Networking for Consultants

This meeting will address the art of networking, and will offer tips and techniques for consultants.

Consultants often find face-to-face networking to be difficult, particularly in a room full of strangers. This meeting’s panel will address how to approach this kind of situation, as well as others faced by consultants while they are marketing their services.

The panel will consist of three CNSV consultants and a representative from the industry. CNSV Board Director T. Kim Parnell will chair the panel for the evening’s discussions. Questions may be submitted in advance of the meeting to panel member and CNSV Chair Brian A. Berg. (Two other panel members will be announced on the CNSV website.) In addition to questions submitted in advance, audience members will be asked to submit questions at the meeting itself. Think about questions that may help your interactions with new prospects.

The evening could include some role playing exercises with guidance from the panel. The hope is to get some rapid-fire discussion going.

About the speaker,  Kim Parnell (Panel Chair), Brian A. Berg, Peter Salmon, Andy Sinsigalli, Miguel Gomez

Dr. Kim Parnell is the Principal/Founder of PEC, an engineering consulting firm that focuses on support for high-tech and medical device companies. He specializes in the mechanical engineering design and behavior of biomedical devices and also works in electronic components and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Kim has been a CNSV Board Member since 2005. He holds PhD and MSME degrees from Stanford University in Mechanical Engineering and a BES from Georgia Tech.

Brian Berg has been a consultant since 1979, and is President of Berg Software Design. His specialty is computer storage and storage interfaces, including optical storage, flash memory, Storage Area Networks, SCSI and USB. He has participated in over 50 conferences as a speaker, session chair and conference chair. Brian has also worked extensively with intellectual property and patents as an expert witness, particularly in the storage arena. He is currently in his second year Chair of IEEE-CNSV, and he has been a member of PATCA since 1980.

Peter Salmon is an electrical engineering consultant and expert witness specializing in patent litigation. He has authored over 25 patents in the areas of electronic packaging, high-speed digital printers, and electrostatic motors and generators. Having been a systems engineer at both defense companies and commercial start-up companies, he brings an eclectic background to the panel.

Andy Sinsigalli, VP of Investments at AG Edwards in San Jose, will bring a different perspective to the panel that comes from 17 years in the financial services industry. Andy networks with industry professionals, and he will share some of his techniques that have opened doors to developing a client base. Andy has a BS in Economics.

Miguel Gomez has 23 years of experience in hardware and software design in the networking and storage industries. He is also highly skilled in the use of microelectronics simulation software and Verilog coding for digital switching, optical encoder and semiconductor memory systems. Miguel started consulting in 1989 as a technical writer, and this work evolved into an engineering specialty in FPGA prototyping and FPGA-to-ASIC conversion. It also led to his co-founding three start-up companies (including ActSolar), as well as work as an expert witness in seven patent cases.

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