Job Function: McDonald's restaurant, with its famous golden arches, is one of the most recognized brands in the world. Steve Wilson, senior director of global Web communications for McDonald's Corporation, operates behind the scenes, managing a team of people who deliver all McDonald's internal electronic communications as well as the corporate portion of McDonalds.com. "McDonalds is a highly decentralized company," Wilson says. "We provide a tremendous amount of employee self-service information, such as details on insurance plans, electronic town halls, training, and Webcasts through the McDonald's portal. This has been very effective in aligning our business." Wilson's group is responsible for the ongoing evolution and training of the McDonald's user community as well as coordinating with 400 people around the world who serve as content management evangelists.

"The Internet has so changed the role of information for large global brands like McDonald's," Wilson says. "Ten years ago we had the luxury of taking a day to respond to something. But now if something happens in a restaurant somewhere in the world, it is on the wire in like 45 seconds. So we make the portal a single point of information to employees worldwide." Wilson also works with technology and information suppliers. "Our internal content repository is all Day Software's Communiqué, which allows our end users a common look and feel," he says. "We have a global feed from Factiva that provides over 9,000 publications and that is used extensively by communications and marketing people in 92 countries around the world."

In a Day's Work:  "I travel about 15 percent of the time, often to meet my counterparts all over the world," Wilson says. "I find out how people are using the technology, and if they are using the technology effectively." Wilson is a big believer in developing the skills of his user community and he often speaks to groups of owner operators. "We put on an internal annual conference for our portal. It's an opportunity to bring business leaders along on what we're doing." 

Oddest encounter: "Meeting with Ronald McDonald to develop his Web presence on our portal."

View from the desk: "The entire company is in an open office environment."

Outside interest: "I have two passions—photography and scuba diving—and I combine the two."

If not Econtent, then what?: "If I could do anything, I'd be a fashion photographer."