Finds of a Pack Rat

Michael Gartenberg | December 28, 2006, 12:44 PM

Ok, I admit it, I am a pack rat. I tend to keep stuff around, like that old NeXt computer sitting in the garage or the boxes of stuff that have moved with me at least six times over the last twenty years. I have no idea what's in them and yet i keep moving them from place to place. My hard drives are also like that, lots of old information, clips of articles, old research and the like. I did give up on paper a while ago. While I still have a huge file cabinet of stuff from my pre-digital days, there's not a lot of paper stuff i save (with the exception of way tooo many books.)

I'm my attempt to prepare to for 2007 and remove some clutter from my life, i was looking through as stack of stuff and lo and behold, two old research notes. I wondered why I kept them (as I have digital copies of both) until I looked closer, they weren't originals, they were faxed copies that had come back from vendor review. Let me explain, back in the day, at my old firm, Research Notes were regularly sent to vendors for review for "factual accuracy". I don't know what the policy is there today but back then it was a useful tool to make sure that even if vendors didn't like your opinion, you had your facts correct. (Now some analysts also used this as a tool to write provocative notes that they never had any intention of publishing in order to get a response... but that's another story.)

These two notes (I originally had scanned them for posting but realized I don't hold the copyright to them) were special. One came from the competitive analyst at a vendor. What made it special was this it was a fifteen page response to a research note that was at best about a page and half, (with wide margins). Not only did he take issue with some of my facts, but offered what he thought was the correct analysis, and also corrected my spelling and made a few grammatical suggestions as well. The second was even more amusing. I remember it because it started with an apology email from the product manager who reviewed the note, explaining he was tired and not feeling well when he wrote his response. Odd, I hadn't seen a response. I checked the fax machine and there was the response. I can't really quote from the text since this is a family blog but let's just say he extended the biblical blessing for me to "be fruitful and multiply" numerous times.. only he didn't use those words. Turns he was pretty annoyed at what I wrote but had expected his AR person to edit out the language. The new AR person at the time was a little perplexed at the response but dutifully sent of the response verbatim.

It's interesting how different we engage in conversation and feedback in a time that's not so far removed from these dark old days.