Posts tagged with Congo

AMD has taken a bit of flack recently because we referred to an upcoming laptop platform using the name of a river, “Congo”, as a code name.  Some people took objection to the association ― entirely unintended ― with violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).   As it happens, because we were moving closer to launch, we were in the midst of transitioning from using the code name to the more descriptive “2^nd Generation Ultrathin Platform” ― but that only led some other people to believe that we were bowing to pressure.

I want to set the record straight: here is what happened. 

At D7 this year I saw the presentation by playwright and activist Eve Ensler on the issue of “rape-free products.”  I have to admit that before that I was ignorant of the violence taking place in the DRC. You can learn more about what she said here.

At about the same time, others who were educated about this violence started to make the (again, unintended) connection between our product code name (which are meant to be internal but have a way of becoming public) and the tragedy in the DRC, and this made it into some blogs.  This was happening as the team was in the process of formally transitioning from the code name to the more formal product name (in the same way, “Yukon” became our “1^st Generation Ultrathin Platform”), so we were already referring to the product as our “2^nd Generation Ultrathin Platform.”

Two conclusions:

1.       Anything that gives awareness to this issue is a good thing.

2.       We get to make the point that we are introducing our 2^nd generation product while others are still on their first.

Given these two things we were happy to expedite the transition that was already in place.

For more on Eve Ensler’s work visit her site.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.