. You seemed pretty sure you were working on this add-on It’s well worth the cost. So why are you people in marketing arguing about this again? Isn’t this problem already solved?” Chad, who had been staring at the table, looked up and said, "Hey, come on guys, don't take it so seriously, he's just a new guy! You can't expect him to know everything - he doesn't even have a cappuccino Don’t even know where the plane is! Stop blaming him.”

"I don't think we need to waste any more time on this," Nora said. "It's settled. We're going to add 'gold dust' technology." She gave me a hard look. After another disgusting twenty minutes, the meeting ended, and everyone began to leave the meeting room one after another.Morden secretly patted me on the shoulder, and everything was said without saying anything.I screwed up and made a fool of myself.Everyone looked at me curiously. "Well, Nora," Paolo Camilleti held out a finger, "can you stay for a while? I have something to discuss with you."

I walked out of the conference room, and Chad came up and whispered, "It doesn't look like she's very receptive, but your opinion is valuable, man." Ha, that's right.Son of a bitch.

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