Why Tech Matters

In the late 90s, a young colleague of mine got a hot stock tip on two biotech companies from his uncle, a doctor. Tech stock insanity hit both me and my mother. Without research or due diligence, I bought one and she bought the other. According to The Wall Street Journal, 12/06/07, "As measured by the Dow Jones technology index, tech stocks topped out in late March 2000. Then they began a long slide that lasted until October 2002 and left them 84% below their peak."

My stock slid into death. My mother's slid but lived. She held on to it.

At the 12/06/07 NewVa Corridor Technology Council (NCTC) Biotech After Hours hosted by the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Wendy Penry and Marge Musumeci, representatives from Human Genome Sciences, Inc., spoke about their company's evolution from research, to development, to commercialization.

The drug Human Genome Sciences hopes to market first addresses Hepatitis C. The second addresses lupus.

After their talk, I asked Ms. Penry, Virginia Tech Class of '91, if the company's stock symbol was HGSI. She said yes.

The name of the stock my mother bought? Human Genome Sciences, symbol HGSI. She has been diagnosed with lupus.

Hold on, mother.

Comments

[Marge Musumeci]

Thanks, Anne. It was a great experience speaking with you, visiting Tech, and hearing about "Blogging." I don't know how practical it will be for HGS as a 2008 objective, but we should certainly take a look at the opportunities it presents in light of our current brand work. We appreciate the references made to HGS and our soon to be commercial products. Hope your mother continues to do well with our stock and benefit from the treatment! Best Regards.

Marge Musumeci
Associate Director Strategic Staffing
Human Genome Sciences, Inc.
Rockville, MD 20850

[Anne Clelland]

Thank you, Marge, for your good wishes for my mother.

Speaking of 2008, it's still 2007 but I'm reading a book with a 2008 copyright date: Michael A. Banks's Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers. At the end of each interview, Banks lists "Points to Review." If you're short on time, consider reading those pages as a bulleted list of the most current best practices for blogging.

Also, here's an example of a staff blog that might be interesting for HGSI to consider:
http://blog.inc.com/faq.html