I’ll admit I was obsessed with Brand. Brand. Brand. back at MetaTV. But after all I was competing against big time companies with more money and an audience who was so brand concious. Our customers and partners were entertainment companies, advertisers and of course the cable giants. So in my mind, everything had to be “cool”, everything had to have a “story” and that included the Conference Room names …. which many of our customers and partners would end up sitting in meetings with us. So tapping into the ideas through a contest for all employees, this is the blend we came up with. It worked very very well, as we had beautiful (but low cost) black and white photos of the movie stars and directors in the rooms, very classy.
How did the conference rooms come to be named?
We had a contest and true to MetaTV fashion we came up with an Innovative naming scheme …
Original Message—–
From: Ramon Chen
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2001 5:23 PM
To: *All MetaTV
Subject: Results of the Room naming contest
Thank you to everyone for the overwhelming participation in the room naming contest. We are delighted to announce that there are multiple winners!
There were over 100 entries and multiple submissions and wonderful suggestions ranging from planets, volcanos, local bars, local landmarks, golf courses, cuts of meat! (meet), satellites, TV innovators/inventors, bodies of water, Jazz greats, colors, TV stations, flowers, monuments/landmarks, jazz greats, types of cars, seven dwarfs, comets, space missions, fruit, wines, stadium names, the letters T and V in city names, rivers, world leaders, greek heroes, classical musicians, names from Beowulf, nine muses, technologies, scientists, NBA teams, buttons on portals and various TV shows and more (sorry if I left out listing any entries).
In the end, in true MetaTV collaborative fashion the names for the rooms came from a variety of entries that together supplied the thinking and actual names selected. There were so many great ideas that a number of suggestions have been incorporated under an overall umbrella category for all the rooms of TV/Movie shows, actors and directors which are associative with what we do. With an additional sub-theme for each room within the category providing a MetaTV innovative twist. The themes for each room picked from the entries support additional activties beyond initial naming. Each theme for a room will contain additional photographs, posters, artwork that will complemented associated activities such as:
1) product release code names (a suggestion was made to include a new associated code name picture and attribution in that room each time a new product release associated with that room/theme rolls out – yes, we know we’ll have more products in the future, but we are expecting that we will also have more rooms as we grow too! In addition, we want to be able to recognize those teams and contributions on projects – Creative Services, TV Services and Professional Services that don’t (yet) have individual project code names for their great work)
2) We also have a MetaTV employee pet pictures room (a room that MetaTV folks with pets (or pets of friends of MetaTV folks) can showcase pictures of their pride and joys).
Selections were made from all entries by picking out innovative, adaptive and amazing ideas and names that were fun and interesting. Those picked provided an innovative twist on the usual single theme across all rooms generally implemented by companies. Selected names also allowed for associated themes that could be adaptable and provide enjoyment/participation/collaboration into the future. The goal is eventually to provide designs and pictures in each room based on the room names and themes that will amaze visitors.
Note that the main board room and living room are not named beyond “board room” and “living room” because those are our most highly customer/partner facing rooms and usually do not need names for the entrances/doors. In addition, it has not been fully determined what kind of design/art will be used for the interior for those rooms. Those rooms not withstanding, here are the names for 10 other rooms:
NAMES
| Room | Name | Theme | Fun messaging and activities | Product Releases if applicable |
| Main Engineering | Coppola | Directors | “Directors” weekly meetings also likely to be held here | Portal Server |
| Other Engineering | Hepburn | Actors/Actresses | “Small but elegant designer room” | Portal Designer |
| Executive | Casablanca | Classic Movies | “Syndicate it again Sam” | Syndication Server |
| Glass Room East | Cheers | Sitcoms | “Everybody can see you and they know your name” | Commerce Server |
| Sales/Biz Dev East | Godzilla | Sci-Fi | “Where enormous deals get done” | Syndication Designer |
| Main Kitchen | Dino | Cartoon Characters | “Lots of food and advertised consumer products” | Ad Server |
| Other Smaller Kitchen East | Homer | Cartoon Characters | “Small sized but big eats” | |
| Printer Room East | Lassie | TV/Movie Pets | Pictures of MetaTV folks pets on bulletin board in the room | |
| Hotel Engineering | Hotel California | TV/Movie Hotels | Hotel California – apart from being an Eagles song – was also a small independent movie in 1998 | |
| Hotel Sales | Heartbreak Hotel | TV/Movie Hotels | Heartbreak Hotel was a Chris Columbus movie in 1988 |
Finally the names had to work where possible in the context of arranging meetings and discussions, so one word room names worked best
“Our meeting is in Coppola”. Oh I think I saw him/her in “Dino”. Of course “Your printout is in Lassie” is pretty funny. Our visitor is at the “Hotel California”
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Contributing Winning Entries Names/Suggestions
David De Andrade Name rooms after product release code names and have celebrations/dedications for each additional release
Lena Sack A famous TV pets room (so that MetaTV employees can put pictures of their pets up on a board)
Marcus Duerod The Simpsons (Homer selected for the name of the smaller Kitchen in the East wing)
Dean Griffiths MetaTV actual product names (not quite MetaTV code names for products but along the same theme)
Amy Shultz Generation X classic TV – listing pretty much every great TV show (Cheers, the glass room in the East Wing listed #1)
William Briggs Famous Black and White TV shows (contributed to overall theme)
Margaret Wade Best TV shows (contributed to overall theme)
Julie Chendes Classic TV (contributed to overall theme)
Prakash Hegde TV Cartoon Characters (Category selected for our kitchens Dino and Homer)
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Each person with a contributing entry receives a $15 gift voucher – please see HR for your prize.
Thank you for all your suggestions and contributions! We are looking at purchasing nice posters/photographs to complement the room names and also are looking forward to your pet pictures (start getting those portraits of your goldfish taken!) and the fun activities that will come from rolling out of those product releases and adding new photos/posters to the rooms.
– Ramon