My Analysis Experience, Part 2

equities analysis,technical communication,adobe robohelp,madcap flare,San Diego

My Analysis Background

My main exposure to corporate analysis is informal and only from about ten years experience – four years in investigating property crimes and white collar crime in the late 1990s in New Mexico as a private investigator, one year working for Linsco/Private Ledger, a San Diego company which is the largest stateside independent broker-dealer and does its own in-house equities analysis. This is where I started studying for the series 7 brokerage license and my first paper trading portfolio earned 67% over nine months in 1999.

The other five years comes from direct exposure to the Help Authoring Tool field, specifically in working for two years within eHelp Corporation, and also testing competitor’s products partly within that time and also after I left eHelp. I’ve also made technical communication part of my portfolio of skills that I use to make a living.

I also had the opportunity in 2005 to work on a project with The Diffusion Group (TDG) , a direct market analysis company located in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. While TDG specializes in consumer electronics I was fortunate enough to be able to observe how market analysis is completed.

Ever wonder where Marketing gets those nifty projections and numbers from in your company? Companies like TDG provide them with it. It’s a hot field and falls into the Bleeding Edge, right past the Leading Edge of adoptable technology. They are the future-tellers, and accuracy is their game.

Bleeding Edge: Defined

As my old Novatel Wireless boss said once, you know what the bleeding edge is? It’s where you get cut up for going past the leading edge. That boss was Brad Weinert, back in 1999 when he was just a Product Manager / Tech Support department head. He’s now the CEO of Novatel Wireless and one of the most honest men I’ve worked for.

During the timespan from 1999 until the present (nine years) I’ve also maintained close ties within Blue Sky Software (BSS) until it became eHelp, then after eHelp was purchased by Macromedia, within Macromedia and Adobe. Some stayed with Adobe, some left.

This is what I called, in one post, the ‘beer and wings’ connection.

Summing up, it takes a bit of investigation, some good human intelligence, and the ability to read SEC filings to do your job right in analysis. I’m fortunate enough to have all of these plus good sources within the Technical Communication space.