The New Guy
Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 1:09 pm by David DeWalt
Well it’s only my fourth day here at McAfee, and I’m more convinced than ever that coming here was the right decision. I’m extremely proud to be part of an organization that provides such an essential service – protecting the world from harm. It’s great to be steering a company that not only protects governments and businesses around the world, but also keeps families, like mine and yours, safe online.
Actually, I knew it was the right decision back in early March when I toured all of McAfee’s U.S. offices and met the amazing team face-to-face. On Monday, I spent the whole morning outside our Plano office and greeted every employee personally with a handshake. It certainly got me jazzed up for my new job.
Can you tell how glad I am to be here?
They tell me I’m the first McAfee CEO to blog, a badge of honor that represents the changing culture of this organization. McAfee has been through some difficult times recently, and I know it’s been hard on the people here who don’t deserve what they’ve been through. But things are going to be different now. This is a world-class company with enormous opportunity for growth, and I’m privileged to be leading it forward.
I’m personally committed to providing the honest and transparent leadership that our customers, employees, shareholders and partners deserve. I look forward to meeting you over the coming weeks and months, and in particular, hearing your thoughts, ideas and suggestions. You can either post comments for me here on this blog, or contact me at ceo@mcafee.com. I will do my best to either personally respond, or have a member of my team get back to you.
Here’s to a great future for McAfee.
- Posted in CEO Perspectives
[...] Trackback McAfee Avert Labs welcomes our new CEO Dave DeWalt aboard. Check out his first blog post on our sister blog Security Insights. [...]
Well, as a CEO of one of the biggest PC security firms hats off to you for the courage of supplying your email address in this post.
This’ll test your spam filters.
But, anyway, good luck.
[...] I’ve always felt that company CEOs should blog — but based on how many others in my position blog, I seem to be in the minority in this opinion. Well, my hats off to McAfee’s newest blogger, CEO David DeWalt. Welcome to the world of blogging, Dave [...]
Congratulations on joining the blogosphere…just a small suggestion, reading the comments should be more intuitive, the only way to get to them is by clicking on “Leave a comment”. This may through some users off.
Best of luck.
Felix
+1 to Felix, and a couple further suggestions:
-Who is “Editor” and why are they posting to your blog? Blogs are persons – not companies. Certainly not job titles.
.
-There are very, very few comments on your posts. This could be for a lot of reasons, but I’d venture the largest reason is too many posts read like marketing. You have a chance to (among other things) turn that around.
-Don’t forget the other half of blogging – commenting on other blogs using your identity.
-One blog on your blogroll? And that’s ” * McAfee Avert Labs Blog”
-Your feed is being limited to two lines… I had the same issue on my WordPress blog earlier this week, so reading this: http://www.mymicroisv.com/?p=295
-According to the source code for your index.html, you are using an old version of WorkPress! Not a good example to set
Cheers,
[...] The new CEO of McAfee is blogging on their WordPress blog, very cool to see another CEO blogging. « Dave Chappelle Comment » [...]
Another CEO who blogs, awesome!
As a fellow blogging CEO, I’m stoked to see more companies jump in. Be sure to carefully read your comments since it’s a great way to the pulse of your customers.
Unfortunately, I have to report that some of McAfee’s personal security applications cause our customers a lot of heartache online.
I certainly hope your arrival signifies a shift at McAfee and that your team will take a closer look at how to make benign problems, like uploading photos to photo sharing services, less difficult for those who also want to protect themselves.
Best of luck with your new job!
Congratulations for joining McAfee as a CEO and welcome to the blogosphere!
Best of luck to you and McAfee!
- Avi
I used McAfee’s early antivirus products and found them trustworthy and effective, and I’m open to having that trust restored. Good luck and best regards to you and your team.
nice to see you blogging.
with vista you have lots of possibilities to work on hahahahaha
i’m sorry but i’m not a potential customer by now, as i’m using mac xD maybe in the future but i hope not…
anyway, good luck in your new job ^_^
Best wishes as CEO, let me know if you need a photographer =)
David,
It’s always a good thing to hear it directly from the man in charge. I hope you’ll find this to be a positive experience and one that will benefit all our shared consumers.
Bill Pytlovany
BillP Studios
Hi,
It’s great that CEOs like yourself are blogging!
On our site, we like to get everyone’s story, and we are currently interviewing several CEOs, company founders etc – we find they are often extremely interesting.
I look forward to reading more of your posts.
David, great to see you embracing this communication medium. I think the open attitude expressed through weblogs is very endearing to customers (both loyal and potential). I hope to see more CEOs online and sharing their company’s vision with the little people. Congrats!
I met this “New Guy” and he is really cool… so this blog doesnt suprise me. We are excited to see what happens next.
Good luck in your new job and welcome blogging.
It’s always a pleasure to read the thoughts and insights into CEO’s of established companies. I always enjoy talking with CEOs, since they’ve usually been ‘around the block’. Good luck with this new adventure David!
As a CEO and former CIO, I congratulate you on your new position, and for the transparency to start a CEO blogsite.
I also have to confess to possibly having to leave McAfee as my long-time home PC security provider. My subscription expired April 1, and I am not sure I want to renew. Since I acquired a new laptop for my wife at Christmas and added it to our home network of now 3 PCs, we consistently lose internet access on the laptop and sometimes our desktop PCs. The only way to restore it (that I have discovered so far) is to uninstall McAfee and resinstall it, which sometimes works for a week or two untill it fails again. The I repeat the uninstall/reinstall scenario and am fine for a while.
I would prefer to stay with McAfee and will hold off for a day or so to see if someone monitors this blog and might care to respond to me with a suggestion. I have tried your websites and various web searches but have found nothing of help so far.
I assume this is nothing more than a conflict with XP and is probably their fault, but I have to rely upon your firm to maintain compatibility if that’s the case.
Thanks in advance for any help you or your staff can suggest.
And, best wishes in your new position. You have the opportunity to benefit millions! Wishing you all the best.
Tom
dave, not sure if you’ll see this but congrats on your career and new position.
Paul Joyce, UD teammate
I joined in Nov. knowing that McAfee would be getting a new CEO. I was counting on the board getting it right. After a few meetings, I am convinced that McAfee got better than I imagined.
No wishing of good luck, we’ll make our own with DDW at the helm.
Hi David, just a quick note to say that we really enjoyed meeting you and Ranjana (not sure if that is the correct spelling)at Clivedon. Love to hear from you both.
Dear David, It was nice reading your blog.
We truly appreciate your sincere concern on child safety on the internet.
We look forward to reading your posts more often …
It was great to read your blog. Congrats on your new position
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